Do I need an external hard drive to create a system image?

Solution 1:

Yes it's really easy by using Norton Ghost.First take your system back-up with ghost and save it in your external drive.Whenever you need to recover the system,you can load your image to your disk by using norton ghost again.

Solution 2:

Would it work better with an external hard drive?

Yes, it's always better to keep a drive backup safe and sound on a external storage device.

I looked at HP250GB Pocket Media Drive with USB cable for about $80. Would this work for creating the system image and for recovery?

Most certainly, 250 GB goes a long way, most drive backup programs offer compression of up to 50%

Does a recovery put the operating system back on my laptop?

But of course.

My recommendation:

EASEUS Todo Backup, supporting Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7 and Windows Server 2000/2003/2008, is a potent FREE backup software providing system backup & restore, hard disk or partition backup & restore, disk clone to protect your system and disk. It can back up whole PC, including the operating system plus your data, applications, settings and everything!

Solution 3:

I would always recommend doing a full backup to either a USB flash drive or an external hard drive.

Windows built in backup utility is brilliant for a full image, but if you want another tool, look for ImageX in the WAIK (Microsoft Windows Automated Installation Kit).

It is a tiny tool. I personally made a custom WindowsPE disk with this on it (the WAIK guides you through this) but you can put it on a usb stick and run Windows setup from the dvd or BartPE. You can then create a full drive backup very easily

Read here for more information on the tool. You basically need the \mount and \capture flags.

Here is the direct link to information on creating images.

Here is the direct link to information on mounting images.