Windows 10: Transferring files from old hard drive to new hard drive

Hello,


My laptop recently broke that was running Windows 7. I bought a new laptop that is running Windows 10. Since my old laptop would not start, I bought a hard drive enclosure so I could move everything off my old hard drive onto my new one.

I am confused with exactly how to move everything onto my new computer. If I simply copy and paste everything on the old hard drive to my new one, will being on a different version of Windows affect how my files transfer? Will it create duplicates of things like Google Chrome or other apps? Is copy and pasting it the best way to do it?

I am confused at this point and could use some guidance. Thanks for any response.

:)

 

new system old hard drive...

I have an old hard drive that has those old ribbon connections to transfer data to the mother board.

I have a new computer that mostly uses those cool little ATA (I think that is what they are called) connections.

The new computer has a Vista OS.

I opened up the case and I was supprised to see on the motherboard a wide ribbon connection and so I connected the old hard drive and a free power connection.

When I turned on the computer, the system started up like usual and did not notice the new hard drive.

I went to the Control Pannel and did an automatic add hard drive call and it did not find the old hard drive.

Any suggestions?

 

Transferring old Hard Drive to New Computer?

Yes you'll be able to access your files no problem (from within the OS on the new hard drive). However dont count on it booting from that hard drive. The driver issues will most likely be too much, and it will just blue screen. Theres always a chance it will boot, so try it out, but its going to be a mess uninstalling all the drivers from the previous computer then installing the new ones. It wont be clean, thats for sure. Better to put the old hard drive in the new machine, back up your files to the new hard drive, then reinstall xp on the old hard drive from scratch, if you are able to do that. Ive tried transferring hard drives between computers several times, and most of the time (unless the computers are very similar hardware-wise, i.e. two dells of the same series) they just blue screen. A handful of times though, it has worked, so try it out and see.

As for the external, no it will still have the same effect, as the drivers will kill it (once again, most likely)

 

Old Hard drive to new hard drive

I now have my old hard drive converted to an external drive and am wondering what is the best way to move files from the old to the new. I was thinking of booting the old drive and saving the files I want to the cloud and then downloading them to my new
computer. Does anyone have any other suggestions?