Thanks for that web address to download the Vista operating system from. I had a quick look at it, and being from Lenovo it should be a very clean and a totally functional ISO. By the way, I use Rufas to transfer my ISO files onto flash drives. It's a great little program for that function. You probably use it yourself.
Also, I searched around on line and found a few Lenovo T430 second hand computers. Yes, they look great, but here in Australia where I live, they are asking around 600 or so Australian dollars for them. I could look for one on E-Bay where price tags are probably much lower, but you never know what your buying that way. Perhaps I better throw in a few hundred extra dollars above that $600 and buy something new. For a new computer, I gather a Lenovo is still a good choice? By the way, how do you think such a computer would react to wiping it's hard drive clean and then installing the Wndows 7 32 bit system on it? This of course would only be a temporary installation until I got a clone of it across to a Flash Drive. Once the OS on the flash drive checked out ok, I could then install the 64 bit version of Windows 7 onto the laptop's drive. I prefer it to Windows 10.
Lisa I gather you were not too impressed with your attempt to install a Windows OS onto a Flash drive?
"when I read todo backup could do the whole run from pen drive but in reality it doesn't work more than it works."