Is Win7 installation affected by...

[italiano121]

Howdy folks:
Please help me with a question about my Dell Win7 Premium laptop.
A)Would the following scenario affect my windows installation ?
1. Taking out my hard drive and enclosing in USB HD enclosure.
2. Connecting via USB to identical laptop.
3. I assume HD will be assigned a drive letter.
4. Making an emergency backup of my hard drive by just pasting and copying from the now
external USB HD to a folder in the other identical system.
5. Putting hard drive back in my laptop.
B) Would the drive take on the C: drive letter again when I put it back?
C)Will it boot ok when I put it back?
Thank You All

 

[Petey7]

It will not effect your drive in the slightest, but I doubt that that method would actually make a usable backup of your computer. That is why people us imaging software to make backups. A better idea would be to put the other hard drive in the enclosure, create a folder, and use Windows 7 backup to create an image of your hard disk in that folder on the other drive.

 

[whs]

Copy/Paste will do nothing for you. Do as Petey says and make an image - e.g. with this: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html?ltr=I

 

[Petey7]

Free Macrium is suggested by many, so you might want to do that rather than Windows built in backup software.

 

[madtownidiot]

Unfortunately, you have to have at least the professional version of windows 7 in order to use the windows image backup, which works very well for what you're trying to accomplish. The method you asked about in your first post would work for backing up your files but you wouldn't be able to recover your system by copying everything back to your HDD. Unless you used imaging software like ghost or acronis, you won't be able to make a backup than you can copy to a HDD and make it bootable.

 

[DeaconFrost]

Yeah, what you are trying to do is like re-engineering lettuce just to make salad. Why mess around with a process that involves a lot of manual work, and won't be successful anyway, when you can just use a free imaging tool, like Macrium? It's free, simple, and designed for this purpose. It can even be scheduled.

 

[Petey7]

Unfortunately, you have to have at least the professional version of windows 7 in order to use the windows image backup, which works very well for what you're trying to accomplish.

Actually, you can use Windows Image back-up with any version of 7, you just can't back-up to a network device.

Source: Windows 7 editions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[FliGi7]

If you are set on taking the drive out and mounting it to another laptop, I suggest the following:

dcfldd

Straight forward, bit for bit copy of the whole drive. It doesn't get simpler than that.

 

[madtownidiot]

Unfortunately, you have to have at least the professional version of windows 7 in order to use the windows image backup, which works very well for what you're trying to accomplish.

Actually, you can use Windows Image back-up with any version of 7, you just can't back-up to a network device.

Source: Windows 7 editions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

my fault... wasn't reading it right... Which one is right for you? - Microsoft Windows

 

[Petey7]

my fault... wasn't reading it right... Which one is right for you? - Microsoft Windows

If it wasn't for my mom having home premium, I would have thought the same thing (and did until I saw she had it).

 

[italiano121]

Thanks Guys, great links, good ideas

Thank You Petey, and Thank You vhs as well as madtownidiot and DeaconFrost
for replying to my post with good useful information. You guys are great. Indeed Macrium has great reviews. And I’ve been considering using it. My concern is with Dell’s hidden partitions. First one a hidden primary Fat16, 49MB diagnostic partition and the second a hidden 15GB NFTS recovery partition. I have never seen partitions like this. The C: drive does not show as active in disk management yet the hidden recovery partition does. The third and last partition on the 500GB Seagate is a normal C: with Win7 Premium.

1. I don’t know where the MBR is. In the first diagnostic partition ?

2. So when I restore with Macrium I only have to restore the MBR to the first diagnostic partition ?
(I think I would have to make the recovery partition active and not the C: )

3.I don’t know if Macrium can clone the recovery partition in a way that it is functional when restored ? ( I heard some stories of people with older Win XP Dell’s having problems using Acronis)

4. If there is an issue with the recovery of these partitions I am not sure how or if it would affect booting. ?
5. It would be good to know of others that have successfully cloned a dell HD with these partitions.
. Just wish such a great company Like Dell would consider including in their user’s guide information on the successful; backing up of these partitions.
But I whole heartedly agree if any program can tackle such a task it would probably be Macrium and I am grateful to you guys for the real good links you directed me to. All I had where some much older links and a lot of confusion
Thank You For the good input fellows.

 

[madtownidiot]

If I were in your shoes, I would:
1) use windows to create a system image on an external drive
2) Zero the entire HDD using diskpart from a system recovery disk, deleting all partitions including the recovery partition (which is full of bloat anyway)
3) Restore from the system image.
4) Reallocate partitions in whichever way you choose using gparted (my preference is 80-100 GB for windows and programs and the rest for media, VHDs, etc)

total time to accomplish: 2-3 hours max

 

[Petey7]

+1 on what midtown said.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

If I were in your shoes, I would:
1) use windows to create a system image on an external drive
2) Zero the entire HDD using diskpart from a system recovery disk, deleting all partitions including the recovery partition (which is full of bloat anyway)
3) Restore from the system image.
4) Reallocate partitions in whichever way you choose using gparted (my preference is 80-100 GB for windows and programs and the rest for media, VHDs, etc)

total time to accomplish: 2-3 hours max

SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation Step Two