Random BSOD in WIndows 7 Kernel-Power Event ID 41

I've never used the Macrium for cloning, I use it for imaging. But, I know others who have cloned with it and have been very successful. I use Paragon Migrate ($19.95) and it never fails. But none of them will put your data at risk. Cloning is basically just copying. The sector by sector does sound like it may be cloning. You'll have to read the instructions and make sure it is talking about an OS drive. There is a difference in cloning an OS and a data drive. But, I would assume a sector by sector copy would be a OS drive. Cloning is not risky to the data by any program I've ever seen. it is simply a copy, but in an exact manner as the program has to be aware of boot sectors and several other things.

As for your first question, yes that's exactly what I meant. You can either do that, do a clean install of both OS's or you could gamble and try to change it and see. If it won't boot. it will BSOD. You can then go back and into bios and change it back, and usually no harm done. I think Windows 7 would be fine trying it, but I don't know how XP will deal with it. Windows 7 is much more forgiving than XP.

That should work.

A good imaging program, will only image the used portion of the drive, no matter what size it is. But you wouldn't want to buy a new drive that would instantly be full. My personal opinion, the larger drives fail more often than smaller drives. I don't really like over 1 TB drive size. Over that you are gambling. I have 4 or 5 2 TB drives, but I use them as external backups. So, they usually last longer because they are actually running only when you do a backup and I do backups to 2 or 3 drives. That seems to make them last longer. If I were you, I would get a 750 GB drive at least. That should give you 250GB of free space. If I were doing it, I would get a 1 TB drive. The Seagate Barracuda and Western Digital drives are pretty good and pretty fast for 1 TB drives and pretty reasonable. Also remember, if you get a drive more than 80-85% full, it tends to slow it down.

Whatever you do, make sure you back everything up externally. I don't like the ready made external drives. I have 3 or 4 external docks, which are great. You use a regular internal drive and can swap drives in 30 seconds, if you are very slow. 15 is more like it. This is what I like. If you have it, eSATA is much faster than USB 3.0. Just trust me on that. If you don't have eSATA, I'll show you how to get it for about $10. I hope that answered your questions. If not, ask again, I'll try harder.


By the way, Macrium is about as good an imaging program there is, and the price is better. Free is hard to beat.

Tht's a decision you will have to make. But, If it were me and it was going to cost me $50-$60, I would buy a new drive instead of a repaired drive. You can get a new 1 TB hard drive for somewhere in that price range. Western Digital Blue drives and Seagate Barracuda drives are in that price range for 1 TB drives. Strange thing is, 500Gb are about the same price, at least close enough where you are within $10 to double the size. That is what I would do. The final decision is yours. Having said that, I have used factory recertified drives before and they lasted for years. but, If I'm going to pay the equivalent of a new drive, I would opt for new.