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I need to do a full backup of a boot partition of Windows 7. I want to be able to restore it if needed.
My understanding is that the only way to do this is to clone the partition byte-for-byte using something like Clonezilla. (If I'm in error, please correct me.)
Question:
Can I reduce the size of the partition before cloning (in order to minimize the size of the clone image), then increase the size of the partition after the making the clone, and then decrease the partition to the smaller size if the clone ever needs to be restored? Will that work?
You can copy as much or as little of a drive or partition as you want using most tools – Ramhound – 2016-07-19T21:35:54.607
@Ramhound Thanks. My premise might be incorrect. I thought that in order to backup (and restore) a bootable Windows partition (that can survive a format), you had to perform a byte-by-byte clone. Am I wrong? I hope so. – RockPaperLizard – 2016-07-19T21:39:27.827
@RockPaperLizard- You need only need the boot partition and the OS partition. Its up to you to verify the files are within the sectors you specify when you perform the sector-by-sector copy of a particular copy. You don't have to copy the entire partition or the free space to make the drive bootable. – Ramhound – 2016-07-19T23:44:19.143