7 Home Premium upgrade to Pro still possible without Anytime Upgrade?

gripenhack · 14 Sep 2015

Want to upgrade Win 7 Home Premium 32bit to Pro 32bit so that, among other things, I can do backups to a network attached storage device. Anytime Upgrade tells me it is no longer available.
Home Premium was installed from a Reinstallation DVD for Dell PCs (I have a Dimension 5000) and I still have the DVD and product key from when I installed and registered it.
Is there still a way to upgrade (legally of course) or would I need to buy a Pro DVD (or download it) with a new product key and do a clean install? Or is there some other solution?
Sorry if this or something very similar has been asked before, probably several times this year, but would appreciate anybody's help. Thanks in advance.

Ztruker · 14 Sep 2015

You will have to buy a Pro upgrade DVD or download.

Why do you need Pro? Can't you do the backup from Win 7 Home using software like Macrium Reflect (free or Pro) or EaseUS Back Upper or similar?

gripenhack · 14 Sep 2015

Thanks ZTruker, that's as I suspected.
And yes, that was going to be my follow-up ask for a good recommendation on alternative backup software as there's so much out there. I'll certainly take a look at Macrium. In addition to the desktop I also have an external 500Gb drive getting full of photos and music (as well as the Windows backups from my basic C drive) which I then have to backup separately to the NAS. All I want to do really is backup C and the external drive to the same place (4Tb NAS) in a single operation. My Win7 Pro laptop is also backed up there, so ...
Thanks for your help, appreciate it.

Ztruker · 15 Sep 2015

I'm currently using AOMEI Back Upper Pro but thinking of switching to Macrium Reflect Pro since it's notification support works. I can't get it to work with AOMEI.

AddRAM · 15 Sep 2015

How to Get Pro Features in Windows Home Versions with Third Party Tools

It discusses backing up using the network in this article.

gripenhack · 17 Sep 2015

Thanks AddRAM. Interesting.

gripenhack · 17 Sep 2015

Thanks Ztruker. Am now running Macrium Reflect Free to see how it goes and will almost certainly upgrade to get the notifications support when I'm comfortable with the basics.