To use a image file and put that on a new drive or restore old drive I would need to put the image on a USB flash drive or DVD and be bootable to reinstall everything and macrium relect will do this is that correct? To make a clone I would need a usb adapter to plug new drive into laptop to clone with macrium reflect.
An image is a back up of the entire drive just a file not a clone. A clone is a complete replica of the old drive. Let me see if I understand this completely. Also, I beta-tested both Macrium and Acronis on Win10 as part of the Windows 10 Insider Testing community. I keep Macrium images for about 3 dozen of my Client's computers, and especially when I build them a new computer or laptop from scratch. I've spent the last 2 years working on Image Cloning, and have selected to use the Macrium to protect all of my top Client's computers, both business and home and it hasn't let me down yet. Neemo's suggestion of Clonezilla isn't bad, but it's for tekkie experts, definitely an advanced program! Also, Clonezilla fails to work on Win10 environment reliably, however it does a fairly good job on older systems such as XP, Vista, Win7.
I've tested on a wide variety of PC desktops and laptops across major brands from WinXP all the way through Win10. I'd go with the MACRIUM REFLECT here as mentioned by holdum, I've tested all the major free and fee-based programs on the marker, and Macrium is by far the best.
