how to back up entire windows 7 OS [closed]

Question

how to back up entire windows 7 OS to be used on another drive as if it were a new operating system? For example, to use both Ubuntu and Windows 7, yet have entire Ubuntu partition on the computer and windows on a separate drive or something else. But the OS backup would absolutely need to be like exactly the same version as before when first used. Is there someone who knows this?

Answer 1

You can back up windows 7 to an other drive, but windows does not like to run from it. It is a lot more easy to put Ubuntu on an second drive and run it. I am assuming you are talking about an external hard drive. If you have the space you, can partition your drive for Windows and Ubuntu. Ubuntu needs 5 to 10 gb to install, but you should give it as much as you can. Back up Win 7 first and then you can use Ubuntu's installer to partition your primary drive, or to install Ubuntu to the secondary drive. Please backup first, and read carefully the installers questions. Primary drive should be label sda, and secondary will be sdb. Good luck.

Answer 2

I suggest you use a program called dd.

If you use dd you can create a full image back up of the drive. After that you can use dd to reapply that backup to another drive.

Here is a link to a friendly tutorial http://www.marksanborn.net/howto/make-a-backup-image-of-your-hard-drive-with-dd/

There are lots of good tutorials for this software as its been around for awhile.

But basically just copy and pasting from that link about

You can use a graphical utility on Ubuntu to double check and make sure you are copying the correct drive called "Disk Utility" Of course the command below could possibly and most likely be the wrong for your setup.

To copy disk to image file use

dd if=/dev/sda ibs=4096 | gzip > partition.image.gz conv=noerror

To restore disk image from file

dd if=partition.image.gz | gunzip | dd of=/dev/sdba