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#21
It sounds like you are confusing cloning with imaging.
"Cloning" a drive is what you would do if you simply wanted to copy a complete drive onto another drive and then put the other drive in the closet in case the original drive failed or you just wanted to swap back to it. The closet drive would be immediately bootable, but would soon be out of date because your original drive would continue to evolve, getting more data and receiving more Windows updates and new programs. It's normally done when things are working well and you just want to move to a new drive, usually a larger drive.
Imaging is what you would do if you wanted to be able to restore a drive to an earlier state. You'd make an image of certain partitions on say August 20. You'd save the image file to another drive. The image is just a huge file. It isn't bootable. To be useful, you'd "restore" it later on if you had problems with the original drive. This is a "backup" in the proper sense of the word. Cloning isn't. "Restoring" isn't merely copying to a new drive. It's a formal process. Image restoration is usually done when you are in a bad situation--to recover to an earlier time frame.
Decide which you want to do. Most people, if they had Win 7 and wanted to try Win 10, would make an image of Win 7, rather than clone it. But cloning would work in your situation. You better confirm the clone works before you upgrade to 10.
Cloning and imaging can both fail, so be prepared for that.