Transferring contents of hard drive to new external hard drive - help needed

chessfan

Hi guys

I've recently brought a new PC; I had my previous PC for about 8 years and it was still running XP whereas the new one runs 8.1.

I want to transfer the contents of the old hard drive to a new external hard drive that I will be buying.

What would be the simplest way for me to do this? I guess the hard drive has around 100GB on; mainly photos, music, video and MS files. Any suggestions or advice would be very welcome.

Thank you!

chessfan

cookie365

Plug the external drive into the old PC, then drag the files you want to keep from the PC to the new external drive.

Robisere

This is the official Microsoft Windows source of advice: -

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/products/features/windows-easy-transfer

Tells you how to transfer all your files and folders for an upgrade. But I would first buy another hard drive and copy ALL the contents of your hard drive to that. Then you have a complete backup before you then load the other new hard drive to take your music, etc.

Google and download Macrium Free, this will make the job of backups easier. If it all goes well, you can then format the drive with your old system on it and use it for regular backups.

abibee

Right-click - Copy/Cut > Right-click - Paste... wait.

To be serious, I don't know if there's an automated way of doing it. Just being methodical and organised, it pays to have organisation on your hard drive, so you know where everything is/goes.

googler

Take the HDD out of the old machine, put it in a USB caddy and use it as an external drive. Or install it as a secondary drive on the new PC (assuming it's a desktop machine). There's guides all over YouTube and the internut on how to do this

Take copies of important stuff onto the new HDD, and/or onto the new external drive.