Imaging a drive

OspreyO · 28 Sep 2014 at 17:47

Someone in the family got a new laptop. No windows media disks with it. Its all on the disk and no option to make recovery disks from it.

I want to make an image of the disk so if I have a problem with it in the future I'll be able to put in a new disk (or SSD) and put it back to its original state.

Can I use macrium reflect to do this. Do I need to remove the drive out of the laptop? Or can I image it from the laptop itself?

RJC · 28 Sep 2014 at 17:56

You can use Macrium reflect and you will be able to do this without touching the laptops hard drive, just you need a external drive to copy the image too.

OspreyO · 28 Sep 2014 at 18:06

Cheers. If I image a fresh install of Windows (most of the 500GB disk is empty). Will the space required on the destination be 500GB or less.

zola25 · 28 Sep 2014 at 19:24

You can also use system image from within Windows 7/8/8.1 to an external drive. If using system image, the image will only take up the used amount of space, not the full 500Gb - I'd imagine that it's the same in Macrum Reflect.

OspreyO · 29 Sep 2014 at 11:24

Cheers for the update. I'll have a go.