It's the amount of USED disk space that usually makes the difference, not partition size. Obviously the Windows 7 backup program is the worst which coincides with my experience. A lot of folks like Acronis, but I had some very bad experiences with it, so I keep away from it. Norton Ghost used to be the best, but good old Symantec has dropped support for it, so I'm using the FREE program Easeus Todo Backup Free. It works extremely well for me and is totally free for home use.
Good luck.
I recently tested imaging of my Windows 7 system using three different utilities. Times were recorded and are shown below. If anyone has resized a partition during imaging while using Macrium, did it take longer than the normal operation? Is there anything that can be done to shorten the time?
The compressed image files were typically 45-50 GB. Windows 7 used about 70 GB on a 1 TB disk with single partition plus the small boot partition. Imaging was done by booting and running the associated recovery CD. Verification was not enabled.
Create and Store Image on External USB 3.0 Disk
Acronis - 9 minutes
Macrium - 14 minutes
Windows 7 - 12 minutes
Restore Image to 1 TB Disk
Acronis - 9 minutes
Macrium - 25 minutes
Macrium - 52 minutes (resize 1 TB to 500 GB)
Windows 7 - 29 minutes

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