UKC

Every week or so I use Windows 7's built-in 'Back up and Restore' to create an image of my local drive, which is then saved onto an external USB hard drive. Yesterday I bought a new (bigger) SSD to replace my existing one and am trying to restore the image of the old SSD to the new one, but what I thought would be a 5 minute job has so far been the opposite.

If I boot from my Windows installation DVD using 'normal' BIOS, I can get as far as choosing the image I want to use before I get an error message saying "Windows cannot restore a system image to a computer that has different firmware. The system image was created on a computer using EFI and the computer is using BIOS".
If I then boot from the DVD using EFI I can only get as far as clicking the 'Restore Windows from image' option after the setup files load, at which point I get an error saying that the recovery disk is incompatible and to try another disk.

Out of interest, I tried booting from BIOS and restoring the image to my old SSD and that worked fine so I know that the image and the installation DVD are both ok. Surely there must be some way to do it, as the whole point of being able to restore from an image is that you can do it to a different drive not the same one.

Can anyone help? I've tried Google and found quite a few people having the same issue but unfortunately no solution to it.

In reply to Foxache:

There are a couple of issues. Windows backup and restore is noddy to say the least. You can basically only backup and restore that PC. If you change anything about it i.e. hard drive size etc, you will run into problems and certainly won't be able to expand the partition being restored.

There is a neat little freeby I use called Macrium Reflect which will backup and restore your PC and if you replace the disk, you can expand / shrink the restored partitions as you go along. I believe it can handle EFI and their associated GPT disks.

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

However, if you want to restore to a different PC you will need to splash out the $58 or so for the Pro version which has the redeploy function. It has got me out of trouble several times.

In reply to ByEek:

Now that you mention it, I remember using Macrium Reflect years ago to sort out an old laptop but had forgotten all about it.

So do you reckon I'll be able to image my current drive then restore to the new drive using the free version or will that require the redeploy function in the Pro version (what, in its eyes, would constitute a new PC)?

In reply to Foxache:

You could use Paragon Free Backup
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/br-free/

You could use this to create a mirror image and store the image on an external hard drive. You should then be able to put this image onto a new SSD drive.

Or, start from scratch with a clean install on your new SSD and make an image of that when you've got the new set-up just how you like it.

Well this has turned into a right bloody nightmare!

Given what everyone has said I ditched Windows Restore and created an image of my old SSD using Macrium Reflect, along with a Reflect rescue disk to boot from. That part, along with restoring this image to the new SSD, was all dead straightforward, but I just cannot get my PC to boot from the new SSD.

I've checked the partitions on it using Gparted and they all look fine. Macrium also sees it as a valid Windows 7 installation when I boot from the Macrium rescue disk. It's set as the number 1 device in the boot priority list and I've also tried using the "Fix boot problems" option on the rescue disk, selecting the Windows install on the new SSD and telling it to boot from the boot partition on that drive, but every time I try it I just get the black screen with the flashing white cursor.

The new SSD definitely works ok because I can install a new copy of Windows to it and boot from that, just not the image. I've also tried restoring the image to the old SSD and that works fine too (i.e. I can boot from it) so that rules Macrium out. What's cracking off?!

Well on the off-chance that someone else reads this and is having the same problem, the following worked for me:

-Set boot priority as 1= CD/DVD drive, 2 = the new SSD/HDD and everything else disabled
-Boot Windows installation DVD using EFI so that the repair options are displayed (rather than the "This disk isn't compatible" error that I got with BIOS)
-Run the startup repair (it'll probably say it's failed but it definitely did something to help fix mine, because performing the steps below on their own didn't work)
-Restart, boot from DVD, open a command prompt and run all of the bootrec repair options
-Restart, boot from installation DVD again and now try running startup repair again. At this point mine failed again ("Windows was unable to automatically fix the error" or something) but then on restarting it popped up with some dialogue box about it detecting a problem with the installation, churned away doing something, and then suddenly it worked!

Having wasted about 2 days on this I'm now weeping tears of joy.

In reply to Foxache:

Sounds like a lot of hassle when you could just make a custom build of win7 and chuck it on a usb stick and just format/install to give yourself a new ready-to-go win7 installation.

The reason most people do frequent installs of their OS is to get rid of problems caused by bad configs or excessive program installation that slow the machine down, if you're backing up an image any problems you have will just be transferred to the new installation.. which kind of defeats the purpose.

A clean install would've defeated the whole object of what I was trying to do though, i.e. get everything onto my new SSD so that it's exactly as it was on my old SSD.