Hi Guys,
because Win7 EOL is coming very soon I'm asking for your help.
I'm not really into technical stuff so if some expert users kindly share a little knowledge and support I'll be really grateful. Hope this thread could be useful to other users too.

What I need is Step by Step Guide, Advice, Tutorial Links, How to... etc etc

1) how to CLONE my beloved Win7 system so I can restore it anytime I need.
I'm looking at this app:
http://www.clonezilla.org/
but it doesn't really look intuitive.
Basically I need to create a clone on an external USB HD and instructions about how to restore the System from a clone.

2) How to make a partition, one HD with 2 OS: Win7 + Win10.
is this a good starting point?
https://www.wikihow.com/Partition-Your-Hard-Drive-in-Windows-7

3) How to install Win10 on a partition to use Dual Boot feature.

4) where to find the right Win10 version. Any p.bay link already tested and safe?
(PM with advice or links are really welcome)

Big thanks to everybody who care to help in this difficult time of transition.
God bless you.

Hagen

 

Last edited: Dec 7, 2019

Yes you can have 2 or more OS on 1 single HDD.

I used to have Win XP and Win7 + a logical partition visible excusively by the chosen booted OS while the other OS was invisible.
To do that I used Masterbooter in the first place, later replaced by GAG BOOT:
http://gag.sourceforge.net/

And of course you can backup an entire OS to external device, ready to be restored.

At the very moment I can't explain all steps (it takes a while), I'll come back later if in the meanwhile you didn't figured out yourself.

 

Looks interesting, thanks @orbitbooster.

 

The most comprehensive cloning soft must be Acronis. It also allows performing incremental backups, which means after your initial backup and when you want to do a newer one, you can only back up what's changed and not the whole partition again. You can aslo make bootable disks and usb sticks with it etc.

Yep, this is how its done. With that said, it's always better to install on a secondary drive than partitioning, especially if your OS is on a HDD and not on SSD. Also keep in mind that SSD's performance (even with the best ones) takes a significant drop when the SSD is close to being full.

Nothing special here. Just install Win10 on the partition of your choice and when you reboot you will be greeted with an OS selection menu

You should be looking for a Win10 Pro Lite. I'd say LTSC, but sadly, Win10 Enterprise LTSC (previously known as LTSB), is still stuck on build 1809 which doesn't include some must have fixes for audio users that were introduced with build 1903. For a nice version, just google oprekin. He's a very good modder of Win isos.
Cheers

 

Which fixes? I'm currently on Windows 7 and was planning to upgrade to Windows 10 LTSC soon. Is that important?
I've read 1809 has some bugs with some games using multichannel audio, but not sure how that affects music production.

 

Yep, it is important. I 'll copy paste from the web. The description refers to a Windows Insider's Preview version update about a year ago in Jan 2019. It came to normal Windows as well in the form of Win10 build 1903:
"FLS Slot Limit Increase
As PCs get more powerful, musicians have created increasingly complex projects with more tracks, more instruments, and deeper effects chains. As a result, some of those musicians were running up against a FLS (Fiber Local Storage) slot allocation ceiling that prevented them from loading into their DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) as many unique plugins as they’d like. This build greatly raises that per-process FLS slot allocation ceiling, allowing loading potentially thousands of unique plugins. Beyond musicians, this change will positively impact any application that dynamically loads hundreds or thousands of unique DLLs that have statically-linked Visual C++ runtimes, or otherwise allocate FLS slots."
Cheers
EDIT: I forgot to mention, the limit of FLS slots since build1903 is raised to 4000 lol. An article on the initial update: https://www.scanproaudio.info/2019/01/10/microsoft-insider-preview-raises-the-windows-fls-limit/

 

Last edited: Dec 7, 2019

brrrzzzt

 

Last edited: Dec 9, 2019

Thanks a lot, lots of info in your post!
Acronis looks good but I would go for something free and possibly open source, any alternative?
Anyone have experience with clonezilla? Does it worth?

 

I personally don't, but you can try:

Backup & Recovery 2014 Free Edition
Macrium Reflect 7 Free Edition​

I was writing as fast as possible a tutorial for you, but in the meanwhile check those above.

 

Macrium Reflect 7 Free Edition looks interesting, is it ads free?
Thanks for helping with a tutorial, I'll try it, that's great.

After a little of searching I think I would go for clonezilla + rufus.ie, if someone care to show the main steps when using those software I'll be truly grateful. (how to make a BackUp and Restore when needed using clonezilla + rufus.ie)

Any link in sister site to Aomei or Macrium working?
Why not to post this stuff on sister site too?

 

Last edited: Dec 8, 2019

@jhagen

First I would ask you to find a backup software in bootable .iso format, Acronis as already mentioned by @taskforce or any other you can find, also free like Macrium or Paragon.

A partition manager like MiniTool Partition in .iso bootable format.

Keep in mind that usually all the sw mentioned are just win install programs, and once installed they should have a menu command like "create bootable media" and that is what you need.

Create a bootable usb key with above bootable software and windows 7 / 10 install images in .iso format.
In order to get it simple, donwload and install to a usb key
https://www.aioboot.com/en/

NOTE: from the AIO site you can see there are links to some useful tool:
https://www.aioboot.com/en/packages/

Launch AIOBOOT from the key and add all needed stuff above (see tutorials on its site)

Once done, you can finally boot your key and choose the backup / partition manager and select the os to backup, eventually to an external usb hdd or secondary internal hdd.

End of part 1

 

I would go for rufus ONLY to install OS.
To run live OS or tools I would use AIO boot, that is able to install OS in anyway.

 

My suggestion is to go with orbitbooster's recommendations. As nice that clonezilla is Open Source it lacks 2 very useful features out of the box to make backups easier to generate and restore.

Clonezilla (taken from their website):
-Differential/incremental backup is not implemented yet (every backup must be a full backup, very time consuming)
-Due to the image format limitation, the image can not be explored or mounted. You can _NOT_ recovery single file from the image

 

at first, Windows 7 going EOL is just marketing bullshit of Microsoft to push everyone into their public beta testing project called Windows 10,
if you don't really NEED newer version of Windows (because of some hardware or software you would like to use) there's no valid reason to upgrade to Windows 10, there is no performance advantage, no security advantage, no reliability advantage; only if you build a new computer from scratch, you'll get better driver support (but I assume you won't, since you ask about migrating your current setup),

after years of experience, those are my suggestions:

1) just don't - it will inevitably break some licenses/activations, because clone is used on different hardware (drive)
instead, get a new drive for new OS and perform clean install, keep than old drive with old OS in shelf or something like that,
(and no, there is no intuitive way on Windows due to its design, like for ex. CarbonCopyCloner on MacOS which can do full bootable backup even while using the Mac)

2) just don't - Windows is not really designed for multiboot, although capable of it - you'll most likely mess things up especially if your Win7 boots at legacy mode and Windows 10 will boot in UEFI, and on top of that there's MBR/GPT drive partition table formating, which automatically "breaks" once you reach certain amount of partitions on drive (which for 2 OSes is just on the edge usually)

3) I highly discourage of installing more systems on one drive...
but, similarly as if you installed on empty drive, just make sure you have empty partition preformatted so you can just grab it during install, and hope it won't crash during install or cripple another OS, and hope it will magically figure out howto set up bootloader for both drives (Windows 10 can handle that usually)

4) if you open Microsoft website from Mac or Linux system, you can directly download whatever installer ISO image you want, on Windows it's not possible and always redirects you to shitty creation tool;
don't bother obtaining old versions, 1909 PRO or at least 1903 PRO is best compromise to choose imo
be aware any third-party modded version (like 1909 LITE, LITE PLUS or SUPER LITE by oprekin) are meant for advanced users and may cause unexpected problems anytime which you may not want to hassle with eventually

again, reminder - don't make it difficult by attempting such things unless you absolutely need to

 

I don't think it's related to audio stuff.
I give you an "ultimate" suggestion:
https://sergeistrelec.ru/winpe-10-8-sergei-strelec-english/

This is a live Win 8 / 10 that have many (even too much) tools to do almost anything you need to backup / partition an stuff like that.

Add it to AIO boot and you're ok.

 

Yeah, that's a good advice, especially if you don't have much experience with partition tampering.
Now with the System reserved partition, GPT and UEFI things got worse, but still is possible, as long that you comfortably remain in the Bios legacy.

But I just wanted to share a bit of experience I had in creating a dual boot that I actually was forced to do in order to make work an old (XP) scanner.

 

Like many people, for many years, I've been using a Hiren's Bootable USB as my Swiss Army Knife of 'Windows build and maintain tools'. but this sergeistrelec package really does look like a fabulous update to that - ta very much @orbitbooster

 

Thanks a lot guys!! this is lot of info, I need time to test.

 

i wish it would support incremental clones. Ever tried the full version of macrium it has this delta cloning

 

Last edited: Dec 8, 2019

It actually works quite good with Acronis True image here. I havent tested it on dissimilar hardware tho nor have I tried it with supersuper on differnt hardware. But If the Hardware ID change, licenses will stop working on mac either.