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Can a backup disc be restored to a smaller disc?

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I am trying to help as friend install Acronis and have given her a 2TB external drive for use for the backups. Her system has a single internal drive....C:\

I plan a disc-to-disc BU, however, can a recovery be carried out, from the 2TB external drive to the smaller internal drive?

The contents of the external drive will never be larger than the internal drive, obviously.

Regards....Noel

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Noel wrote:
can a recovery be carried out, from the 2TB external drive to the smaller internal drive?

Size of external disk is not relevant.

The size of the existing used space on the main disk is the important thing. If restoring to a disk smaller than the original source disk, The size of a new disk would need to be at the very very least twiice the size of the used space from which the backup was made.

If restoring to a disk smaller than the original source disk, most likely, the type of restore needed would be as illustrated in signature link 3 below, item #1 Restoring to a Larger/Smaller disk. Each partition would need to be restored individually as per example.

added: Have you looked at the Windows Disk Management graphical view to see how many partitions exist on this computer? This can also affect the type of restore being contemplated.

Many thanks GroverH.

There are only two partitions on the existing internal disc...Winre and C:\. Or perhaps this is counted as a single partition.

The Internal disc is 1TB, or less and I know the external BU disc is 2TB and I wondered if using a Disc-to-Disc BU, there might be a problem if restoring to the same internal disc.

Regards...Noel

No, this is not counted as a single partition.

If there is no problems with the system but you just want to go backup in time via the backup, then you could restore C only.
However, If you are having problems with the syst em, then you would want to restore both partitions and is this specific disk, you could perform a disk option restore which would restore everything. A disk opiton restore is illustrated in signature link 3, item 2--disk option restore.

If restoring only C, the signature link 3, item 3 would suffice. "Restoring only C"

If restoring to a new disk, in this specific example, you could use signature link 3, item 2 or item 1--either one but the disk opiton restore would be better.

You and your friend may find this guide of interest.
It is new and has just been added. No questions to be posted on that forum where the guide is posted.
This is really an update to 2014 as much of the material exists in other guides in my signature--such as signature link 2 below.

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/56872

My goodness GroverH, what an incredibly valuable guide!

I am so grateful and I am sure all Users will be delighted with this detailed set of instructions.

Regards.....Noel