How To ... transfer from Old PC to New PC ?

[Mako Koiwai]

We bought Karen a new PC. Can anyone point to a tutorial on how one can port over "everything" from one's old (custom built by Rocky) PC to a new Gateway PC.

In the Mac world there is a fairly simply way of tethering between two Mac's with an ethernet or firewire cable and doing a data "migration."

[Kristoffer Gjevre]

I usually do it manually as I only transfer my data that I keep on a separate drive, but this may be a starting point:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... r-computer" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Aaron Goldsmith]

Back your data up to an external USB hard drive. Copy it to the new PC. You now also have a backup of your data for when your hard drive fails.

[John Stimson]

If the new computer uses the same operating system, then install the old hard drive and new hard drive in the same computer, and use a partition copying tool to clone the old drive onto the new drive. Put the new drive in the new machine, and let it detect which drivers it needs, then reboot to allow it to take effect. You should be up and running at that point, and not have to reinstall any software.

If you are migrating to a new OS, you'll have to evaluate which machine to have the new hard drive installed in when you upgrade the OS. In some cases, the old OS won't have drivers available to run the new hardware, so you would have to run the OS upgrade on the old machine first. In others, the old machine will be so old that there are not drivers available for some of its hardware in the new OS. Most of the time, the new OS will run well enough on either machine to complete the upgrade.

[Stephen Yeoh]

It's more work, but it's better to re-install everything - assuming you still have the original media. It gives you a chance to clean out old junk and reduces the likelihood that you will have some kind of driver conflict as you move - particularly between operating systems. That being said, being able to migrate with 'one click' is very very tempting.