can i use backup&restore in windows home premium to put in a new OS drive?

It appears to have backed up drive E: (that's what the dialogue box said during progress), which is the HP system recovery volume. So... this is an OS level backup of the same backup I can do by pressing Esc during startup anyway?

Does this thing restore your system image to factory state, and then restore your personal files on top of it?

 

The 'backup & restore' options are nearly the same in HP as Pro. Once you have selected 'backup and restore' from the maintenance folder select 'Create a system image' from the left side of the page. Follow the prompts as to where you want to store your image (External HD or DVD's).

The 'system image' is a complete image of your current HD. I used backup/restore to image a 320GB HD and install a new 500GB HD. No issues if going to a larger HD but most of these programs would have trouble going to a smaller HD.

Edit: Pro allows you to backup over a Network while HP does not. Thanks for the correction 'Indrek'

 

Huh. Turns out I had no reason to buy Pro in the first place lol, that was the only feature I wanted. I could have sworn back when 7 came out that backup & restore was pro and ultimate only.

So I restore to a larger hdd, it would create a separate partition for the E: drive that it backed up, and create that as well as the C: drive with the OS info? It just make the C: drive bigger to accomodate the extra hdd spcae? And then I could system restore off that E: drive on the new hdd just I like can now by hitting ESC as it boots up?

Sorry to pollute this board with the most basic of q's btw, I haven't touched laptops beyond what the manufacturer gives me in a decade. I used the same Dell forever and never updated drivers or anything, I'm finding many things a shock, like the fact that you no longer get OS discs, just partitions. I'm used to reformatting, reinstalling, running the nimh battery all the way down, etc.

 

Correct. I stand corrected, thank you.

 

The 'system image' backup is a complete image of your HD (similar to clone). All partitions, everything on your HD is included in the backup image. The restore of the backup to a new HD will put all the data, partitions, etc. onto the new HD.

I can't go so far as saying hitting ESC will boot into the restore partition on the new HD. It should but there may be something in the MBR that will need to be cleaned up first. Once I image a drive I don't keep the restore partition, just the image.

Once you have your new HD just give it a try. The data on your original HD will still be intact so you have not lost anything during this process. If you have problems come back here and let us know.

 

Tyvm for being patient with someone new to all this! +rep Good to know I can upgrade size at least, though it seems I still won't be able to go to a (smaller) ssd. Oh and of course backing up a bloatware-stripped recovery option.

 

That is not necessarily so, if the image is less than the total capacity of the smaller drive you may not have any problems. Most problems arise when one trys to Clone a larger drive to a smaller drive (obvious).

Admittedly I have not used a SSD before but all the reading I have done on setting them up suggests that the best way is with a clean install of the OS, on a newly formated drive and new install of all programs (not imaging from a HD the first time). There are many fine threads on this topic.

 

Several bootable specialist linux distros (clonezilla, gpartd, pmagic, others) are intended to copy/clone a complete hard drive, among other disk maintenance functions. All of them can resize partitions to accommodate differences in original and replacement disk drives.

The linux distros I mentioned are all under 150Mb in size so they will quite easily fit on a CD. Most of them have options to configure and boot from a USB stick if that is how you want to go.

Going from a large hard drive to a smaller hard drive can be done within reason. It is important to make sure that the new, smaller hard drive (an SSD??) is in fact large enough so that all of the files on the original hard drive can fit. This is something that only the OP can figure out. Just do the math.

One thing that can help the process along is to nuke known large files and space-eaters like page space, hibernation/sleep files, and system restore on the original hard drive. Once the clone of the original drive is created, installed, and booted up, those large files are easily recreated and system restore can be restarted on the cloned system. No sense wasting time copying them over from the original hard drive.

I usually keep the original hard drive in a machine, hook up the new drive temporarily via a usb/sata/pata dongle cable (cost around $20-), boot the machine up with a Clonezilla CD, click a few options, and let it run.

When done, I swap the original hard drive for the new one and then let the machine boot up normally.

Never a problem. Doing it this way leaves the original hard drive unaltered in case something does happen, leaving a great fallback recovery option of simply putting the original back in place.

Most of the how-tos found on the net reference Clonezilla. Clonezilla includes the utilities in gpartd and pmagic wrapped up with a nice minimalist GUI.

 

A couple of quibbles:

The "disk image" backup created by the Win7 backup program actually consists of separate files, one for each of the NTFS partitions that it backs up. They're stored in the same vhd format as is used for the virtual disk used by XP mode's virtual machine, and you can use Win7's disk management gui to attach and detach them to access their files.

Win7's backup will refuse to try to restore to a disk which is even the slightest bit smaller than the disk that was backed up, even though the disk partitions are nowhere near full. You'll need a 3rd party backup solution (like Ghost, or Acronis. or the Linux options mentioned by newposter) to get the kinds of backup functionality that most people expect -- like being able to clone one disk to another despite capacity differences.

 

Oh this is exciting; so I might be able to do a transfer to ssd without buying Windows. Which is better/easier, Ghost or Acronis? Sounds like a worthy investment, since I don't need a new copy of Windows except to do a new OS drive.

 

You certainly don't need to buy another copy of Windows to move it to another disk on the same computer.

A comparison of Acronis and Ghost is at Review: Acronis True Image vs Symantec Ghost
It isn't extremely recent, since Ghost is up to v15 now.

 

Personally I wouldn't trust a windows-based imaging program. Too many chances for live NTFS and windows security measures and open files to get in the way of a clean copy.

Use a trusted external (bootable) program/OS that is capable of doing your disk clone without depending on booting from one of the drives involved in the copy/clone.

 

Oh! Can I make a linux usb boot and do it that way?? (Not that I have ever done that before lol) Anything that saves me money is good. I can always restore the factory state with my HP disks right? Could you tell me the search term I need to use to get more info on this, what that process is called?

 

Geeee, read post #9 in this very thread.........

 

I did, that's where i got "linux'". I'm just asking for the search term I use to get more info. I just quoted the shorter post. I am actually reading all the replies, don't want anyone to think I'm not.

 

Something like 'linux disk image software'?

There is a sticky at the top of this forum with free software listed:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-ever-growing-free-windows-software-list.html

Look under 'Data Backup/Recovery'

Here is more info about some of the popular disk image programs:

Paragon Backup & Restore Free vs Macrium Reflect Free vs EASEUS Todo Backup vs DriveImage XML vs Acronis True Image Home: Which one should you use? | Headline | dotTech

Like 'newsposter' mentioned a lot of people use 'clonezilla'.

Clonezilla

Listed under Limitations:
The destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one. (I take this to mean you can't clone to a smaller drive). This is not unusual with a lot of backup programs as mentioned in previous posts.

Everyone who uses a disk image / Clone program has their favorite. You are not going to find all people agreeing on one program in particular. Like with all software, sometimes there is just a particular program that does not agree with your particular computer.

i.e. Some people disklike Acronis TI because they have had issues with it. I never have and it is my favorite backup software. Acronis does allow you to make a Linux based backup CD (also) to run it offline.

Pick one of the free programs if you wish and give it a try. If it doesn't do what you want, or you don't like it, try another. When you are doing as you are, creating a clone or backing up an image to a new drive, the data on your original HD is in tact so there is no downside to trying new software.

Get yourself a cheap external USB enclosure to put your new drive in for cloning purposes or even restoring a backup to for that matter. You will be glad you have one at some time.

I am tapped out, time for you to do some reading.

 

Tyvm for all that! Again sorry for the basic qs. The Linux option looks rather complicated lol, but I think I'll wade through it since I want to install Linux on my mom's Vista machine anyway.