Windows 7 Can I use backup on old hard disk to restore on a new hard disk?

[keshk]

The hard disk in my laptop Aspire V3-571G is faulty as I keep receiving error messaging warning me that my HDD is faulty and might fail anytime. Moreover the computer has really slowed down and for example takes like 20 mins to start up.

I want to backup this current hard disk, buy a new hard disk and swap it. My question is, can I use the back up on this old hard disk to a new one. I find it quite unfair if I have to end up purchasing the software too just cos my hardware spoiled. I am using windows 7 professional.

Please advice.

 

[kemical]

If you buy certain SSD's they come with a cable and instructions on how to extract the data from one drive to another so you can just plop the drive right in and off you go.
Buy one of these and you won't regret it. Recent updates to the firmware are pushing the speeds to 700-1000MB/s R/W which is incredible (depending on model)
This video shows how easy it is to move the data over:


The above is the Pro model but the sequence is exactly the same for the Evo model too.

 

[Jimbo22]

Along with kemical's excellent advice, there are data transfer cables to do just what your asking. Doing a simple search showed quite a few cables and brands. Here are some images.....

https://www.google.com/search?q=dat...fKrIHYDg&sqi=2&ved=0CJUBELAE&biw=1600&bih=774

 

[Gregory123]

The hard disk in my laptop Aspire V3-571G is faulty as I keep receiving error messaging warning me that my HDD is faulty and might fail anytime. Moreover the computer has really slowed down and for example takes like 20 mins to start up.

I want to backup this current hard disk, buy a new hard disk and swap it. My question is, can I use the back up on this old hard disk to a new one. I find it quite unfair if I have to end up purchasing the software too just cos my hardware spoiled. I am using windows 7 professional.

Please advice.

Actually I would like to extend the same question about the backups:
I am using Windows backup (Windows 7 Pro) regularly. I have done system image and then doing scheduled backups every week. Despite my general dislike of some of Microsoft's software, so far it works very nice, and I can even recover previous versions of a file by right-clicking on it. System restore also works very well. The only problem is that the external hard drive fills very fast (each incremental backup is about 100 MB) and I hate deleting the old ones. (There is also the problem that Windows backup does not work on drives larger than 2 TB). The only way to free some space is to delete some of old backups. Does it make sense to copy them to a different disk (3TB or better) before deleting? Sounds reasonable, but usually things do not work simply with Microsoft! If I buy a new external drive and to backups there, do I loose my old ones?
Thanks for advice!

 

[Saltgrass]

I suppose my question would not look at the backup itself, but if you feel comfortable using a drive that is already having problems to make one. Maybe it would not hurt to try, even if the final result was not acceptable, you could still just reinstall and you might be able to pull old files out of the backup.

Do you have an external drive you could try a Windows image backup right now? If the drive is going bad, the sooner the better.

I have always used the built-in imaging utility, but it is restricted in what it can do. If you plan ahead and resize partitions and move some data to other locations, you can usually get it to work.