Windows 7 – System Image Recovery
So I have several of these HP EliteBook 2730p Tablet PC’s. They are all identically configured, so my assumption was that the System Image Recovery options in Windows 7 would allow me to clone them with the same backup image.
Well, for the record, yes, I can. It works great, in fact! Except for one major condition: the hard drive you’re restoring to MUST be pre-partitioned in the same way that it was in the image.
That is, if you’ve got a 120GB hard drive, and you partition it with the default format (100MB system recovery drive, and 100-some-odd GB for C: drive), then you have to repartition the system that way to start with, and THEN launch SIR to perform the restore. Otherwise it will fail with a 0×80070057 error about an invalid parameter. Oops! Hopefully this will be corrected in SP1.