Can I image old HDD to a USB, then boot from USB and clone to new HDD?

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kureoshin

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Oct 3, 2013
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10,510
I've been researching the different methods recently to clone my 500gb Windows 8.1 to a new 1TB HDD. I noticed that for most of these methods, I should use a cloning software and a SATA-USB adapter to clone data from my old HDD to new HDD while they are simultaneously connected to the laptop.

So, I'm wondering, is it possible to do that without a SATA-USB adapter? Say, could I create an image of the 500gb to an external USB drive, then switch out the old hard drive in my laptop with the new one, then boot from the USB and somehow migrate the data from the USB to my new hard drive so that the new hard drive would look exactly the same as the old one except there's more memory now? If this process is way more complicated than using a SATA-USB adapter, then I may just buy an adapter and clone instead.
 
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digitaldoc
AFAIK, these ISO images are from an optical disk, and then you can get them to run off a flash drive. This is not the same as imaging an entire hard drive.
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kureoshin

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Oct 3, 2013
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10,510
I was planning on using Macrium Reflect. I've never tried migrating data from one hard disk drive to another before so I'm doing this based off what I see in tutorials. The current HDD I'm using is the Toshiba MQ01ABD050 and I'm planning on getting the HGST Travelstar 7k1000 http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Travelstar-2-5-Inch-Internal-0J22423/dp/B00B4QESVQ.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll look into Apricorn but this is like a one time thing so I don't know if I should buy a cloning software.
 
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kureoshin

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Oct 3, 2013
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10,510
So I found this article recently http://pcsupport.about.com/od/file-folder/fl/burn-iso-usb.htm. It explains how I can burn an ISO image to a USB using Rufus. Has anybody tried that or are familiar with how this works? The thing I'm wondering is, how do you actually create an ISO image of the OS or is this and ISO image of the current state of the entire hard drive?
 
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kureoshin

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Oct 3, 2013
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10,510
Oh the reason I thought that site might be helpful for what I wanted to do because there is another article on the site that explains how you can boot from an external hard drive using an ISO image..
 
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