We report on a remarkable enhancement of high harmonic (HH) radiation emitted from the interaction of an ultra-intense laser pulse with ultra-thin foils by a manipulation of foil pre-plasma conditions. With a strong counter-propagating pre-pulse, we introduce a concerted expansion of the ultrathin foil target, and this significantly raises the efficiency of the HH generation process. Our experimental results show how the emission efficiency can be easily controlled by the intensity and delay time of the pre-pulse. The results give an important insight into the high harmonic generation process from solid dense plasmas when spatially limited. 1D particles in cell simulations confirm our experimental findings and show a significant dependency of the HH emission efficiency on the plasma density. The simplicity of the ultra-thin foil target and interaction geometry hold promise for specifically compact realization of imaging experiments with ultra-short and bright extreme ultra violet-pulses.