Clone With AOMEI

SIW2 said:

You must be using very old clone tools. Modern ones do intelligent clones ( with sector by sector as an option).

I suggest you look at Aomei.

I'll have to do that.

Well, let me restate: I think that there is value in the "exact-copy", old-school type of clone which preserves everything, even the free space and the fragmentation. I think it's good to have that kind of clone backup as well as an image backup.

Sorry for all the questions, but I have now (with your help) have narrowed down what I think I should choose as a Backup Option. This is what I'm thinking of doing now guys, please tell me what you think.

Firstly, I wonder if I should even attempt to run sfc, or CHKDSK C: /R with the heat on this thing. I just checked and it was at 51C or 123.8F. This was with IE, Chrome, Task Manager, Speccy and Three for Four Instances of File Explorer open, and eventually went up to 53 just before I shut er down.

Now I will try another PSU I have that is identical to this one, and is known to be good to see if that will bring down heat.

1. I believe that I should choose "Disk Backup" in AOMEI at least to get one Image. But, this does not allow for Resizing Partitions, that I can see.
Disk Backup

Here they are confusing me also:
"You can backup multiple hard disks in one time by clicking “Add” to continue adding source drives, but when it comes to restoration, you can only restore these disks one by one. Moreover, the number of disks after recovery will be the same as the source disks; it is impossible to restore several disks’ image to one large drive."
I say this because they have only One Partition Highlighted when they use the Word "hard disks" they do mean an HDD right, and not a Partition? I've seen folks use the word "disk" to describe a Partition?

2. Then, (and here is where I need my and held) as to which is the best way to put this OS to another, larger HDD, Image or Clone. It seems as though you guys are saying that either is good. And the only thing that a noob like me can see that will affect this process is Resizing the C Drive during the process. I wonder if this is the way to do this, or, would it be better done from within Windows 7?
a. And if I do Resize C Drive, do I, or Should I, choose Sector by Sector Clone?

Here is the sector-by-sector-clone link I read. Very cool AOMEI is tool to say the least.
The Best Tool of Sector by Sector Clone: AOMEI Backupper

The AOMIE Pages are pretty good, but not great IMO. One thing they are saying is this:
"Disk clone only supports to clone 3 partition at most from GPT to MBR, so if the source disk contains over 3partitions, the remaining partition should use “Partition Clone”."
This won't matter for me as I'm going from MBR to MBR right?

NOTE: I can drop a "sysprep" Image I have onto this pc, but am trying to save all the work of reinstalling everything, of course.

Thanks again, Nasty7

RolandJS said:

Mr.JimP -- "...No one does all of that..." I wouldn't say that, I do almost exactly the same 5 things you do :)

I don't even do all of that! The most I have been able to get myself to do is to do a full backup about once every two months on each of my computers.

With some things, I save to two separate drives, so that I'll have a backup copy in case of drive failure.

But if it was my job to do the backups for my company, I would do all of the things I have mentioned, plus some; It's amazing how much more you can get yourself to do when someone is paying you to do it!

Thanks for all the help guys, got er done. All went well and system is up and running. Now I have a much better grip on how all this works thanks to all the members here, the best!