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Best Way for Hard Drive Restore & Software to use
Hi folks,
I have read and read pages of articles on what I am about to ask and the more I read the more "Confused" and "Undecided" I become ...
First of all I am a Total Newbie in Cloning & Imaging area ...
I have a Gateway M-6862 laptop with Vista Home Prem., SP2, X64 with 250GB WD SATA Hard Drive.
Last week I used the latest "CCleaner" and "Wise Care 365" and did not bother to go thru all the items one by one and said CLEAN ... well, one of these 2 culprits Cleaned alright ... my System became Unstable and I keep getting "Black Screen Of Death" ... on Start-up I would get a Black Screen and No Control of Explorer ... at least I was able to shut-down and go into Safe mode.
So, I had no choice to do a "System Restore" which reinstalled my OS fresh from Partition D ... my Active Partition is C ... so, everything A-OK so far ... the New Install comes with SP1. I had already downloaded SP2 Stand-alone just for this ... so, it's installation did not take much time ... but then when I went online ... there were like 155 new Updates that needed to be installed ... which really did not take much time ...
I am afraid that may be soon Microsoft might decide NOT to Support Vista anymore and the Updates might not be available, if ever my laptop craps out ...
I am used to Vista and most my Apps work with Vista and not sure if it would work with Windows 7 or 8.
I also have already installed my Antivirus and some Basic Software ... like Office and some On-Demand Malware Scanners ... in the hindsight, may be I should have not installed anything else before making my Image or Clone ...
Oh, BTW, I plan to use a 3TB Fresh Seagate External Hard Drive (with USB-3) to park my Image or Clone or whatever you guys suggest ...
So, that is why I am interested in the following Q's
Q1: I can make my Restore Discs via Gateway App ... but what are these Exactly? If my laptop acts up again, can I just pop these in and will automatically bring me to this Clean Point? And will NOT delete my D: Partition Backup?
Q2: What do I need to do Drive Clone or Drive Iamge? For my Purpose?
Q3: Which is the Best & Most Stable & Dependable Disk Cloning Software? Freeware of course! And GUI type ... not too savvy about Text-Based or Script App.
Q4: Between these 3 which is the Best & Dependable tool
- AOMEI Backupper Free
- Macrium Reflect Free
- Acronis True Image WD Edition Free
I would appreciate any Help!
Thanks,
G! :)