System image restore failed

Windows 7 - SDD Recovery Procedure

Baseline:

1. Your existing install of Windows 7 on the SSD, I will reference this as your “SSD drive”
2. Your external USB drive and the Windows 7 Backup and Restore Image backup, I will refer to this as the “Master Image”.
3. Your internal (E:) hard drive, I will refer to this as the  “Internal Drive”

Software:

MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition:

http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

Acronis True Image 2011 Home (Free Trial): http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/index.html

My Defrag: http://www.mydefrag.com/

Brief Overview:

Use Acronis to covert the “Master Image” to Acronis format. Shrink the front of your “Internal” drive. Disconnect the data cable from the “SDD drive”. Restore the converted “Master Image” to the unallocated space on the “Internal drive”, Boot to the restored image no located on the “Internal Drive”. Shrink the Windows 7 partition on the “Internal Drive”. Create a new Acronis Image Backup to the USB drive. Disconnect the data cable from the “Internal Drive”. Connect the data cable to the “SSD drive”. Restore the newly created Acronis Image to the “SSD drive”. Boot from the SSD drive and verify your apps and data are intact and function properly.

Here are the steps on what you actually will need to do:

1. Install Acronis True Image on the “SSD drive” if you haven’t already done so.
2. Install Partition Wizard on the “SDD drive”.
3. Create a folder on the USB drive and make a copy the “Master Image” folders and file in the folder you created. (WindowsImageBackup, folder that has the same name as your ‘Computer Name’ and a file named MediaId.bin). This is for added protection of the “Master Image”.
4. Use Acronis to convert the “Master Image” located in the root of the USB drive (do not use the extra copy in the folder you created) for use by the Acronis True Image recovery media. The conversion will create a file with a .tib extension.
5. Shrink the front of the (E:) “Internal Drive” drive partition to create 150GB of “Unallocated” space. This is more than large enough to restore the image to.
6. Use the Acronis 'Recovery Disk' to restore the converted “Master Image” to the "Unallocated" (150GB) space on the “Internal Drive”.
7. See if you can boot to what was once your E: drive, which will now have 3 partitions (System,Reserved, Windows and your original data partition). Note: The small 100MB System,Reserved partition must be marked as the 'Active' partition during the image restore. If it is not use Partition Wizard (Bootable CD) to mark it as the active partition.
8. Run ‘Disk Cleanup’. Install My Defrag and defragment the drive using the option to consolidate everything up at the front of the drive. This will not only make step 9 easier to perform but also minimize the footprint of the image backup you are going to create in step 10. Should also have less impact for TRIM on the SSD drive.
9. Shrink the Windows partition on the “Internal Drive” drive (Using ‘Disk Management’) to a size that is slightly less than the 80GB. This assumes that your previous installation which you used for the creation of the “Master Image” did not consume more than 80GB. In any case try to get it (Shrink it) down to less 100GB.
10. Install Acronis and create a new Image Backup using Acronis to the USB drive.

Note: Only include the System,Reserved and Windows (C:) partition in the backup. Do not include the data partition of what was once your E: drive.

11. Disconnect the data cable from the “Internal Drive” and connect the data cable to the “SSD Drive”.
12. Boot from the Acronis 'Recovery/Rescue' CD and restore the newly created “Acronis” image from the USB drive to the “SSD Drive”. This is where the leap of faith kicks in. With Windows already on the “SSD Drive” you need to (Using Acronis) first delete the existing “System,Reserved” and the “Windows” partitions from the “SDD” drive so the entire 120GB is listed as “Unallocated”. Then you start the image recovery process and let Acronis resize the image to fully utilize all 120GigaBytes on the “SSD drive”.
13. Remove the Acronis CD and reboot to Windows.
14. Next you should use Windows 7’s  'Disk Management' to verify that there is no unallocated space. If there is, then 'Extend' the SSD drive C: partition to include any unallocated space that may be remaining at the end of the SSD drive.
15. Your done.

Please note that I will not be available after about 10AM US Eastern Time.

J W Stuart http://www.pagestart.com

I know how to recover the data files - in fact that's the first thing I did when I got the replacement SSD drive.  Then I realised that that was not the same thing as a full restore.  It's the applications which are the problem - especially my email program (Mozilla Thunderbird) which, when I first bought this machine was an absolute nightmare to reinstall and reconfigure - mainly because all of the thousands of emails in its "Mailbase" are compressed.  When you reinstall it new folders are created and copying old folders across just messes it up.  It's that sort of thing - and smtp and pop3 and FTP settings which took me days to sort out last time, and what I'm hoping to try to avoid.  (Though had I have known how long the alternative was going to take I'd obviously have done it that way).  As we've come this far, let's go ahead and try the recovery process.  You'll probably have to lead me through it step by step.  Where do we start?

That leaves two options:

1. Use OCZ's recommendation and stay with a fresh install of Windows (I can show you how to at least recover your data files, but the applications will need to be reinstalled).
2. Go ahead with the recovery process and restore the Image Backup to the new SSD drive. I have this techique documented (using traditional hard drives) documented.

Its your choice.

J W Stuart: http://www.pagestart.com

Here's the answer I got to my request for the link:

OK, I've asked them for the link.