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Preserving an installed programme

I am running 6 Windows 10 machines and on those machines is a specific software that cannot be reinstalled as the company who wrote the program no longer exists. My concern is that should something happened to the machine, or it needs replacing I'm in an awkward situation.
I am looking if this software would clone my C drive on to a USB drive and should the worst happen I can install a new drive C drive and then reinstall the clone Drive onto it. Or would it be more practical to add a second hard drive internally say D, to the machine then clone C onto that one, thereby if the C drive fails, I can make the D drive the new C drive, if you understand what I mean.
I have tried cloning the C drive onto an external USB drive with the free program, but it doesn't seem to work maybe it doesn't do a full genuine clone. Can anyone please give me advice on this as I don't seem able to telephone tech support to discuss this thoroughly thank you

Comments

  • @Johno, You can do a system or disk clone from the current system disk to another disk. You can connect the target disk via USB port or internal slot when you do the clone. After clone, you can try to connect the cloned disk as an internal disk and then set it to boot for checking if it is bootable and all programs are avaliable.
    "I have tried cloning the C drive onto an external USB drive with the free program, but it doesn't seem to work"---What error or situation did you get? Please give us a detailed description.
  • Hi Admin, thanks for coming back to me.
    When I said it doesn't work, what happened is when I go to clone C drive, select it, then the USB drive as the target, the upgrade banner then comes up and prevents me pressing the continue button...great marketing that...Ha ha....so I took advantage of their New Years offer and bought two licences.

    Ok, so now we are up and running on a proper system, do I do a "system" clone, I presume that's the windows and other files, or a disk clone?
    Also, will that clone put the boot system on the USB disk or do I need to set up a boot recovery disk.
    The C drive has a recovery sector on it, but I presume that is just for the boot up part and allows going into disk recovery etc. In that event I would probably lose all my programmes and files, exactly what I don't want to happen.
    What I ideally need, is if the c drive dies, I can install a new one, format it clean, and re clone that from my newly cloned USB drive. Am I seeing that correct?
    Thanks
    Johno
  • @Johno, System clone will clone the system partitions only. Disk Clone will clone all partitions on the disk, including system partitions. We suggest that you can do the disk clone. 
    You can clone the system disk to an external drive. After clone, please check if the cloned disk is bootable, You can connect the cloned disk as an internal disk and set it to boot.
  • Thanks admin, will try that. Also, does that allow me to restore individual files from that newly cloned disk?
    What I think I will do, is buy some new compatible SATA drives and clone to them via a USB/SATA adapter. Theoretically that should give me exact copies of my existing machines.
    However, if the machine "dies" and have to get another machine, can I swap the new drive with my cloned "c" disk as the new "c" or will the windows licence number on the new machine prevent it?
    Thanks
    Johno
  • @Johno, Based on your needs, we suggest that you can create the disk backup. It will back up your system and data to an image file. When your machine "dies", you can universal restore the disk image to the disk of new computer via WinPE bootable media of AOMEI Backupper. But, for the windows license, we don't have the permission to handle it. If the windows license is not allowed to be migrated to a new machine, so you need to register the restored system with new license code. Or, you can contact the support of Microsoft to help you migrate the license.
  • Brilliant
    Thank you very much...
    Johno
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