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Recover Win 7 to a parger partition

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Can I backup my C: drive (Windows 7), then double the size of the partition, and format it, with a partition manager, and then "recover my system into the enlarged C: drive?  So first, is Acronis capable putting the recovery file into an essentially new partition, and second, if it can will Windows 7 still boot?

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Larry, unless you are actually moving your Windows 7 C: drive to a larger physical disk drive as opposed to increasing the size of the existing partition on the same disk drive, then you do not need to backup the partition, format it etc.

If you already have free / unallocated space adjacent to your C: drive, then you can either use a partition manager, or expand the partition from within Windows Computer Management / Disk Management.

If you need to make free / unallocated space then you will need to do this before you can increase the size of the C: drive.

Acronis is fully capable of doing what you want if you are looking to move Windows 7 to a new larger drive - in which case, create a full backup image of the entire original drive.  Ensure that you have also created the Acronis Recovery Media and tested that this works on your computer and you can see all the drives that will be involved.

Remove your existing Windows drive and install your new larger drive.  

Boot from the Acronis Recovery media with an external drive attached containing your backup of the original Windows drive, the restore that image to the new drive. 
Note: If your drive has a small (approx 200MB) Windows system partition (hidden) then this should be restored at that same size and not allowed to be automatically increased in size on the new larger drive.

I am going to double the size of my Windows 7 partition (C: drive).  With a partition manager I'm told this should be no problem.  I know I can back up what is currently my system drive with Acronis.

However if there is a problem with increasing the size of the C: drive and it will no longer boot, Can I reformat it, then use the Acronis back up to re-install my system to the enlarged C: drive to get it to boot?

Larry Ackerson wrote:

However if there is a problem with increasing the size of the C: drive and it will no longer boot, Can I reformat it, then use the Acronis back up to re-install my system to the enlarged C: drive to get it to boot?

Larry,

ATI if fully capable of restoring an image to a larger drive and getting the drive to boot. 

Note:

The backup must made using disk mode, not partition mode. 

If you then perform a restore, as described by Steve Smith, then ATI will proportionally resize the partitions.  To restore an image where you control the partition sizes, you will have to refer to the user manual for the particular version of ATI.  For example, for ATI 2014, the procedure is covered in paragraph 7.1.1.2.  Regardless of which version of ATI you are using, pay particular attention to whether or not to recover Track 0 and MBR.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

FtrPilot