Upgrading Windows 7 To Windows 10 On Old Computer Without USB?

paulyjustin said:

So you are saying if i put a macreium image on that external hard drive/flash drive, there cant be virus/malware on it? Where say i connect the external hard drive to my own laptop only on... nothing can transfer?

Correct. Everything is locked up inside the Macrium image and your PC cannot see it without you explicitly opening up the image with the Macrium software to look at it.

What do you mean by mount th mac image? Like you mean open that program while it being connected to your own laptop? Yea this is why i didnt want to do a mac image with that old laptop with one of my usb external/flash drives.

A machine with Macrium installed has an option, if you right-click on a Macrium image, to mount it as a read-only virtual drive so that you can use File Explorer to see its contents. Macrium will never mount an image unless you explicitly ask it to, so you are safe to put an image on your usb - just don't ask Macrium to mount it.

Bree said:

Correct. Everything is locked up inside the Macrium image and your PC cannot see it without you explicitly opening up the image with the Macrium software to look at it.




A machine with Macrium installed has an option, if you right-click on a Macrium image, to mount it as a read-only virtual drive so that you can use File Explorer to see its contents. Macrium will never mount an image unless you explicitly ask it to, so you are safe to put an image on your usb - just don't ask Macrium to mount it.

Hi thanks for this information. Okay i might do this if they have a usb drive then, i don't want to use mine in case i open it up by mistake say with a misclick.


Also when you do this, just to confirm as i need to do this with my windows 10 dell xps 15 9550 laptop to make a backup image of it, you need 2 things... like a big 1tb external hard drive and say a 32gb flash drive right?

paulyjustin said:

Also when you do this, just to confirm as i need to do this with my windows 10 dell xps 15 9550 laptop to make a backup image of it, you need 2 things... like a big 1tb external hard drive and say a 32gb flash drive right?

No. As you've been told many times already.

You need a drive big enough to store the image file. The image file could be 15 GB or 2 TB, depending on the occupied space on the partitions in the image. We have no idea of the occupied space because you haven't said. If you want to keep more than one image, you'd have to figure that in. If the occupied space is 100 GB, I'd estimate 60 or 70. You might get away with 50, but why crowd it?

You don't need a USB drive anywhere near 32 GB in size to make the Macrium recovery media. If that's what you are referring to. 4 GB is plenty. I think even 1 GB is big enough.

Hey sonic.


Well for my personal laptop, its like 46gb free of 230gb total in the ssd that i use. So im using about 185gb at the moment. I have an external hard drive that is 1tb... so i can use that. There is enough space for this as that external, i used up maybe 50gb only total.


Well i believe you said you needed 2 drives to do this mac image... like 1 external hard drive like the one i have... and another usb flash drive. Like if you only had the 1tb external hard drive, u cant do this right without that usb flash drive? Yea what im confused is you said usb drive for the mac recovery media.


I do have usb flash drive that is like 64gb that i can use for all this.

Ztruker said:

No, you don't want to write the backup image to the Macrium USB boot drive, not even sure Macrium will allow it.

It will, but it would have to be a pretty small image to fit. Macrium will even automatically use multiple 4GB image files if the usb is Fat32.

A Macrium image is roughly 60% the size of the used space on the partition(s) being backed up, so an external HDD is best.

Not sure why you are making this so hard.

1 USB flash drive, 1GB or larger to boot Macrium from.
1 external USB hard drive, 250GB or larger to write the backup image to.

That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

To make the Macrium recovery usb you need about 600MB free space on the usb flash drive, so almost anything will be large enough.
An external usb HDD is ideal for storing the image.

Thanks brees for the answers.

- - - Updated - - -

Hey all. I asked the person if they want to upgrade their dell inspiron laptop to windows 10 and they said they first need to transfer some pictures/files to an external hard drive first.


I won't be doing the macrium image for it but just want to confirm a few things.


They want to keep everything on the laptop as is. Such as keep on the files and apps So when i do this upgrade from windows 7 to windows 10, after the upgrade is done, will the laptop be same speed as before or would it actually be a bit faster or slower? Remember that laptop is extremely slow.


Is the last officiate date to do the windows 10 update like in January 2020? Is there a chance they push the date later like last time or is that the official date?


I assume almost all of you kept all the files and apps the same right before doing this update? Again with my old dell xps desktop, i kept nothing because i wanted nothing on it. But for this one laptop which isn't mine, they want to keep everything on it.


Does anyone know what are the percentage this update can go wrong and then the files/documents can go corrupt etc? Like is this rare or it does happen quite a bit for this update?


Also i know this isn't a mac forum, but their main laptop is a macbook. They also have an external hard drive. But they told me something like if you backup pictures/documents to an external hard drive from windows laptop... say now they want to transfer files to a macbook, they cannot do this. Said something like a hard drive has to be only compatible with a windows or mac computer. Did they make a mistake here? That makes no sense at all. They said when you configure the external hard drive, it then works with either windows or mac... that does not make any sense. They also are not that familiar with using a mac but i assume they are not right here right?

HI there. Well when i did my old desktop windows 7 to windows 10 upgrade there were no issues at all. But it did take a long time to do it... i think it had to do with the 5400 or 7200rpm. But of course, i chose option of not keeping anything.


But this laptop isn't mine and that person wants to keep it as is. So i was curious if after the update is done, is it possible the computer will be faster or slower or it would be the same speed. This laptop is same 5400 or 7200 rpm hard drive. But it lags a lot compared to my dell xps deskop.


Yea they don't want to do clean install because they still want the files/pictures on this computer as they want to keep their backup in 2 places... one is external hard drive, other is this laptop.

paulyjustin said:

I won't be doing the macrium image for it but just want to confirm a few things.

I strongly recommend you still do one. It's your insurance policy in the (unlikely) event that the upgrade goes badly wrong.

They want to keep everything on the laptop as is. Such as keep on the files and apps So when i do this upgrade from windows 7 to windows 10, after the upgrade is done, will the laptop be same speed as before or would it actually be a bit faster or slower? Remember that laptop is extremely slow.

Much of that slowness is probably W7 registry crap that has accumulated over the years. The upgrade to W10 will clear most of that out and make the system feel fresh and faster.

My System One below was originally W7 too, but I had done a factory reset so its W7 ran quite well. In comparison to its original W7, it felt a little faster after upgrading to W10.

Is the last officiate date to do the windows 10 update like in January 2020? Is there a chance they push the date later like last time or is that the official date?

Now that is a very interesting question - and one for which there is no official answer. In fact, the only official word from Microsoft is that "The Windows 10 free upgrade through the Get Windows 10 (GWX) app ended on July 29, 2016", but as we all know, MS have quietly been allowing upgrades to W10 using the MCT media to get digital licences and activation to this day.

Will that end for W7 when it reaches end of support? No one knows and MS aren't saying. It's a possibility, so to be safe do your upgrades before January 14, 2020. You could always upgrade to W10 to get your digital licence now, then go back to your previous W7 and continue to use it for as long as you wish. Then you'd have a digitsl licence for the PC should you want to install W10 later.

I have set aside one W7 PC that has no digital licence for W10. I intend to test if the upgrade still activates once support for W7 has ended.

Does anyone know what are the percentage this update can go wrong and then the files/documents can go corrupt etc? Like is this rare or it does happen quite a bit for this update?

I don't think I've heard of a case where files have been lost with the 1903 upgrade. A few very old programs may not be compatible with W10, but Setup will tell you if that is the case. You could then either uninstall them or see if you can upgrade to a version that is W10 compatible.

Also i know this isn't a mac forum, but their main laptop is a macbook. They also have an external hard drive. ... Said something like a hard drive has to be only compatible with a windows or mac computer. Did they make a mistake here?

It's all to do with the format used on the drive. Macs can't write to NTFS which is the format typically used on Windows external HDDs. Windows can't read a Mac's HFS format. The trick is to format the drive with a format both can use, exFAT for example.

How to Format a Hard Drive For Both Windows and Mac