Must swap zx5000 at store Friday--will DriveImage7 pre & p..

Archived from groups: comp.sys.hp.hardware (More info?)

My hard drive is making bad sounds on my zx5000. If I bring it back on
Friday (i.e., today during biz hours) or maybe over the weekend, the store
will take it back when I walk in the door, give me store credit for it, and
probably will have another one or at least another HP laptop in stock with
at least as large a hard drive (mine has 60g).

To avoid the huge effort of reinstalling & tweaking apps, and for that
matter data, my plan had been to create an image, using Drive Image 7
(updated via web download to latest update, which I think is 7.02 or 7.03).
I spoke with Drive Image's tech support and got a high confidence that it
could work, and I tried backing up and restoring a currently non-critical
Dell Laptop just to confirm that Drive Image would work on that system. I
hadn't thought to call HP to see if they thought it would work, but the Tier
One tech support I'd gotten there led me to not even think of that as a
source I'd have much confidence in. I just did a search and noticed
statements at this newsgroup, but from 2001, that HP doesn't/didn't "allow"
drive cloning/images.

Please advise:
1) Should I make the image of more than just the C: drive? In particular,
should I be picking up a/the backup partition (which to my knowledge I've
never dealt with)?
2) Might this whole approach be flawed--is there something about HP laptops
that will prevent Drive Image from working?
3) Should my focus be on making multiple images (in case one or more fail)
or should it be on assuming that I'll have to reinstall my apps (and data)?
4) Any other ideas/advice?

Thanks!