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TIMFOX123Flag for United States of America

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Paranoid over a windows laptop

Hello

I have a new Windows laptop that is going to be my life for the next few years. It needs  to be backed up and have issues I need to ask about.

1) With a lower cost solution ( usb adapter and a hard drive perhaps ) I need to make sure I can
recover from a hard drive replacement ( including the ability to boot )

2) Versions would be nice without doing the whole drive again.

3) Being a person that left windows behind 15 years ago, how will windows respond to being restored to the same disk or new disk?  Now with your response to this question, can you find reference or your actual daily experience to agree with your statement please.  

4) The laptop will be a dell with the original build.  I have been told that in order to truly backup a windows laptop you need to purchase a second copy of windows so it actually will restore.  I would not mind making a second copy of my machine to visualize in case may laptop gets eaten by a "land shark" at the beach.
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dbrunton
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>>  I have been told that in order to truly backup a windows laptop you need to purchase a second copy of windows so it actually will restore.

No.  Depending on your version of Windows and the manufacturer (in this case Dell) you may be able to:
create restore media disks from the system
buy restore media disks from the manufacturer
media restore disks may come with the system
download media restore disks legally from the Internet

Some links to look at
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1800781/windows-iso-file.html (look at the solution offered there)

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media
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John
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ASKER

Thank you all

I still need to know if Windows is going to cry like a spoiled child about licensing if I replace the hard disk  and restore.

Rindi, great points,.  You have been a source of great wisdom in the past ( and today also ).
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Cool  thx
@TIMFOX123  - You are very welcome and I was happy to help.