Computer Advice Part 2

[Jerry Bruette]

Sorry to pester you fellas, but it's been a long time since I've had to do this.

So we picked up the new 'puter yesterday and found out I may have a little snag. What's the best way to transfer info from the old machine, Win 7, to the new one, Win 11? Can I just do a backup from old machine and restore on the new machine using thumb drives?

We didn't get a new monitor so I will have to keep switching the monitor from old machine to new so I can see what I'm doing.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Jerry, I am sure there are many ways to do this but moving from Win 7 to Win 11 is a big change. I just replaced my 13 year old computer a month ago with a new Win11 version and all I did was copy the documents folder, photos, music and videos onto a couple of thumb drives. Then moved them over to the new computer. Any of the old programs I had, I left because they were so outdated. Have fun with Win 11, it is a really nice upgrade.

[Curt Harms]

What Steve did is what I would do as well. An added benefit is that you have a copy of stuff that you (or worse your beloved) would be very upset to lose. I don't worry about backing up the entire system. I use mostly open source stuff so it's simple though time consuming to reinstall operating system and applications. I make sure I have independent copies of things like photos, important documents, things like that. Hard core guys say you should have 3 copies of important data - 2 rotating versions stored locally and one version stored off site.

[George Yetka]

My key for this type of backup is that I always have a second hard drive in my computers. All software is saved on the main drive and all data on the second. All word/excel/pdfs/photos being kept separate from the main drive makes it easy to pop it out and throw it in a new computer at any time. Also Data files like these are less likely to be corrupted/virused/etc.

But if you have access to the original computer an external plug in drive flash/HD/etc can be plugged in. and you can save all of your stuff. Bookmarks are transferable/Downloads folder/anything you saved/ saved jobs in any software etc.

[Bill Howatt]

In case you were thinking of doing it, you cannot just copy an installed Windows programs to a new machine. They have to be installed.
A USB external hard drive will be a lot faster than flash drives unless you bought expensive ones. Don't be fooled by the USB3 ratings, that's just the interface and it does not usually translate into actual data transfer speeds.
If you have a TV with a HDMI input you probably can use it for a monitor on the new machine - they usually have HDMI video outputs.
I agree with George - keep the important data files off the C drive - setup a separate partition for them.

[Jim Becker]

Data can be copied in many different ways with external storage devices and cloud storage as well as via a network connection. Programs/Applications need to be re-downloaded (or the original install files transfered like the data) and then installed on the new machine. There is no "copy" for programs...

[Paul F Franklin]

I guess I beg to differ a bit. There are several utilities that will transfer both your programs and data to a new PC, avoiding the need to reinstall everything. One example is EaseUS PCtransfer (or something like that). This of course assumes the version of software you have is compatible with Win 11 (not guaranteed by any means). They move all the necessary executables and support files, and registry entries needed.

They are not perfect but they work pretty well. There are downsides: you get all your "stuff", even stuff you may not want. And if your old computer was clogged with junk, your new computer will be clogged with junk.

It's definitely preferable to start with a clean machine, reinstall all your software, and copy over all your data files. But that can be a huge undertaking and not everyone has the install media for every program they want/need, not to mention license keys etc.

IIWM, I'd make a system backup of the clean machine and then try one of the transfer programs. If it doesn't work well, you can always restore from the clean backup and do the transfer manually.

[Bill Howatt]

That trick is done with imaging programs and they will indeed copy over installed programs and the OS and get the machine bootable but you have to get the drivers for the other hardware. You may run into trouble with licensing or you may not, and the application may or may not be supported under W11.
However, if he did this he would end up with Windows 7 on the new machine, it is also likely 32 bit, he could have a hard time finding W7 32 bit drivers for the newer hardware and essentially will have taken a big step backwards.
My preference with a new machine is to install the programs I know I will be using. Defer the others until you come across a time you need it then install it - usually there is a bunch of stuff that never gets reinstalled. This is also a good time to do a general file cleanup and refresh your memory on configuration and touch onto some of the newer features that have been implemented since W7. Of course, you will also learn about the ones that got changed and you wish they hadn't!
This is a good time to make an image backup if you want to delve into that arena - saves your butt if your OS drive crashes or the whole computer goes south.
Data files should always be treated with more care as far as backups go - the OS and apps can be replaced with a bit of work, your personal data files are available nowhere else at any cost.

[Jim Becker]

I guess I beg to differ a bit. There are several utilities that will transfer both your programs and data to a new PC, avoiding the need to reinstall everything. One example is EaseUS PCtransfer (or something like that). This of course assumes the version of software you have is compatible with Win 11 (not guaranteed by any means). They move all the necessary executables and support files, and registry entries needed.

They are not perfect but they work pretty well. There are downsides: you get all your "stuff", even stuff you may not want. And if your old computer was clogged with junk, your new computer will be clogged with junk.

It's definitely preferable to start with a clean machine, reinstall all your software, and copy over all your data files. But that can be a huge undertaking and not everyone has the install media for every program they want/need, not to mention license keys etc.

IIWM, I'd make a system backup of the clean machine and then try one of the transfer programs. If it doesn't work well, you can always restore from the clean backup and do the transfer manually.

I might be ok with that with a transfer between machines running the same generation of OS, but the OP made a bit of a jump all the way to Win11. No way would I not do a clean install of the applications to insure no problems. I say this because of how Windows applications get installed and put a lot of entries into system registry files. Direct transfer of applications is a bit easier on MacOS (no "registry") but even there, I still prefer to do the reinstall.

[Michael Schuch]

Don't try to automatically transfer applications from one computer to another... just don't.

Windows has a data file transfer utility that you can use but I would just do it all manually with what ever preferred external media you choose then save the external media as a backup. Use the process to clean up and organize your data files.

Keeping all of your data files on a separate drive than your OS and applications does make it easier to keep your files organized and backed up. I run a stand alone NAS (network attached storage) for organizing all my files which makes backups quick and easy but this is probably over kill for most (the NAS part, not the organized and backed up part).

[Rich Engelhardt]

USB (thumb) drives and external hard drives are dirt cheap.
Gmail gives you 15GB of free storage also.

Between those three - and using Google Chrome to keep track of my online logins and passwords, I can change from one computer to another nearly seamlessly.

And my phone - I can't forget my phone. I can store a GB of stuff on my phone that synchs up whenever I plug my USB cable into my PC.

[Curt Harms]

In case you were thinking of doing it, you cannot just copy an installed Windows programs to a new machine. They have to be installed.
A USB external hard drive will be a lot faster than flash drives unless you bought expensive ones. Don't be fooled by the USB3 ratings, that's just the interface and it does not usually translate into actual data transfer speeds.
If you have a TV with a HDMI input you probably can use it for a monitor on the new machine - they usually have HDMI video outputs.
I agree with George - keep the important data files off the C drive - setup a separate partition for them.

For grins I took an early version SSD out of a laptop and put it in a SATA-USB enclosure planning to use it for storage. I plugged it into my desktop with after market USB ports. Just for grins I started the desktop up, pressed the key to select the boot device and what do you know, the SSD containing Linux and Windows partitions were seen and were bootable. I did some simple stuff on Windows just to see if it would be unbearably slow. It wasn't; for relatively simple stuff - office apps, web browser the sort of thing most of us do, it was quite usable.

The reason USB flash drives are slow are due to write speeds on mass market USB drives. They may read at 80 MB/sec. but write at perhaps 5 - 10 MB./sec. There are high speed write flash drives that contain lower end SSD controllers but those are more $$ and not typically found in Walmart or Best Buy.

[Kev Williams]

I recently rebuilt four used Dell SFF computers I paid $30 each for to run my fiber lasers, I have a Win7Ultimate-64 install disk, paid like $5 each for a batch of legal licenses, bought four 1/4tb SSD's for them for all of $13 each, and 4 sticks of 4gig ram for each one- less than $100 each all-in for them, the things boot up in 15 seconds and are lightning fast...

I have a win8 computer that does nothing but store all my working jobs from whatever computer I'm using at the time, via network on its two 1tb drives, works great but otherwise I can't stand win8- and I have a laptop with Windows 10, the interface is better than 8 but I hardly ever use it because it's so slow... never tried 11, probably never will either. Since the small Dells worked out so well, I've changed out my other 6 bigger Dells to SSD drives and 16gig-Win7-U-64s, and I couldn't be happier. Stable, blazing fast, no updates to worry about, and a simple AV and a free Tor browser have kept me free of hackers since, well, forever...

And the nice thing about rebuilding a bunch of exact-same computers, I made a verbatim copy of the first 'done' computer's SSD drive to other like drives using an Ease-US program, probably the one mentioned above, installed the copied-to drives into the next computers, and all four computers work... all programs, all drivers and everything else about them are virtually identical.

As to verbatim-copying from a Win7 to a Win11, pretty sure that won't work simply due to OS changes. But if anyone has figured that out, I'd guess Ease-US would be worth checking into!

[Bill Howatt]

It can't work because what you have is an Ease-US image of the W7 disk and the first thing that happens when putting that image onto the target is to effectively wipe out the target partition. Now W11 is totally gone and you restore your W7 setup and end up with W7, not W11. It is a total replacement of the partition data, not a combine. This is how all imaging programs, not just Ease-US work.

[Paul F Franklin]

It can't work because what you have is an Ease-US image of the W7 disk and the first thing that happens when putting that image onto the target is to effectively wipe out the target partition. Now W11 is totally gone and you restore your W7 setup and end up with W7, not W11. It is a total replacement of the partition data, not a combine. This is how all imaging programs, not just Ease-US work.

The Easeus pctransfer program is not an image copy/move. It will transfer from Win7 to win8/10/11 (won't go from newer to older). It doesn't support all programs, but supports a lot of common ones; the rest have to be manually installed on the new machine. It doesn't move the OS, just application files, registry entries, data files, shortcuts, bookmarks, etc.