Moving Programs And Data From Win 7 HD To New Hard Drive?
Aug 20, 2015
I just bought a new computer and it comes with Win 10. I need to plug in my old hard drive with all my installed programs and data (Win 7) and moved them to that new drive (Win 10). Is there a software that you would recommend for this and what should be done? Clone or image? I am lost in terminology!
I have an SSD with a Windows 10 installation on it. This Windows 10 is and upgrade from Windows 8.1 which was an upgrade from Windows 8. I still have the Windows 8 key and installation media. What I'm doing is building a new computer, but my hard drive is still new, so I want to keep it. When I put it in the new system I plan on doing a refresh or clean install, so that everything is nice and clean.
But, I don't have a product key for Windows 10. Is my only option to use my Windows 8 CD then upgrade to 10? Is there a way to retain my 10 installation then reset it? This one hurts my brain. What I think would be best is right before I move the hard drive is do the reset, then move it to the new computer, but then I don't know how windows will active since I can't use the 8 key and it can't do a internet activation based on hardware because all the hardware is new.
I was wondering if it was possible to copy the Windows 10 OS to another hard drive and still be able to use the old one. I have an old laptop, mainly used for videos and internet use, and I would still like to be able to have it for mobility purposes. I'm in the process of building a gaming PC, so of course, I'll need an OS for that as well.
There was a folder titled Windows.000 that was created after my previous upgrade to windows 10. This folder had all of my data on it and now it has completely disappeared. It feels like somebody has physically come into my home and gutted my hard drive. My C: properties say 1.9GB Free out of 2... WTF??
So when I decided to build this pc, i wanted it to have Win7. When i booted it up, i kept getting the message asking if i wanted to upgrade to Win10. so i thought "hey, i paid 50 dollars for win7, so why don't i upgrade to win10 for free instead of paying 100 dollars," so i did. and all of my downloads and files, everything, saved so i didn't have to download everything again. but turns out i don't like win10. so if i go back to win7, will everything stay on my hard drive?
I use a 2 drive set up, a small solid state for my operating system and whatever game I'm currently into, and a 2TB storage drive.
My storage drive (D:) bombed and I took it in for data recovery. The tech saved about 1.3TB of 1.6 used. He put the image onto my new drive and got it going again. However when I try to access explorer or anything pertaining to D: it hangs for about 45 seconds before giving me access. I ran CCleaner first off to knock out registry entries that lost their home but haven't seen any improvement.
What else should I do to get this thing back in order? I'm on Windows 10.
I'm running home edition in both and trying to export contacts from old vista laptop to flash drive, then import to 'people' on win 10 laptop . Do I do it as csv -common separated values ...or vCards (folder of .vcf files)
The old one is perfectly serviceable, but slow (i3-2365M, 1TB hdd, 8Gb mem, on-chip graphics ). The new one is a i7-6700HQ, 512Gb sdd, 1TBhdd, 16Gb mem, NVIDIAGeForce GTX 960M . Both laptops have Windows 10 OS. How can I transfer my files, data, settings and programs to the new laptop?
I was moving video files (AVI) from an external backup drive (WD Element) to another external backup drive (Seagate expansion) after having moved another video file from my laptop (Acer) to that Seagate external drive. The night before I had moved some video files from the WD to the Seagate with no problem but using a different laptop (Sony). These video files are all rather large and I can tell that the space is still being allocated on the Seagate because while the folder cannot be seen the space that was there is still being used by the Seagate because I am missing over 100GB which would be about the size of that now missing folder.
What happened was there was a message that the Seagate drive could not be recognized while the files were in the process of being moved to that drive from the WD. This is after I had already moved a video file of about 26GB with no problem into that now missing folder. When I saw the message I attempted several times to move files to that Seagate drive but I could not so I unplugged the Seagate drive from that laptop (Acer) then reinserted it into the usb port. I got a repair message that said it needed to be repaired because some files were corrupted and that no data would be lost but the drive would be unavailable during the repairs so I checked ok. It took only about 30 seconds and it said the repairs were completed and the drive was available but I noticed that the folder that I was moving the video files to was not gone.
As I stated there are more than 100GB of files in that folder some are video and others are audio recordings that were created by using the myrecording (audio and video) features of the Acer laptop and they are very important so I need to figure out if they can be retrieved from that Seagate drive. I have not copied anything else onto that Seagate drive but I have plugged it into the Acer computer to ensure it is being recognized. Both the external drives WD and Seagate are plug and play that are powered from the usb -- they have no power adapters.
I am planning on building a new PC in the coming months and am trying to figure out the best backup solution for it.
My current plan is to install Win10 and all programs on a 500GB SSD and store all personal files on a 2 or 3TB HDD. I've found plenty of tutorials online for moving the Windows "Users" folder to a separate drive either during installation or afterwards.
However I am wondering if doing that will mess up using Window's backup? If either the SSD or the HDD fails, will Windows Backup be able to restore all the files to their proper locations (i.e OS and programs to SSD and data to HDD)?
I've used Windows 7's backup in the past to restore all my data after a HDD failure and it worked flawlessly. However, I'm not committed to using it exclusively. Any other backup options. This computer is going to be the family computer, with all my wife's data on it, so I need to make it "just work".
Why I do this is unimportant. In Win 7, when I move my daily backup files (2 weeks worth about 20gb) from my current BU folder to my save BU folder, the move took a couple of seconds (I think because only the file pointers were changed.) Under Win 10, it takes in excess of 2 hours (I think there is a physical move of file data.) This is my third try since installing Win 10 on my (admittedly slow) server. Will renaming the files work?
I currently have one drive that contains a System Reserved partition (which includes the boot files). The status is System, Active, Primary Partition.I have another drive with the C: partition. The status is Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition.I've been told that if I remove the disk (it's a bit flaky) with the System Reserved partition, I won't be able to boot up. If this is true, is it possible to transfer that partition to another drive? If so, does it have to be at the start of the drive? Alternatively, can I make the C: partition include System status?
Problem: When I click on my H: drive or try to access it from the command line, it gives me an access denied error. However, all of the applications that I have installed on that drive run without issue. So, there is some access there. (See attached images. The first shows the hard drive state in diskmanager and in windows explorer. The second image shows the minecrafter launcher profile (that it is stored in H: and the application running, proving that there is some access.
System: Home built PC: (C:) 240GB SSD for OS, (E:) 1TB HDD for file storage and backup, (H:) 1TB HDD for large applications and video editing files. All drives are Simple, Basic, and none have encryption. All use the SATA connectors.
Process: I had Windows 7 Home 64 bit with, among many other things, Comodo Internet Security, Virtualbox, ImageDisk. During the upgrade process, I noticed that Windows 10, during the upgrade, ran the file system check and fix "problems" on the H: drive.
(Side note) Having forgotten to uninstall Comodo before the upgrade, I did not have network after the upgrade. The fix was non-trivial as I had to use a second computer to download the unofficial comodo uninstaller. Reboot. Uninstall the network devices. Reboot. And once Windows 10 was up and running, it reinstalled the network devices and the network was available.
Still, whether before or after the Comodo uninstall and reinstall, the uninstall of ImageDisk, or the uninstall of the Virtualbox network device, I have no access to the H: drive.
Pen Drive and external hard drive keep getting errors! So I select to fix the problem scandrive recommended scan and repair. But there's never anything wrong with them it reports! And it takes ages to scan it takes 10-15 minutes for 32GB pen drive. Windows 7 Pro done it in a flash! Anything I can do about it.
What is the MapData folder which has recently appeared on my D drive? (This is the drive containing all my user folders with the exception of Pictures.) It contains subfolders diskcache, mapscache and files overrides.json, updater.nma
Ever since doing a fresh install of Windows 10, in "This PC", my secondary hard drive is not in the list. I have already tried right clicking "This PC" and clicking Manage -> Disk Management, but there is nothing there except my SSD with Windows 10 installed.
I have tried changing SATA cables, SATA ports, but it still does not appear in This PC. I have also tried installing my hard drive on a another computer to see if the files were corrupted. They were not, all files were still the same before the installation of Windows 10. I did not leave the hard drive plugged in during the installation.
In the BIOS, my computer recognizes both my SSD and my hard drive, but in This PC, it's still missing.
I used CLEAN in DISKPART and i delete all partitions of my only disk.
Now i dont have any OS on my laptop and i want recover partition by "Partition Wizard" or "Test Disk" that can boot from CD but i fear that this bootable program overwrite on my only disk to load itself and some part of my data will be lost.
Wondering how Windows 10 deals with putting data on a separate partition or drive. Does it use the same general method as in Windows 7, where it re-maps (for example) "Documents" to a folder on a different letter drive path? So that C:Users{user}Documents becomes G:Users{user}Documents?
I'm hoping that it actually becomes more like *nix, using symbolic links to point to the right place (so C:Users{user}Documents points to the separate partition of drive). Personally, I find the Win7 method to be clunky and problematic in actual use.
One of my WD Green 2tb drives has become raw and can't be used. Windows will not complete a format of it. Shows up in my computer. Is there any way of saving this drive?
I am currently trying to convert my mSATA SSD from MBR to GPT. I have downloaded EaseUS partition master and can see that I can convert the disk using the software. My question is however if this is possible to do with my mSATA drive that my PC boots from and has Windows 10 installed or does it have to be a drive that is not booted from. I know there are lots of threads on this however none specify of this is possible using the drive you are booted from.
I put my Asus K54C back to O.O.T.B. factory settings by tapping F9 on a reboot and it went through a 'EMS settings' and restored the whole computer, took about an hour. As we all know there are loads of programs that are unwanted and just wastes space. Advertising, games and just junk basically.
I elected to install windows 10 and opted for the 'keep nothing' when it came to the programs that I wanted to keep. Just a complete install of windows 10 'only'.It took everything of, even the factory settings for Asus programs that was on my desktop etc. My HD went from about 45 gig to just 15 gig but there are still programs on C:Drive such as the 'esupport' from Asus that is still there and its a whopper more than 2 gig in size.
My first question is: How do I get rid of these programs that are on C: Drive without upsetting the laptop's running (registry etc). These are not in the 'programs and features' where you can uninstall them safely. Through past experience many years ago I did 'delete' them thinking I was doing good but totally messed up the laptop's running completely. So how I can take them of safely? My second question is: In my C:Drive there have been folders added that was not put there by me (I don't think so anyways) such as,
1. $SysReset. (I think it is a dollar sign at the start of the name, not sure) in this folder is 'Logs' and it has SetupAct_offline.log as a text Document. 2. Also 'ESD' on the drive but with nothing in it at all.
There are a couple of folders such as 'AsusVibeData' and the 'esupport' that was left behind when windows 10 was installed.I just want to get rid of these folders that are taking up so...... much space safely and find out how to do it.
Got a perfect upgrade from Win7 Pro to Win10 Pro for any programs that were on the boot disk. However any programs that were loaded on a second (non-bootable) disk were not recognized at all. Is there any way, other than reloading all those programs, to get Win10 Pro to know they are there? I thought this would be caught when the system upgraded but this did not happen. I was trying to keep my boot drive lean and mean.