Question Concerning RAM Memory

I burn my photos to a data CD so I have a copy before I do any editing.
I also store them on things like USB sticks and sd cards. You could keep a stick or card in a safe deposit box off site for safe storage.

You can also store "some" that are of special interest and want to be sure you never lose "in the cloud". My google drive has 17 GB of free storage. The normal amount is 15 GB for free storage. I took a security survey and as a result, I was given 2 additional gigs of storage. I choose not to share my photos.
Between my husband's gmail account with 15 GB of storage and my gmail account with 17 GB, we have a lot of space to store photos off site (just in case the house burns down, falls into a sinkhole or is swept away by a tornado). Just something to consider.

 

Does the hard drive just have Linux Mint on it? I never done it so I am not sure if that will work or not. I do know it is better to have windows on the hard drive first then put Linux on second.

 

If you're imaging an old drive onto this other drive that already has Linux, no worries. The Linux install will be overwritten. The drive the image is restored onto will look exactly like the original imaged drive.

 

Yep what Tony said I thought you wanted to dual boot. Just image windows 7 on there and you will be good.

 

When you say image that would be taking one hard drive with windows 7 and imaging to another hard drive. I think you are saying you want to reload windows 7 onto another disk. If that is the case you will need a copy of windows 7 then.
I am a little confused on actually what you want to do could you please clear that up please.

 

Windows 7 comes on a DVD and I'm not sure you'll be able to find a copy to buy.

You might do better just buying another Optiplex 780 with Win 7 Pro loaded on it. ($140 and it has a 2 year warranty)
https://www.newegg.com/dell-optiplex-780-student-home-office/p/1VK-0001-0BJ06

Then keep the other Optiplex for parts.

 

Do you have the Windows 7 install media (probably a CD/DVD) and associated license? If yes, then you can do a clean install of Windows 7 on your new hard drive/SSD using the media and license.

If you don't have the install media and license, you'll need to make an image of your current drive and restore the image to the new hard drive/SSD. Making the image and restoring is a bit involved.

 

See if this helps. It's from Macrium who makes a free version of their software.


Basically you install the program on your computer. Start the program and select your current hard drive as the "Source". Then select the new drive as the "Target". Of course you'll have to connect the new drive to the computer somehow. I use a SATA to USB adapter. Then follow the prompts to make a clone of your Source drive to the Target drive. There may be questions of partition sizing that comes up. We'll deal with that later because I'm too tired to go into it tonight.

What you end up with is an exact duplicate of the Source drive on the Target drive.

I didn't mention making an image. Making an image involves an intermediate step. It involves compressing all the hundreds of files on the Source drive into a single large data file on some other drive. That file is the image file. You can't do anything with it in the single file state. Now that the image file is created, you use the software to "Restore" it to the Target drive. The restore processes expands the single image file into all those files that were on the Source drive. When it's done, it'll look exactly like the Source drive.

I prefer the Image/Restore method over the Clone method because it's harder to make a mistake. You don't want to screw up and clone the empty drive onto a working drive.

 

Yep I did sorry I got a little lost. Tony has it covered I use that software also it works very well. Sorry for the confusion hope you get it going.

 

Yes, that's the Image/Restore process. The link you provided uses Windows to make the image and then to restore it to another drive.

I've never used Windows for this purpose, but it should work. I use Acronis' True Image. It's not free. Some folks here have used Macrium's free application which is shown on our page of recommended software. https://computerhelpforums.com/threads/chf-recommended-software.48136/ I sent you the link to Macrium's tutorial a few posts ago.

You can make an image using Windows and then restore it to your new drive. If that doesn't work, try Macrium's free software. Nothing to lose but time. You'll probably even learn something along the way,