Hardware-related questions about Complete PC Restore :

We’ve seen a lot of questions about restoring Complete PC Restore images to different hardware. Here are some answers to the common questions.

Q. Can you restore a Complete PC Backup image to a smaller drive if the amount of space used in the initial backup is smaller than the smaller disk?

A. The backup can be restored only if:

At least the same number of hard drives are present, and
Each disk is at least as big as the disk it replaces.

Here are some examples to illustrate this:

Working examples

During backup
---------------------------------
1x100GB drive
1x100GB drive
1x100GB drive
1x100GB drive,1x200GB drive
1x100GB drive,1x200GB drive

During restore
--------------------------------

1x100GB drive

1x200GB drive

1x200GB drive, 1x80GB drive

1x100GB drive, 1x200GB drive

2x200GB drive, 2x200GB drive

Non-working examples

During backup
----------------------------------------------
1x100GB drive
1x100GB drive
1x100GB drive
1x100GB drive, 1x200GB drive
1x100GB drive, 1x200GB drive
1x100GB drive, 1x200GB drive

During restore

---------------------------------------------

0 drives*

1x80GB drive

1x80GB drive, 1x40GB drive

1x500GB drive

1x500GB drive, 1x160GB drive

1x500GB drive, 1x80GB drive

*possibly due to no drivers loaded in Windows Recovery Environment (RE)


Courtesy: cfsbloggers
http://blogs.technet.com