How to set up new laptop?

Neil_Jones

SiliconChip said:

carly said:

Olinda99 said:

or copy everything onto a usb stick

then plug stick.into new laptop and copy everything off

then put stick somewhere safe in case you need a backup

That was my initial plan, it will take a long time though, I just wondered if there was a better way. Good idea to have an independent physical back up though. Thanks

I don't understand why you think it'll take a long time unless you have a huge volume of data to copy over (>1TB). I have spent the last couple of days setting up my latest laptop and copying the data over was one of the quickest steps (applying Windows 11 and other software updates was probably the slowest).

I would argue most people don't have *that* much data, certainly nowhere near enough to take "a long time".  It should take half an hour at the most for most people if that.

Your Windows installation and installed programs will take up the lion's share of the used space on the old drive, and you don't copy those.