Johnny wrote:
On Sat, 20 Dec 2014 14:43:14 -0500
"Mayayana" wrote:

This doesn't exactly answer your question, but I'd
suggest you look into disk imaging. With a disk image
you can have a stored copy of your OS after you've
installed software and got it just the way you want
it. Then you can restore that backup at any time
easily. It's a lot easier and more secure (no need
to worry about software disks and activation codes)
than just being able to do a factory restore.

I don't plan on using Windows 7. I'm going to remove it, but I wanted
a way to restore the computer to the way it was when I bought it. I
might give it to someone later on.

If you have any concerns about the functionality of
the U.S. Micro Corporation setup, image the entire
disk with Macrium Reflect Free, or with your copy of
Acronis True Image. (Seagate and Western Digital offer
a version of Acronis, which operates only on their
branded hard drives, so you don't even have to pay
to try out some Acronis-written stuff.)

Both of those, when you install the software, they
have you make a "recovery CD". That's a boot CD that
runs the computer while you're doing either a backup
or a restore. It allows treating the internal hard
drive as a "data disk", while you're backing it up.
The CD is essential when restoring to a new blank
hard drive, but the CD optionally can be used to
do the backup too.

Both software products are likely to use "intelligent
copying" when preparing the image. If the C: partition
is 320GB and the C: contents are only 20GB, then the
image will be 20GB. So only the occupied spaces get
copied. The MBR should be copied, as well as the first
track or so (for GRUB if it was present).

Now, once you've made the image, you can compress it.
I use 7-ZIP .7Z compression, Ultra setting, and that
can take a day on a slow computer, to compress the results.

So when you make the large image file, you turn off
compression in Macrium, with the understanding you will
be applying a compression step as the last step. This
will reduce the final storage space needed.

That approach is not practical for nearly-full source
disks, due to the amount of scratch space you need to
process the image files later. If you barely have enough
space to hold an image, then by all means select the
aggressive compression setting within the backup tool,
and don't bother with a better compression tool later.

For a well-established OEM computer brand, they have you burn
a set of three DVDs (made from the unlabeled 12GB recovery
partition on the hard drive). Which is sufficient to do a factory
restore later. The DVDs would have about 4GB each or so. You
could image those DVDs, after they're burned, and keep
the files on a hard drive. That's the most compact way
possible, to save the software for later. But I'm
recommending the more pessimistic above procedure,
because nothing in your description suggests the
U.S. Micro Corporation collection is well curated.
If in doubt, "back it all up" :-) Maybe their software
is just C:, and nothing to recover with. You never know.

*******

Macrium is available here. About a 150MB download, of
which 110MB is used for preparing a boot CD.

CNET download, lower left corner, for WinXP or later.
WinXP or later required, if you expect VSS to work.
Will also do everything, from the recovery CD they make
for you. For this job, I'd make and boot the recovery
CD, as that doubles as a test case that the recovery
CD boots the computer. There is no guarantee (like on
UEFI machines), that the recovery CD will work, so always
test it so you know it works OK.

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

Paul