Help Needed With System Image Backup to New Laptop

[Juney00]

Hi, I hope someone can help me. I had a Samsung RV511 laptop which has a lot of important information on it, so I bought a 1TB Toshiba hard drive which came with back up software. I backed up the whole system as a system image. Had I known the difficulty I have now, I would have just backed up the files. My laptop died, and so I need to know....

If I buy another laptop the same, will I be able to backup the system image from my old laptop?

If I buy another does the spec need to be exactly the same? i.e. I have seen another with a smaller hard drive and less memory. My laptop was 640GB hdd and the ones I have seen are 320GB and 500GB. I have not as yet seen a second hand one with the same spec as mine. Also the ones I have seen have less RAM, mine is 6GB, and the ones I have seen are 3-4GB.

Can someone tell me what I need to buy in order to restore this system image please? I understand that I will have backed up drivers, so does that mean the new laptop has to have the same hardware?

I have read about software that will enable you to restore to another computer, but cost is a factor at the moment, so I don't want to waste money on something that won't work. I have read good and bad about the software.

Any help would be gratefully received. Thanks for reading

 

[ignatzatsonic]

You want to restore the image of the C partition on the old laptop onto a new laptop?

I'm assuming the new laptop will have a new Windows installation when you buy it---they nearly always do.

I can't see why you would want to do that, leaving aside the legality. If you did it, the fresh Windows installation on the new laptop would be destroyed (overwritten) by the restoration of the image of the old laptop. What's the advantage of that?

On the other hand, if you simply want to restore your DATA (not Windows) from the old laptop to the new laptop, you should be able to do that without overwriting your new Windows installation.

I'm guessing you used Toshiba software to make this image.

I know nothing at all about that software, but there should certainly be a way to drill down into the image and simply copy your data files to the new laptop with the mouse or keyboard. You can certainly do that with other imaging programs. I'd consult the documentation for the Toshiba software, which may be included with the drive or may be available on the Toshiba website.

Imaging software is not the sharpest tool for backing up data, as you've found out. It works, but it can be testy or clumsy.

 

[Juney00]

I read somewhere that the image of my system could not be restored to another computer, and the files on the back up hard drive don't make much sense to me! I've just looked at the hard drive and it came pre loaded with Nero Back Up and Burn Essentials. I wonder if I loaded that onto another computer, would it be able to read and restore the data from the backup only? I do wish I had just transferred my files! I am just about to load it now, it is Nero BackItUp Essentials - will report back. Thanks for your reply