Want to clone HD before OS upgrade, lots of Q's

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godfree51586

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Mar 21, 2012
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Hey Guys,

So I decided that I finally want to upgrade to Windows 7 from Windows XP, mainly because I'm upgrading my system from directx 9 with a Radeon 4850 to a Direct X11 with a 6850 to help my gaming performance. I wanted to make a complete clone of my current hard drive in case something goes terribly wrong with the upgrade so I can restore to exactly how it was before, but I recently just started reading up a bit on the whole cloning procedures so I don't know a lot about it. My questions:

1. All I have is an external hard drive, am I able to clone to this?
2. If so how would I restore my clone from the external drive to the main in case of failure? Is it bootable?
3. If it's not bootable... I hear many of these programs require creating a bootable CD, can you create AND restore images with this? (Is this how 2 is done?)
4. I currently have files on my external and I read cloning wipes everything on it to write to it. Should I move all my files to my main drive to have a clean external?
5. After I have upgraded my new hard drive to windows 7, will I be able to load up and retrieve files from my cloned drive and put them on my main drive?

Now after the upgrade to 7 goes okay I'd like to make a clone of that and keep it up to date to be able to restore my system. I was reading in the other thread that creating an image of your drive and then using a backup program is a good way to be failure safe. You restore the image file you created on X date and then any backups after that. But how is this done? I've never used backup software before, I've only moved certain directories to my external.

And one last thing if you could point me in the right direction of a good piece of software (or several) to use for this or write a small guide I'd be hugely appreciative. Thanks!
 
Solution
1. Yes, as long as the drive is the same size or larger than the original.

2. A clone is an exact copy, so yes, it's bootable.

3. Not applicable.

4. Yes, move all files to the other drive first as cloning will wipe out the destination drive.

5. Yes, you can have the cloned drive installed as a secondary drive and retrieve files from it.

Extra: You don't need to clone the windows 7 drive. You use backup software to create an image of the drive. In case of a drive failure, you restore the image and everything is back the way it was. Any good backup software will allow you to create a bootable rescue disk. In case of drive failure you boot from the rescure disk (dvd) and restore a prior image.

I've had great success with Acronis True...
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