Windows 7 backup

I'm trying to backup my OS partition for later transfer to an ssd, however, in the windows 7 backup tool, it says that to backup for use in restoring a system it needs to backup both my 60 gig OS partitiona nd my 440 gig program partition. Is there some way just to backup the OS partition? Am I wrong in thinking this should be possible?

Apparently windows thinks any service running from the other partition makes the partition a system partition and doesn't find it important to tell me what program is causing me to back up an extra 400gigs of data for no reason. So no solution at this point only head banging.

I personally wouldn't bother with the built in back up ap. I have multiple hd's installed and none are partitioned. I have but one program that I put all the data (map software) to a slave. I also installed win 7 to a single partition using up the entire drive.
Regardless, if you are using a separate partition with which to use as your program files location, the built in ap will automatically want to back that up.
I use acronis true image home and it works flawless with my 11.2 gb of OS data which is stored as a disc image file compressed down to 5.9 gigs. Windows backup is slow, it creates multiple files, and it's compression sucks.
I'd just install clean to a non-partitioned drive if possible.

DriveXML is what you want. It will make a complete drive image that can be restored to another disk. It can also be used with or without win7 in case your system crashes.

thank you orion. I didn't think drive xml was what i wanted but you were correct. I've had enough of trying to get windows 7 backup to not be awful