[RaceFace]

Hi,

I've had the computer up and running some months now, without any trouble or problems, and I recently installed a WDC Green 1TB; used for random stuff.

I've got the OS on the first Seagate Barracuda HDD, is there any way, and how do I back-up the OS to the WDC HDD? I can't seem to find the CD for the OS at the moment, and to be one the safe side, I'd like to back-up files.

Not sure if this is in the right place to post it, but thanks for replies anyways!
(And should the Green HDD system be NTFS or exFAT?)

[saint19]

Do you only want backup files? Or make a full image of your current OS. The new HDD should be NTFS

[RaceFace]

I'd like to make a full image of my current OS.

Would that make it possible to run Win 7 from there, if my main HDD with the OS fails?

And also, a friend told me to choose exFAT over NTFS. Why would I choose any over another for that matter?

[TempliNocturnus]

There are several ways to accomplish a disk image. Doing so is best done offline (via a boot disk). The two types of imaging methods are sector based and file system based. Clonezilla and DriveImageXML are the two sector based methods I would use (both are free). For a file system image, I use the Microsoft provided command line utility called ImageX (a GUI exists for it; google GUI ImageX).

Sector based imaging tools are probably the most popular with home users, however file system methods have several advantages; among them are: smaller image size/better compression, hardware versatility, ability to extract portions of the data backed up from the image without applying it. The only downside of file system based methods is that they're not all that popular outside of professional IT, thus may require additional technical skills to use effectively.

As far as exFAT, I see no reason why to use it over NTFS and many reasons to NOT use it over NTFS to contain an OS. exFAT will only see advantages when used on flash media. Other than that, you loose the ACL's provided by NTFS (hampering your system's security), and you'll be limited to a few OS's that can read exFAT; therefore you might be assed-out if you ever need to recover data from the volume in a Linux boot disk. I would also imagine that certain Windows disk and file features you may wish to use may not be available on an exFAT partition--System Restore and other service and programs that rely on Volume Shadow Copy.