Transfer Software and Files from Old Windows 10 PC to a New PC
Windows PC won’t last for years and this is common view to public. You need to build a new PC or buy a new one to replace the old one. This is an easy task now! But the real trouble is how to transfer software and files from the old Windows 10 PC to the new one.
In fact, a simple copy-paste does not work for software programs as this won’t move entries in Registry. What is more, this could be a huge time consuming process if you preferred doing it manually.
To make this process much faster and more smooth, it is more recommended using professional software to get it done in a comfortable way. This is the purpose of this article. We have listed five popular software that you can use for moving software and data from old Windows 10 PC to a new one.
Each of these utilities have their own pros and cons, go through each one and depending on your situation, choose the one that is best for you and clone all programs and data from old PC to a new PC.
Things You Need to Prepare:
- A USB drive for creating bootable media.
- HDD or SSD Enclosure for physical data transfer.
Before getting started, you should put hard drive or SSD for new PC into a enclosure so it can be used as a portable drive for data transfer. Please pick up the one that supports USB 3.0, which has a much faster reading and writing speed.
Macrium Reflect Free
Macrium is one of the most important players when it comes to disk backup and clone. It offers two different solutions for transferring software and data from old PC to new PC. The first one is for commercial purpose and the second one is for home users, which is free!
Macrium Reflect Free Edition is a powerful piece of software that can not only clone Windows 10 to a new drive, but can also create a bootable image of a running Windows machine. It is our first suggestion for transferring software and data between two different drives.
- Go to Reflect Free download page and scroll down the page. You will find Reflect 7 Free. Click the download button and select I need a personal free license. Input your email to continue.
2. Install Reflect Free on the old Windows 10 PC, and fire up the utility.
3. Connect the new drive with USB enclosure to the old computer. Now, select the disc you would like to clone on the old Windows 10 PC. A Clone the disk link would appear, press that link.
4. Now select new drive as destination drive. However, you need to remember that this will delete all the existing data on that new drive.
5. Now, drag-and-drop all the drives from the old Windows 10 PC that you would like to move to the new PC. Just make sure that the order the drives appear in both the old and new drives are same.
6. In case the size of the old disk is different than the new one, you may have to change the size of the drives.
7. Once done, press Next, twice, to get an overview of the drives you are about to clone. Review it, and then press Finish.
Finally, grab a cup of coffee and wait for the process to be done!
Clonezilla
This is another free to use utility that you can use to transfer data from old Windows 10 PC to a new one. However, you need to prepare a bootable USB using Clonezilla before using it for disk cloning.
Remember, that you can also prepare a CD/DVD instead of an USB, however, most modern Windows 10 PC does have an USB port irrespective of whether they have a CD/DVD drive or not.
1. Download the Clonezilla Live zip file from their website (https://clonezilla.org/downloads.php), extract the content of the zip file in the USB drive
2. Next, open a Command Prompt as an administrator, locate a file called makeboot64.bat in the following directory:
\utils\win32\makeboot or \utils\win64\makeboot and run makeboot.bat
3. Follow all the instructions given on the screen to create a bootable USB.
Please note that if you are using a CD/DVD instead of an USB, you need to download the ISO file and burn it on your CD/DVD. Also, you can use a Linux or Mac PC to create this USB
4. Now, boot your old Windows 10 PC from this bootable USB.
5. Once the old Windows 10 PC boots using Clonezilla, choose the option which says “Clonezilla live (Default settings, VGA 800x600)” from the boot menu and press Enter.
6. In the next window, select the option which says “Clonezilla live (To RAM. Boot media can be removed later)” and press Enter. This copies all the Clonezilla files into the RAM from the HDD of the new Windows 10 PC which might take some time.
7. Now it will ask you to choose your language, please select the same and press Enter.
8. On the next screen, it will ask you to choose your keyboard layout. Select “Keep” and press Enter.
9. On the next screen, select the option which says “Start Clonezilla” and press Enter.
10. On the next screen, select the option that says “device-device” and press Enter since you would be cloning the old Windows 10 PC directly to a new Windows 10 PC.
11. Next, select the option which says “Beginner” and press Enter. This will make life much easier for you since the Expert mode is targeted towards power users.
12. On the next screen, select “disk_to_local_disk” and press Enter
13. Next, select the drive from the old Windows 10 PC where it asks you to choose the source.
14. Now you need to select the target drive in the new Windows 10 PC.
15. If the old Windows 10 PC is working fine, select “-sfsck” on the next screen and press Enter, otherwise select “-fsck”.
16. Next, select what you want Clonezilla to do when the cloning is complete. I would suggest you to select “-p Choose” so that you can choose what to do once the process is complete.
17. Once the next scree, press Enter to start the process. Remember, Clonezilla will ask for confirmation multiple times before starting each step of cloning the drives, please give your confirmation by pressing “y”, without the quotes, and press Enter each time
18. Once the process starts, Clonezilla will take it up from there
19. Once the process is completed, Clonezilla will give you the option to restart/power off your PC. Choose what you want and press Enter. Once done, your new drive is ready for use and all the old software and data will be cloned in the new drive from the old Windows 10 PC
EaseUS Todo Backup Home
This is a freemium disk cloning utility that supports all major versions of Windows including Windows 10. You can use it to not only clone your HDD, but also for creating backups, or for recovering data from damaged drives. They do have a free version of this available on their website with limited functionalities.
1. Download the utility from their website (https://www.easeus.com/backup-software/tb-home.html) and install it on your old Windows 10 PC.
2. Start the utility and choose Clone from the panel on the left
3. Insert new drive into the old computer and select the drive partition(s) that you would like to clone and press Next.
4. Now, select the target drive on old new Windows 10 PC and press Next.
5. Finally, press the Proceed button to start transferring software and data from old PC to new one.
Acronis Disk Director
This is another freemium software designed for cloning old Windows 10 PC to a new one. However, this is plagued by many drawbacks. For example, only only MBR disks are available for clone. GPT disks are not supported.
Also, you don’t have the option to clone a separate partition. Instead, you can clone only the entire disk. Cloning dynamic disks are also not supported.
You can clone old Windows 10 PC to a new one using Acronis Disk Director in 2 ways. First, by creating a bootable media, second, by installing it in Windows. We will look at the second option here since it is much easier that way.
1. Get the utility from their website (https://www.acronis.com/en-us/products/disk-director-home/), install it on old Windows 10 PC and run it.
2. Plug the new drive into old computer.
3. Now, select the disk drive that you would like to clone to your new Windows 10 PC by right-clicking on it and choosing Clone basic disk from the menu.
4. Choose the destination drive and press Next.
5. If the destination drive is of same size, select “As is” on the next screen, otherwise select “Use proportional resizing” and press Finish.
6. Finally, press “Commit pending” to start the process of cloning
Paragon Hard Disk Manager
This is a premium application that not only lets you clone old Windows 10 PC to a new one, but it also lets you partition hard drive, create backups, and copy irrespective of the sector size. So, cloning from old Windows 10 PC to new one would be a breeze. However, this does not have any free version available on their website.
1. Purchase and download the utility from their website (https://www.paragon-software.com/home/hdm-windows/), install it on your old Windows 10 PC and fire up the utility
2. Choose “Copy and Migration”, then select Copy Disk.
3. This should open up the hard disk cloning wizard, select the hard drive that you would like to copy. This would be the hard drive from your old Windows 10 PC. Then press Next.
4. Now, select the hard drive from the new Windows 10 PC which would be our destination drive, and press Next.
5. In the next window, under Copy options, leave everything unchecked. Under Resize options, keep both options checked and press Next.
6. Now, start the process and once the process completed, you have a fully functional hard drive on new Windows 10 PC just like the old one.
R-Drive Image
This is a freemium program that helps in cloning your drives to a new hard drive, CD/DVD drive, or even Iomega Zip drives. There is a 30 day free trial available on their website, albeit limitations. You can also write unattended actions and scripts if you are a tech savvy
1. Get the utility from their official website (https://www.drive-image.com/) and install it, then run the utility
2. From the Action Selection window, select “Copy a Disk to a Disk” option and press Next.
3. On the next window, select the source and target drives, and then press Next.
4. Now, select Raw disk copy under Copying mode to clone the drive as is, and press Next.
5. On the final screen, press Start button to initiate the cloning process. Once completed, R-Drive Image will show it to you on a small pop-up message box. Click OK and close the utility. That’s it, it’s done!
