Rensul 1 Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 Does anyone know of a way to bare metal restore to a smaller sized hard drive? I'd like to restore WS2012R2e to a 128GB SSD but right now it's backed up from a 500GB hard drive - my experience has been that you can only restore to an equal or greater sized hard drive - looking to see if anyone has any workarounds to this... - Trying to put the SSD on the famous Schoondoggie bracket! Thanks Link to post Share on other sites
diehard 42 Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 Since you already have that 500 gig backup. Use Disk Management and shrink your current OS drive partition to smaller than the SSD. Then do a new backup and restore the new backup to the SSD. Link to post Share on other sites
Rensul 1 Posted March 23, 2014 Author Share Posted March 23, 2014 Awesome - thanks Link to post Share on other sites
ikon 439 Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 Be aware you could run into issues: sometimes there are so-called 'unmovable files' in a location on the drive that will prevent you from shrinking it as small as you need. Hopefully, that won't be the case, but be prepared. Link to post Share on other sites
diehard 42 Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 I've run into that issue and download a trial of PerfectDisk that has an option to shrink for SSD Link to post Share on other sites
Rensul 1 Posted March 23, 2014 Author Share Posted March 23, 2014 I'll give it a shot without doing anything special - If it bombs out or only re-partitions down to a certain size and no more then at least I know that it could very well be due to some immovable files. Then I'll need to decide if I want to go the PerfectDisk route. Thanks Link to post Share on other sites
jmwills 284 Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 As long as the partition being restored will fit on the new drive, it works, with a caveat. Use a docking station mount the new drive and the executable estore file and point to the the new drive. Works like a champ. The beauty is you can restore any machine that has been backed up to any external drive then place that drive in the new target client and off you go. Link to post Share on other sites
ikon 439 Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 jmwills makes a good point; you absolutely do NOT have to restore an image using the computer it was made from -- you can use any computer that can run the Recovery Disk. Link to post Share on other sites
Rensul 1 Posted March 27, 2014 Author Share Posted March 27, 2014 So looks like I ran into the immovable file situation. I can't shrink the volume below 300GB... Plan B is just to get a 500GB 2.5" spindle drive and attach it to the bracket and use that as my OS drive. As always - thanks for everyone's help. Although I think I'll still look into Perfect Disk and see if I can trust it to move the immovable files. Link to post Share on other sites
ikon 439 Posted March 27, 2014 Share Posted March 27, 2014 As long as you don't mess with the original drive (i.e. you keep it as it is, so you have a fallback) you should be able to experiment to your heart's content. Link to post Share on other sites
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