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After cloning HDD, restoration fails

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I cloned my system (Win7 Ultimate) from a 320gb internal HDD onto a 500gb USB external drive prior to installing a new 500gb drive into my laptop (HP Pavilion series) using the Acronis Boot CD to do so. I was successful in restoring the original cloned system onto the new 500gb internal drive. Unfortunately that 500gb internal drive started failing within 24 hours, so I swapped it out for the original 320gb internal. I will be getting a replacement for the dud 500gb, but don't know long it will take and I have urgent work that needs to be done. I really don't want to spend more hours reinstalling software and files onto a disk that will be removed as soon as my replacement arrives.

When I tried to restore my cloned system from the USB 500gb external drive to the 320gb internal, I got a "cloning failed" error. I had already reformatted the original 320gb internal disk (damn!!). What do I do now? Would it work if I placed the 320gb in an external enclosure and cloned back to it that way? The 500gb drive had not been partitioned before I started - would I succeed if I divide it into 2 partitions with the first partition being set around 320gb? I'm willing to try any suggestions that are going to be relatively swift......

This is the first time I have used Acronis True Image Home 2010.

Thanks.

regards
Pat. Mitchell

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What build number of TI are you using? I'd suggest making an image file of the 500GB and then restore that file to the 320GB rather than cloning. See Grover's Index of the Accumulated Wisdom by Many. Check here first for guides or solutions. http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3426. Section 7 should help.

Pat, when you clone a drive the target has to be the same size or larger, thus you cannot go from the 500GB to the 320GB. ThomasJK has a great suggestion however you "may" encounter an issue with the BOOTMGR, if you do then see my post at http://forum.acronis.com/forum/10587 and see if helps you.

Are we talking clonging or backing up?

Instead of cloning you should be able to make a backup and restore that to a diff size drive.

At a minimum, I'd make a backup onto a spare drdive just to ensure that I'd could go back to the beginning, so to speak. Consider getting another external drive to use to store multiple backups.