Can i clone win 7 to a flash drive?

[darian2hunter]

I have an idea, so if i ever need to reinstall windows i could just clone windows 7 to a flash drive then clone it back to get a clean win7 again? It is only 32gb!

 

[Seemly]

I am not sure about how are you gonna deal with prroduct key problems, but however yes, there is programs which helps you create ISO setup of your windows, I did it to my windows 10 from my brother 's laptop

 

[darian2hunter]

But if you clone then you don't need another product key do you?

 

[Seemly]

But if you clone then you don't need another product key do you?

Yes you will need, if you don't, everyone would have pirated windows

 

[sizzling]

Its fairly pointless, windows doesn't like being moved from one pc to another, with big hardware changes a fresh install is always recommended.

But back to the original question, I dont know if cloning will work but you wont need to re entre the product key if running on the same PC, changing PC if it somehow works and actually boots then I suspect you will need to reactivate

 

[USAFRet]

I have an idea, so if i ever need to reinstall windows i could just clone windows 7 to a flash drive then clone it back to get a clean win7 again? It is only 32gb!

1. You can't clone or image 'only' the OS. Unless of course you start with a brand new install that was completed an hour ago. The current imaging tools take the whole drive.
2. 32GB is too small
3. If you have a retail Win 7 license, you can download the ISO installation file direct from MS. If it is an OEM license, you can download it from whoever installed the OS on the system. If it was you, then surely you still have your install media around somewhere.

 

[Rookie_MIB]

What you could do is get a backup program (I use EaseUS backup free, works well enough), and then do a full system drive backup to that flash drive. The good thing about it is that you can use compression to keep the filesize down somewhat. You can also do incremental backups which only save the diffs. I would then also make sure you put a copy of the installation program on the drive as well to make sure you can get it back off (changing versions and whatnot).