Ok, so I have a basic problem. The harddrive that I am presently using (500GB Seagate) has bad sectors (I am going to send this in for exchange under warranty ). I have made a full system backup using the in-built backup and restore manager. (System Image + C:) I have used only about 30GB in total on C:, so the restore is also about this size. I want to restore this to a new 160GB drive. Is this possible? (All my data is on other drives, and so unaffected by the operating system and all program files as such ) If so, which method should I utilize to minimize restoring time(and effort). My system at present is fully running, and has both hard drives installed in it. (Also, I will set the 160GB disk to be C: once I do the restore ) I appreciate all thoughts and ideas! Thanks.

I don't believe this is possible. If some of that 300GB is redundant data that's also stored on other drives you have, I suggest deleting it or backing it up separately to another drive, and then creating a backup of your C: drive that will hopefully end up smaller than 160GB. -Nick

Nick, He said 30GB, not 300 ;-) couchpotato, As long as the restore file is smaller than the drive you're trying to expand it to, you shouldn't have any trouble at all. There is a tutorial on restoring from a Windows backup available here .-Alex

Thanks for the help! Im going to try this out this weekend. Hope it goes well! Ill let you'll know how it worked out. Also, it shouldn't matter that i'm using the 64bit version of windows 7 right?

Ok, I tried that. It didn't work. It doesn't let me expand it to the smaller 160GB drive. Give an error saying something to the tune of 'no compatible drives to restore to'. I'm prepared to give up on the full restore, but now am primarily interested in restoring a winxp mode vm stored on that hdd. can that be copy/ pasted over? If so, where is the file/s located, and where do i put it? (Both drives are connected and are now running individual copies of windows7 on them )