proper steps before win8 install to be able to go back to 7

[dee91]

hi, i have read quite a few tutorials on backup and am still not clear on the proper steps to make a backup of windows 7.

my plan:

- somehow backup windows 7 on a usb stick.(the most basic backup but with my paid copy - license)

- upgrade to windows 8

- if neccesary (if i don't like win8) ?plug in my backup usb and replace my hard drive with windows 7.

what steps do i take? do i make an image with macro, and stick it on a usb and thats it? or is there more to it? i plan on doing a factory reset to my computer before making the backup as all my important stuff are documents that i have backed up. programs and all i am happy to reinstall as i don't have much.
i have spent hours on this forum searching for clear answers but i am still confused. TIA!

 

[Golden]

what steps do i take? do i make an image with macro, and stick it on a usb and thats it?

Hello,

Do you mean Macrium? If so, then thats fine, you don't need to do anything else apart from checking that the Macrium rescue media boots properly, and that it can see the Macrium image on the USB correctly.

Regards,
Golden

 

[dee91]

G'day mate,

Thanx for the reply,

as well, I wanted to know, does my isb need to be formatted to fat32 or NTFS?

And do I need to install a boot loader on it? How exactly once I have the image on the USB would I replace my current hard drive? Using macrium in windows?
Or would I be booting it somehow off the USB?

I appreciate your help, thank you very much. - I am pretty excited to get this done because I want to install windows 8 on my X220T. I've got a windows phone and love the UI and am dying to try it on my computer.

Cheers!

 

[ignatzatsonic]

How exactly once I have the image on the USB would I replace my current hard drive? Using macrium in windows?
Or would I be booting it somehow off the USB?

No, you would not boot off the USB.

You need to make a Macrium image file and store it on the USB. You should make an image file of the C partition and of the "System Reserved" partition, if you have one.

You must make a bootable "rescue disk" in Macrium from Macrium's "other tasks" menu.

That disk can be Linux-based or WinPE-based. The latter is more reliable.

After making the rescue disk, you should confirm that your PC can in fact boot from it and that you can locate your image file on the USB from within the rescue disk's interface. If you can't, you cannot restore the image file from the USB and the whole exercise is useless.

Assuming the rescue disk does boot your PC, you would boot from it to restore the image whenever the need arises. You would first connect the new hard drive, boot from the rescue disk, locate the image file on the USB, and direct the restoration to the new hard drive----all from within the rescue disk's interface.

 

[dee91]

wow thanks for that.
it sounds alot clearer now.
1 more question,
i don't have a CD drive so i would need to boot from a USB. - is that possible? can i both boot from a USB and restore the image from that same USB? or, if i can't both boot and restore from one usb, can i put the image on another USB and boot from one, restore the image from the other?
TIA!

 

[Golden]

Yes, you can - write the WinPE ISO to a USB drive using YUMI.

Get the WinPE ISO here and follow these steps

 

[dee91]

thank you all very much.

i did a practice run of the image recovery and felt secure to go ahead and install windows 8. as of first sight i am completely impressed with windows 8. thank you all for helping me move on to this experiance. keep up the good work you all do!