Allan, thank you for your detailed advice.  However, I have now solved the problem.  Assuming the "not enough disk space" error message was the residual consequence of the apparently failed attempt to clone the contents of the old drive to the new, I found a utility that both created a bootable flash drive and provided a hard drive erase tool. After running the erase tool, I tried the system restore again and it successfully formatted the partition and installed the system backup.  There was a problem with Win7 failing to start (possibly a problem with the Win boot manager), but after several attempts with both the Win self-repair and the repair disk, it is now fully functional. I did reset the bios to its defaults at one point, so this may have been the key. Greg
Dell Vostro 3350 Win 7 Following a blue screen failure (one month after end of warranty) that could not be resolved I have had a new hard drive installed that is the same model and size as the original.  However, when I try and do a factory system restore from the CD I created when I bought the laptop, it won't run - with the error message "not enough disk space". As I have a blank drive, I do not have any other utilities to fix this.  Has the new drive been inappropriately formatted or partitioned?  How do I correct the new drive so the system restore will run? All suggestions gratefully received! Greg
System Restore: "Not enough disk space"