Windows 7 Backup & Restore to a new SSD???

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n0vice

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Nov 26, 2013
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Hi

Can anyone tell me if it would be possible to transfer a system image created from Windows 7 Backup and Restore on an old HDD to an external device? then transfer it with a recovery disk to a new SSD??

I was wondering if this was possible as I tried the imaging software that came with the SSD which did not work and Ghost which I have used successfully on many occasions and it always failed! Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
 
Solution
giantbucket
Nope. You can recover to a fresh drive that you just bought 14 nanoseconds ago. Windows will even set up a partition on the SSD to match what it originally was on the HDD,

One note of caution - look for a place where it mentions excluding disks!!! And then exclude all drives other than your SSD.

Or unplug every drive except the SSD and the one that has the image before you boot into the CD recovery disc.
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giantbucket

giantbucket

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if you mean to just copy-paste the entire "WindowsImageBackup" folder from the D: drive to the N: drive, then yes. and as long as your mobo and win7 recovery can see the external N: drive via USB, you can restore that image onto a new drive.

the ONLY thing is: are you using SATA on both old drive and new, or was the old drive IDE for some reason? as long as the interfaces are the same, and you're restoring onto the exact same computer, then yeah piece of cake.

of course, keep the original OS drive intact until you're satisfied that your recovery gave you the OS back exactly as expected, and you're able to boot / reboot / etc repeatedly with no issues.
 
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n0vice

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Nov 26, 2013
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Thanks for your response! Both are SATA drives. So if I remove the old hard disk drive, connect the external device with the image backup (.wim file) created through back up and restore, then install the new SSD in place of the old HDD: I can then boot from a Windows Repair Disc that I can use to transfer the system image from the external hard drive to the new SSD??
 
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popatim

popatim

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AS long as the SSD isn't smaller than the old HDD then Windows can restore just fine. If the SSD is smaller then you will need to either shrink the existing partition on the old HDD (and make it small enough to fit onto the SSD) or use a different utility that can restore to a smaller drive.
 
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n0vice

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Nov 26, 2013
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Thanks both for your replies.

OK the SSD is larger than the HDD so hopefully should go OK. Will I have to have Windows 7 installed on the SSD though so that the recovery disc recognises a version of Windows 7 on the drive that I am recovering to?
 
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giantbucket

giantbucket

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Nope. You can recover to a fresh drive that you just bought 14 nanoseconds ago. Windows will even set up a partition on the SSD to match what it originally was on the HDD,

One note of caution - look for a place where it mentions excluding disks!!! And then exclude all drives other than your SSD.

Or unplug every drive except the SSD and the one that has the image before you boot into the CD recovery disc.
 
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Solution
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n0vice

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Nov 26, 2013
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Thanks for all your advice. I am going to test this for future reference! :) However, someone already sorted this before I could by using Partition magic to transfer the data from one drive to the other.

 
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n0vice

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Ghost is old also and out of support after June 2014 :) I don't think the motherboard supports UEFI its a Dell Optiplex 755 so about 6 years old!

 
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