Here is what happened, the full story.
I purchased the Win8 upgrade CD from a local Microcenter. Since they had the disks for $40 I figured it was a great deal and better than doing the online upgrade, as I would have the DVD.
My wife's computer is identical to mine. I built them both from parts at Newegg. They were running Win7 64 bit.
On my computer, I put the extra partition of 60 gigs on disk 0 so that I could run the Win8 beta.
That is what shows up as the current C:
The only part I want/need to backup is the current C partition.
When I ran the 64 bit Win8 DVD, for the heck of it I ran it from the Win8 beta, expecting it to fail. But it didn't, it ran through with no problem. But it did not give me any options to save personal files or settings, nor the option to do a "Clean" install.
I still have a Windows.old folder, though...but it has nothing in it as I had nothing under the Win8 beta that I intended to keep.
When I ran the upgrade on my wife's computer (a second 64 bit DVD, trying to be completely legit here), I ran it under her Win 7 and it again ran just fine. The only option it gave me was to save personal files and settings, which it also stored under the Windows.old.
Now, I want to do a system backup so that I don't have to install Win7 in order to run the Win 8 upgrade, but I am not sure if that is necessary either. Regardless, I want to run the backup just to make life easier and not have to redo Outlook and other settings.
Hope this all makes sense.
Rod