System Image

I downloaded Reflect free, created a recovery DVD, backed up my OS disk image, deleted and re-created the system RAID 0 disk, and I'm using the restored image as we speak. Very nice. Works fine with Win 10.

DJG said:

I downloaded Reflect free, created a recovery DVD, backed up my OS disk image, deleted and re-created the system RAID 0 disk, and I'm using the restored image as we speak. Very nice. Works fine with Win 10.

Thanks. I'm making a image now

I've done a backup using Acronis True Image 2016. Thanks for the help!

Boozad said:

I already did it when I wrote the tutorial.

If you did the testing then you must know the answer to this question...

If you create a system image with just the critical partitions and move it to a smaller drive, which is large enough for those partitions, will it work even if the total partitioned space on the original drive is too large to fit on the smaller drive...

Sorry if I missed this in your tutorial.

Boozad said:

It completely depends on the size of each drive in question and the compressed size of the image. If the image is too large then no, it won't work.

The question was trying to be non-specific so as to not get into the weeds with drive sizes. I am not referring to the actual Image size and whether it will fit in a partition, but will the image, when recovered, fit on a smaller drive.

The problem used to be, the image would need a target drive as least as large as the total partitioned space on the original Hard drive. For instance, if there were 300 GBs of partitioned space (all partitions) on the original drive, the image of that drive would not fit on a 250 GB drive. Now, if only 120 GB of the 300 GBs is used for the Critical partitions, would that image fit on the 250 GB drive?

There have been many instances of someone wanting to move their install to an SSD, which is normally smaller than the original HDD, so this question comes up quite a bit.

Sorry to be a pain, but if you have not tested this, I will need to.

Boozad said:

I've not tested that no as I personally wouldn't try to recover an image of a larger drive onto a smaller one.

We can make it fit!!

It works as long as the actual data the image contains does not use more space than available on the new, smaller drive. Most imaging programs offer to adjust partition size when restoring. But of course the new disk has at least to be big enough so all data within the image fits on the disk.

If you are doing just one partition that would work, but if you're restoring a whole disk with several partitions it may not.