Need app to Clone System Partition.

I've cloned a drive before.

The current problem I have is that i got a 1TB drive with 3 partitions that I have to migrate to 2-3 smaller drives.

Acronis doesn't even wasn't to consider the operation, Apparently the 2013 version doesn't do partition to cloning to a smaller drive even if the partition in question fits with quite enough space to spare.

Then I gave the drive to a friend. He said that his software did it but the copied system drive didn't boot when the original was disconnected.

Other software problems I've seen is that the software won't do a direct copy but rather create an image and then you have to restore from it separately. If thats my option I'll probably loan a hardrive for the job but I doubt it is.

So which damn software do I try so I can clone a 100GB System Partition from a 1TB drive to a new 320GB drive, and have the darn OS boot obviously. Doing smaller drives to bigger ones was never any problem.

(Yes i saw the pre-post search results - just making sure I'm not hauling or buying any more useless cds that supposedly should but don't do the job)

 

I think the problem you may be running into is that when cloning partitions the software won't clone the MBR automatically. I usually use a Windows repair disc to attempt to fix that after the clone.
You can create a repair disc by tying repair into the Start/search box and choosing Create a Repair disc.

What happened when you tried to boot your clone-do you remember the error?

Take a look at Macrium Reflect. It says the MBR for Win7 is part of the small system reserved partition, I'm surprised by this and am not entirely sure it is true but have always been happy with the results of cloning or imaging using the product. But I have never cloned only the system partition ( I always imaged single partitions).

I'd give it a go and then see what your error is when trying to boot and then we should be able to recover from there.

 

I may be wrong about this but I can't see that it would ever be possible to clone a larger drive to a smaller one as a clone is just that - a replica of the original in every respect. I use Acronis a lot and find imaging to be totally reliable and can cope with larger to smaller. An Acronis image of the system partition will always contain the MBR btw.

@gvstn - Win 7 installed to a clean disk does have the 100MB system reserved partition, but if you partition a disk first and then install Win 7 there will be no system reserved partition and the MBR will be in track zero.