win 7 64 bit laptop MAKE A CLONE / Image

[Raul_McCai]

There is a laptop running Win 7 64 bit

I have finally convinced the owner (after a ransomware attack and then later an email crash) that backing it up might be a good thing.
I have my server backed up with a plug & play front bay type set up I used Acronis to crate an image complete with MBR and I can just insert that hard drive and run with it any time I want.

However the laptop presents me with a different issue ( and of course my ignorance is always another issue).
I can get an external drive or I can get a docking station and a SATA hard drive.
I can make an image of her computer or just copy all the data files or both.
I can do these things

However

The laptop HD is a different kind of beast from my Workstation using 4" wide SATA hard drives in front loading bays. On the laptop, I can't just pull the one drive and insert the other.

So the question is:
How to I migrate the Clone/Image of the laptop from an external or big SATA drive over to the lap top.
This assumes the physical drive on the lap top is not what failed, but rather the issues are software or ransomware - - that sort of thing.

Aside: The reason I'm thinking along these lines is because a dead straight up clone complete with MBR and all the operating software is a whole lot easier than reinstalling all the software from discs.
Can't tell ya how many times CIH forced me to do that in the 1990s.

Any input? Thx

 

[boosted1g]

You can always use something like macrium reflect instead of acronis and transfer it over the network.

The recovery boot CD also allows you to mount a share and transfer the saved image back to the computer.

ONe other nice thing about Reflect is that you can mount the image on the storage computer if you ever just want to recover a quick file or two.

 

[captaincharisma]

why not just put the cloned image on a USB external hard drive and transfer the image to the laptop's HDD that way. a program like Acronis should detect an external drive

 

[boosted1g]

You can always use something like macrium reflect instead of acronis and transfer it over the network.

The recovery boot CD also allows you to mount a share and transfer the saved image back to the computer.

ONe other nice thing about Reflect is that you can mount the image on the storage computer if you ever just want to recover a quick file or two.

 

[jsmithepa]

I keep only OS+App on C: and that's what I image, using Macrium but they are others. Macrium writes the image to a file to my network drive but can be usb-attached as well, once compressed, taking only 11G. Through Macrium, I create a BOOTABLE USB recovery flash (512M enough) and that's what I used to boot when restore needed, takes 15 minutes. My data is kept on D: and they are backed up at different intervals. So....

1. Macrium is disaster recovery, restore OS to clean.
2. Data partition backup when lots of change/important is been made.