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Cloning a Win 7 PC & backing it up on a bootable USB flash drive

johnny333

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
It's almost Black Friday & I'm shopping for a USB 3.0 flash drive.
The intention is to clone the contents of whatever is on my 64bit Win 7 machine onto a bootable USB flash drive.

So if my my Win 7 system becomes corrupted, I want to be able to restore a copy from a backup from a clone that is on the USB flash drive, thus avoiding the tedious process of installing everything from scratch.

I only need to backup my system files & a few applications which are about 50GB

Is this doable?
How do you make the flash drive bootable?
If it is doable what software do I need?
 

garlic

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
It's almost Black Friday & I'm shopping for a USB 3.0 flash drive.
The intention is to clone the contents of whatever is on my 64bit Win 7 machine onto a bootable USB flash drive.

So if my my Win 7 system becomes corrupted, I want to be able to restore a copy from a backup from a clone that is on the USB flash drive, thus avoiding the tedious process of installing everything from scratch.

I only need to backup my system files & a few applications which are about 50GB

Is this doable?
How do you make the flash drive bootable?
If it is doable what software do I need?

1) Download Macrium Reflect: Free Edition
2) Do an image backup and then create a recovery USB Drive using the program
3) Copy the backup image to the USD Drive and that's it.

Whenever your system screws up, insert the USB drive and boot from the drive and you can select the image to restore from.

In all honesty, there is no need to purchase a separate USB drive for this. Most PCs already have a separate HDD, a D: drive. Just create a bootable USB drive or CD using the software, while saving the image file to anywhere on a PC, preferably a D: drive or just somewhere within the C: drive or a portable HDD.When windows screw up, you can still restore that image from anywhere that image is stored. Furthermore, if your HDD fails, your USB 3.0 drive will also only run at 2.0 due to drivers not available without OS running. Get that USB 3.0 flash drive to use as an everyday tool and enjoy the blazing speed instead of letting it lie around useless till you need to restore an image. Save the image somewhere else.
 
Last edited:

potato29

Alfrescian
Loyal
So if my my Win 7 system becomes corrupted, I want to be able to restore a copy from a backup from a clone that is on the USB flash drive, thus avoiding the tedious process of installing everything from scratch.

I only need to backup my system files & a few applications which are about 50GB

Is this doable?
How do you make the flash drive bootable?
If it is doable what software do I need?

no need flash drive. just do a factory reset.
 

Jah_rastafar_I

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
1) Download Macrium Reflect: Free Edition
2) Do an image backup and then create a recovery USB Drive using the program
3) Copy the backup image to the USD Drive and that's it.

Whenever your system screws up, insert the USB drive and boot from the drive and you can select the image to restore from.

In all honesty, there is no need to purchase a separate USB drive for this. Most PCs already have a separate HDD, a D: drive. Just create a bootable USB drive or CD using the software, while saving the image file to anywhere on a PC, preferably a D: drive or just somewhere within the C: drive or a portable HDD.When windows screw up, you can still restore that image from anywhere that image is stored. Furthermore, if your HDD fails, your USB 3.0 drive will also only run at 2.0 due to drivers not available without OS running. Get that USB 3.0 flash drive to use as an everyday tool and enjoy the blazing speed instead of letting it lie around useless till you need to restore an image. Save the image somewhere else.

you sure all pcs have seperate hdd? You don't even know if he bought a branded pc or one that he assembled himself or if he is using a notebook.

Anyway not all USB3.0 have the same speeds. I have an ASUS maximus board with USB3.0 with turbo/UASP function and on my samsung external HDD the transfer of files is above 110mb/s which is much faster than regular usb3.0 speeds. My thumbdrive USB is also 3.0 but transfers at say 20mb/s
 

Jah_rastafar_I

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
Btw i use acronis true image which isn't free but i cracked it. Pretty good. Ghost/image your setup so when you restore everything is as it was.
 

garlic

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
you sure all pcs have seperate hdd? You don't even know if he bought a branded pc or one that he assembled himself or if he is using a notebook.

Anyway not all USB3.0 have the same speeds. I have an ASUS maximus board with USB3.0 with turbo/UASP function and on my samsung external HDD the transfer of files is above 110mb/s which is much faster than regular usb3.0 speeds. My thumbdrive USB is also 3.0 but transfers at say 20mb/s

1) Which idiot said "All PCs"?
2) a D: drive doesn't necessarily mean a separate HDD, could be a partition. Anyway, i covered a few common scenarios, TS can even backup the image to an external HDD, Local separate partition or even onto a DVD drive. Take note that a clean install of Windows 7 with office will have an image size of roughly 15gb.
3) Yeah, USB 3.0's speed varies across a large spectrum, but the premium of one nowadays is so low that USB 2.0 is not really worth to get new, but still generally much faster.
 

garlic

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
Btw i use acronis true image which isn't free but i cracked it. Pretty good. Ghost/image your setup so when you restore everything is as it was.

Yeah, i tried acronis before as well. I remember it was very good too.. TS can try acronis as well..
 

Jah_rastafar_I

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
1) Which idiot said "All PCs"?
2) a D: drive doesn't necessarily mean a separate HDD, could be a partition. Anyway, i covered a few common scenarios, TS can even backup the image to an external HDD, Local separate partition or even onto a DVD drive. Take note that a clean install of Windows 7 with office will have an image size of roughly 15gb.
3) Yeah, USB 3.0's speed varies across a large spectrum, but the premium of one nowadays is so low that USB 2.0 is not really worth to get new, but still generally much faster.

my point is you said most pcs have a seperate hdd but how would you know since you don't even know TS pc setup. That is what i meant and he wants to use a thumb drive not an internal hdd.
 

johnny333

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
I'm using a home built DIY machine that I put together. I've been thinking of doing this for sometime & finally decided to do it because recently my SSD crashed. I'll probably get a newer & bigger SSD drive. as well as a backup solution e.g. USB flash drive or SSD drive.

Have been checking on prices at Amazon & the prices for USB flash drives & SSD drives are really attractive. You can now get a 240GB SSD for just US$60 or a 32GB USB flash drive for only US$10. The fast Sandisk 64GB extreme USB flash drive is only US$32.49

I'll wait until tomorrow which is Black Friday before deciding:smile:
 

garlic

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
I'm using a home built DIY machine that I put together. I've been thinking of doing this for sometime & finally decided to do it because recently my SSD crashed. I'll probably get a newer & bigger SSD drive. as well as a backup solution e.g. USB flash drive or SSD drive.

Have been checking on prices at Amazon & the prices for USB flash drives & SSD drives are really attractive. You can now get a 240GB SSD for just US$60 or a 32GB USB flash drive for only US$10. The fast Sandisk 64GB extreme USB flash drive is only US$32.49

I'll wait until tomorrow which is Black Friday before deciding:smile:

Me too, the prices are really attractive and there is free shipping for the Extreme Pro SSD i am looking at. The prices even better than the prices at Sitex. Take a look here Thinking to get the PS4 from Walmart as well for USD$299 for the uncharted bundle, but risk no local warranty. The PS4 is not region-locked from what i've read.

Anyway, acronis and macrium reflect are good choices for you to clone and/or create an image.

Anyway not all USB3.0 have the same speeds. I have an ASUS maximus board with USB3.0 with turbo/UASP function and on my samsung external HDD the transfer of files is above 110mb/s which is much faster than regular usb3.0 speeds. My thumbdrive USB is also 3.0 but transfers at say 20mb/s

You can try update the drivers (ASmedia and Intel) to latest ones, then switch between ports to test the speed as the ports' controller drivers are different.
 

johnny333

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
my point is you said most pcs have a seperate hdd but how would you know since you don't even know TS pc setup. That is what i meant and he wants to use a thumb drive not an internal hdd.

Just to clarify. I'm looking for a way to quickly re-install the Win OS & applications in case I have a crash.

I heard that Apple is selling a thumdrive with the Mac OS installer on it. I liked the idea of having a thumb drive with a backup of the system installer.
It is I think a better solution than having to use a CD installer.

Don't have the space for another HDD because I already have 3 internal HDDs.
 

johnny333

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
Me too, the prices are really attractive and there is free shipping for the Extreme Pro SSD i am looking at. The prices even better than the prices at Sitex. Take a look here Thinking to get the PS4 from Walmart as well for USD$299 for the uncharted bundle, but risk no local warranty. The PS4 is not region-locked from what i've read.

Anyway, acronis and macrium reflect are good choices for you to clone and/or create an image.



You can try update the drivers (ASmedia and Intel) to latest ones, then switch between ports to test the speed as the ports' controller drivers are different.


I heard that Target also ships to Spore.
 

garlic

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
Just to clarify. I'm looking for a way to quickly re-install the Win OS & applications in case I have a crash.

I heard that Apple is selling a thumdrive with the Mac OS installer on it. I liked the idea of having a thumb drive with a backup of the system installer.
It is I think a better solution than having to use a CD installer.

Don't have the space for another HDD because I already have 3 internal HDDs.

For your scenario, it is extremely easy, just follow this, then copy the installation of your required programs to a separate folder onto the thumb drive so that once your windows 7 is installed, you can install the programs you want straightaway.

However, that will be a clean install of everything and loss of all stuffs. Creating an image periodically will be able to get you back to where u were last at with even all your emails, browser histories and bookmarks intact. For me, i can restore back to one year ago how my windows 7 was, i automate a backup image monthly for 12 months.
 

johnny333

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
For your scenario, it is extremely easy, just follow this, then copy the installation of your required programs to a separate folder onto the thumb drive so that once your windows 7 is installed, you can install the programs you want straightaway.

However, that will be a clean install of everything and loss of all stuffs. Creating an image periodically will be able to get you back to where u were last at with even all your emails, browser histories and bookmarks intact. For me, i can restore back to one year ago how my windows 7 was, i automate a backup image monthly for 12 months.


Thanks. Looks like the info I need.
 

LulzSec

Alfrescian
Loyal
1) Download Macrium Reflect: Free Edition
2) Do an image backup and then create a recovery USB Drive using the program
3) Copy the backup image to the USD Drive and that's it.

Whenever your system screws up, insert the USB drive and boot from the drive and you can select the image to restore from.

In all honesty, there is no need to purchase a separate USB drive for this. Most PCs already have a separate HDD, a D: drive. Just create a bootable USB drive or CD using the software, while saving the image file to anywhere on a PC, preferably a D: drive or just somewhere within the C: drive or a portable HDD.When windows screw up, you can still restore that image from anywhere that image is stored. Furthermore, if your HDD fails, your USB 3.0 drive will also only run at 2.0 due to drivers not available without OS running. Get that USB 3.0 flash drive to use as an everyday tool and enjoy the blazing speed instead of letting it lie around useless till you need to restore an image. Save the image somewhere else.

I thought Windows 7 itself has backup and restore utility where one can create a backup image and store it in D drive? No good?
 
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