Backing up Vista to restore to Windows 7

[Kelemvor]

I'm upgrading (reinstalling form scratch) a PC with Vista Home Basic on it up to Windows 7 Ultimate.

Home Basic doesn't have much for backing up other than the basic backup center.

Anyone know if I run that on the Vista machine, will I be able to restore that to the Win7 machine without any problems?

Or is there any other software that would work better in this situation? I don't have any experience doing backups like this...

 

[pcgeek11]

It depends on what you are loking for... Vista Home will not do a complete backup of your system so that you can return to Vista just as it was before installing Windows 7. You will need a third party app for that such as Acronis Trueimage..

pcgeek11

 

[Kelemvor]

I already have a Ghost image of the Vista machine to fall back on if needed.

I just want to backup the data so after I wipe and install Win7, I can put the data back on. Standard Docs, music, etc. Don't want to copy them all manually, want to do some sort of data backup to restore later.

 

[RebateMonger]

I recall having a problem trying to restore an image backup made by Server 2008 (which is very similar to Vista) using a Server 2008R2 (which is very similar to Win7) DVD. So there are differences in the two backup/restore programs that make image backups unusable in the later OS. But you'd think MS would make the file-level restores compatible.

 

[Kelemvor]

Haven't been able to find anything searching online so I guess I'll just manually copy all the folders under the User folder to an external drive and go from there...

hmmm.

 

[Horsepower]

I used windows easy transfer back on XP to Vista and now Vista to 7 with good success.

 

[Kelemvor]

Originally posted by: Horsepower
I used windows easy transfer back on XP to Vista and now Vista to 7 with good success.

Hmm, never even heard of that before. DIdn't know it was there.
Looks like it might do exactly what I need. I'll give it a shot.

 

[Kenmitch]

Drive image XML I think it's called will make a completed backup. It will also let you explore the backup image and take what you need out of it. And it's free. Works best off bootable media such as UBCD4windows for backing up the drive as it locks it down. Only downside is you can't restore image to a smaller sized partition.