yorolpal
What if my Win 7 isnt totally up to date...will the Win 10 update take care of all that?  Or do I need to do some prep work?
 

I think Olpal, Win 7 does need to have the latest updates for this upgrade. I have a home PC with Win 8.1 Pro which I'm planning on upgrading (had a few failed attempts), but will do a clean install of Win 8, update the latest patches, and then upgrade to Win 10. 

That's what I was afraid of.  I've tried, over the course of owning this fabulous DAW to update it 3 or 4 times using the Windows updater and everytime it has hung during updating and crashed the system.  Luckily each time I had set a restore point.  I just tried again this morning and the same thing happened.  It's kind of funny...in the dialog of the Win updater there's a little box that says "last update:  Never".  
 
So, I guess for me it's Win 10 pro full install.  Pooky scared, Daddy!
 

Ol Pal,
 
You can download the install media for Win10 (Home or Pro).
You can perform an "upgrade" install... making sure not to save or migrate anything.
This is essentially the same as a clean install of Win10.
Once finished, you can use Disk Cleanup to remove all remnants of Win7.
You can do this at any time (no need to update Win7 further).
 
Of course, you can also just do a clean install of Win10.
I'm available if you need assistance.

Can I upgrade even though my 7 hasn't been updated?
 

Yes, you just need the Win10 install media.
Not sure you qualify for the free accessibility upgrade to Win10.  
 
Make sure you have a backup image file of the current install.
Then, see if the above link will work (for the free Win10 accessibility upgrade).
If so, proceed with the "upgrade" install... making sure not to save or migrate anything.

Jim knows his stuff.....
 
Sorry if I mislead you Olpal....(when I tried to upgrade to Win 10, I remember it asking me to update to the latest version of 8.1 first).

If I backup the entire DAW using Acronis on to my 4 TB drive will that do it? Or do I need to just do the C:Drive onto a separate drive?  Is there a difference between an Acronis backup and an image file?
 

yorolpal
If I backup the entire DAW using Acronis on to my 4 TB drive will that do it? Or do I need to just do the C:Drive onto a separate drive?  Is there a difference between an Acronis backup and an image file?

 
When you say "C:Drive onto a separate drive", you do mean using Acronis to do so, correct?  Backing out the upgrade might be quite difficult otherwise, I would expect.

What I meant was just get a separate external 1 TB drive and backup just the C: drive contents to it.  Right now I back up my entire DAW on to a 4 TB external drive.
 

Ol Pal,
 
As long as there's enough space to write the backup image file (of your boot drive), you're good-to-go.
You can write the backup image file to any drive other than the drive you're backing up.
You can then move the backup image file where ever you desire (or leave it on an internal drive).