I'm alerting your post to see if any of the experts can help, but in the meantime only a guess.
I know that cloning fails if the target drive is smaller than the source drive, so I am wondering if the same is true when attempting to restore from what is now a source drive to a smaller target drive. Acronis can do this, backup from one drive to a smaller drive, but not many other cloning systems.
What I mean is this;
Source copied, (cloned), to a new drive which is the same size or larger is fine.
Source cloned to a smaller drive fails.
Therefore, is the reverse true?
Restore from a source drive to a smaller drive fails?
It seems so from http://www.runtime.org/driveimage_faq.htm#smaller
You don't say what system you have, so I would ask if you can use a normal hdd which is larger than the original SSD?
Mark
I created an image of a fresh install of windows 7 back in april of a new 128gb ssd. The drive failed 6months later and they cannot get the same one so offered me a different one and the rest of my money back. The only problem is the new drive is 120gb so drive xml freaks out. I've adjusted the size in the drive_C.XML file and physical capacity to get around it freaking out but when it restores it just messes up the partition. Is there any other way around this or any other restore programs that can work with .xml's? My windows 7 is a student update from windows xp so it takes a weekend to get everything on and set-up with drivers and updates etc. I also think Ill have to buy the windows 7update again as it was a use one type program. Thanks for any help you can give

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