Windows 7: Back up on external drive or internal drive

I don't have Windows 7 yet, but I'm just about to install it, but I figure it may be safe to do a back up first. I'm about to do an upgrade from Vista 64-bit to Windows 7 64-bit. I did find these recommendations:

"An image backup of your hard drive offers an easy, dependable way to do just that, since it restores everything on the hard drive: Windows, applications, data, and even the Master Boot Record. To create one, you'll need an external hard drive, and an image backup program. I recommend the free version of Macrium Reflect for image backup, although others will do. Plug in the external hard drive before you create the image, and select that drive as the Backup destination. Also, be sure to create the bootable Rescue CD (this option is on Macrium Reflect's Other Tasks menu) before you start the upgrade."



In these instructions they mention "external hard drive". Does it really have to be an external drive? I have several internal drives to choose from, can't I just use one of them? I have 1 drive with Vista OS and 3 more drives within my computer, so It would be great if I could use one of them.

Hello ptoolemy, and welcome to Seven Forums.

You can save the backup/image to any external or internal HDD you like. It's just recommended to save it onto a separate physical HDD that is not included in the backup/image. That's all.