Norton Ghost, Paragon Backup & Recovery and Acronis True Image are several of the most popular and mostly used Disk Imaging Software Applications as of today. Though the price are high, the features and functionality of these 3 applications outweigh the price tag that may be included.
Laplink Disk Image is one recommended disk imaging software program. There are literally thousands of programs out there, not one necessarily the best out of them, and some examples include Clonezilla, Disk-Image and DriveImage Xml.
Imaging software is a type of backup software, but it serves a different purpose. Standard backup software creates copies of files that are stored on a separate drive or media. These files can then be viewed or copied back as needed, but only the files and the data they contain are backed up. Imaging software actually captures the entire state of a disk, including its partition tables and other information. In essence, a disk image is a clone of the source disk. This means an entire drive can be restored to an exact state, including the operating system and boot sectors in the event of a catastrophic hardware failure.
A hard disk is "hardware", software is the computer languages used in running the computer and its many applications
One can make an image of a hard drive by using a disk imaging utility software like Norton Ghost or Far Stone Total Recovery, these utilities will walk through the imaging process of the disk step by step and this will provide a backup when there is problem.
I have found the KACE K2000 is a very good software package for disk imaging. It is robust and saves each image as a unique file so they can be changed/edited easily. Being able to edit an image is much faster than having to create an entire new one each time a change is needed. It allows bypassing full transfers to edit just the original image which enhances the speed a ton. If you want to learn more you can check the related links.
If you have not used disk imaging / cloning software to transfer it to the new drive, yes. You can still reinstall with the disc, however.
stand-alone computer
Types of software utilities are as below: Disk Storage Disk Defragmenters Disk Checkers Disk Cleaners Disk Space Analyzers Disk Partitions Backup Disk Compression File Managers Archive System Profiles Anti-Virus Hex Editors Data Compression Cryptographic Launcher Applications Registry Cleaners Network Utilities Command Line Interface Graphical User Interface
Only on a virtual machine.
Imaging a hard drive is making an exact copy of your hard drive and either saving that copy onto another hard drive or into a folder. The software packages available can be free or paid for.
The disk is hardware, but information ON the disk is software. Rule of thumb is if you can touch it with your fingers, it is hardware. You can touch the disk, but you cannot touch files or programs.
Basically, you can if you want to, but it doesn't have any privileges. I would suggest you keep your OS and your apps on the same disk, and your documents/files on another.