Backup prior to W10

[navychop]

I am considering "upgrading" from W7 Pro to W10, perhaps in Oct or Nov. I have a RAID 1 in my PC using two 1TB HDDs. I will probably stick with 1TB. I use my PC much less often now, both due to time issues and that I get almost everything done on my 6+

To"clone" the drives in case of worst case scenario, I can:

-Pull one of the HDDs, set aside as the "insurance" and replace. Wait until new drive is mirrored.

-Buy cloning s/w or use freeware to a single HDD. Which?

The situation gets a little muddled by my considering using the opportunity to move to a RAID 5 array with 3 or 4 HDDs, hoping for some speed improvements, or RAID 10 with 4 HDDs.

Any suggestions? I am not a heavy or power user by any means. Never even got around to using the video editing s/w I got.

 

[TheKrell]

How about cloning to your new raid5 array, and then just upgrade the raid5 array while leaving the W7 mirrored drives as they are for the time being?

 

[StevenD]

Pick up a copy of Acronis True Image.

 

[Ilya]

Buy an external USB 3.0 drive ($60) and image your current HDD RAID to it using Windows's built-in System Image tool.
Then once you are comfortable with Windows 10, you can erase that drive and use it for other backup or file-transfer purposes.