How can I restore Windows 7 to Bootcamp partition - not reformat the entire hard drive?

Question

Hello Apple (Mac) Community,
I originally posted this question over on answers.microsoft, but no help was forthcoming. Hope someone can help me with a problem that's (almost) making me nuts! I teach graphics to college students. In brief: I run Windows 7 Pro 64 on a Mac Pro tower, along with Snow Leopard (OSX). Windows is loaded on one partition of a 1TB drive. The other partition is a Mac backup. The Mac OS is on a different drive. Everything was going swimmingly with both OS, until recently. Unfortunately, the drive with Windows showed problems and I determined that the HD was either toast or needed a total reformat. My Mac data was all backed-up. Now I wanted to backup Windows so I can easily get back to the relatively happy point of my Windows 7 experience (drivers loaded, dual monitors all working, etc.). I did some online searching and the recommendation was to create a "system image" of the existing Windows 7 install by attaching an external drive, formatting that to NTFS and selecting "backup to image" in Windows. I did that and also took the opportunity to "create a backup disc" on a DVD. (Windows recommended). Next I rebooted back to Mac OS and completely reformatted the problem 1TB disc to a single partition, zero all data, just to see if it would actually reformat. It all worked! So far, so good. Next I used Bootcamp to create two partitions, one for Windows. I then restarted using the Win7 Pro (64) install disc, reformatted the Bootcamp disk to NTFS (as required) and installed Windows 7. After all that is completed and all working, I next try to use the restore from image function while booted in Windows. I'm instructed to restart from the Win install disc, which I do. Here's where things get difficult. When I try to choose restore from image, at that point the installer asks which drives to I want to exclude... but does not show partitions, only full HDs. I do not want to reformat the entire 1TB drive. I only want Windows on the 120gb Bootcamp partition (which is already formatted for Windows BTW). I spent a lot of time online reading through articles with users having the same frustration.
So here (at long last) is my question: How can I either restore Windows just to a Bootcamp partition... using "Windows System Image" or if that can't be done... can I somehow import all of the settings, etc. from the "image" (image is on external HD) into a fresh Win 7 install? So far the "backup disc" also seems useless. I can't even boot to Windows from it. BTW Apple folks: the only response on the MS side was that some "expert" simply posted links on how to install Windows and restore... not helpful with my particular problem of restoring to a partition.
Any help would be appreciated! Hopefully some help that even a Mac user / new Windows user could understand would be better! Thanks!
-melt

Answer 1

WinClone 3 is OS X and saves Windows image it makes for restore - that should work but you will have to try and you would need to make a new image unless it also works with a native Windows system restore image. It is now supported and has come a long way.
http://www.twocanoes.com/
Paragon Clone OS works and does disk-to-disk clone just like CCC you end up with two bootable drives. But does not work with your setup. It would let you clone and move your Windows install to an SSD or another disk drive though and be bootable.
During its clone process it checks for errors which is very helpful and lets you know - something CCC and others should adopt more of.
http://www.paragon-software.com/downloads/demo.html
I wish for our/my sake you had re-read and rewritten the long 'story' and broken it into a brief list of facts we needed.
OS X
Windows
Backup (though external is much safer) and you want bootable OS X clones as well as TimeMachine
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1553
There are a number of things to do like chkdsk and others as well as Windows DVD to do automatic system repairs and find out why.
AppleHFS - the abilty to mount and read HFS volumes can be notorious.
I would rearrange and redo your storage setup and how you use the 4-5 internal hard drive bays.