I currently have a 7 year old dell desktop which is soon to be replaced by a new laptop. I was planning on stripping back the desk top getting rid of 7 years worth of dross. There are however a few programs that I want to keep on there which will be lost when I reinstall or upgrade the OS, such as MS Office, software for the BT Home hub, drivers for the printer/scanner. Is there a way to back these up on an external hard drive? If so can someone give me an idiots guide on how to do it?

Cheers, Lee.

You can't back up programs, they will need to be re-installed.

Office is easy - wizard on the CD.

Homehub, why would you need this presuming that it is plugged in via an ethernet cable?

Printer - download latest ones off the net.

Any docs, just copy to a portable hard drive, USB stick or SD card and transfer to your new laptop

Edited 30 October, 201114 yr by jrw

+1

Do as above

You can't back up programs, they will need to be re-installed.

Office is easy - wizard on the CD.Homehub, why would you need this presuming that it is plugged in via an ethernet cable?

Printer - download latest ones off the net.

Any docs, just copy to a portable hard drive, USB stick or SD card and transfer to your new laptop

I am clearly as prehistoric as my current system............WTF?

The only Wizard I know is Harry Potter!

Try using "Windows Easy Transfer" to backup your data to an external HDD, and then once reinstalled use it again to restore the data.

We have just completed a refresh of 130 XP desktops, replacing them with Windows 7 ones using this tool and it worked everytime.

Does not transfer programs, these as already mentioned will have to be reinstalled from scratch as you cannot simply backup and restore them due to the way Windows works.

Try using "Windows Easy Transfer" to backup your data to an external HDD, and then once reinstalled use it again to restore the data.

We have just completed a refresh of 130 XP desktops, replacing them with Windows 7 ones using this tool and it worked everytime.

Does not transfer programs, these as already mentioned will have to be reinstalled from scratch as you cannot simply backup and restore them due to the way Windows works.

130 desktops all using local profiles?!

...Windows Easy Transfer does work well though

We have around 14k desktops, with local profiles

When you talk about programs, I pressume that refers to things like MS Office, CorelDraw? I think I have tyhe discs for those and the driver for the printer, can I just plug in my hd and copy all the other files across, pictures, documents, itunes etc?

We have around 14k desktops, with local profiles

Bit thats nice and easy to housekeep then! Ours are local too tbh but all files etc are backed up on network shares so it is just the usual Outlook autocomplete and Word autocorrect that gets lost when pc rebuilt/replaced/upgraded which is tough luck for them when we have around 22k desktops to manage.

Talking about windows 7 i have rolled it out to 150 laptops over the last week using SCCM, what a nightmare that is.

When you talk about programs, I pressume that refers to things like MS Office, CorelDraw? I think I have tyhe discs for those and the driver for the printer, can I just plug in my hd and copy all the other files across, pictures, documents, itunes etc?

Yes thats right programs are what you install to do things like Office, corel etc.

By plug in Hard drive i presume you mean a portable USB one? If so yes it is literally as simple as that. If you want to keep settings to use the windows 7 easy transfer tool to transfer stuff. Basically run this wizard on your windows 7 machine and create the transfer software on your portable drive then plug your drive in your old desktop and run the software and choose (tick boxes) what you want to transfer. This will then transfer files and or settings to the hard drive then simply re run on the windows 7 machine. It is all step by step so easy enough to do

Bit thats nice and easy to housekeep then! Ours are local too tbh but all files etc are backed up on network shares so it is just the usual Outlook autocomplete and Word autocorrect that gets lost when pc rebuilt/replaced/upgraded which is tough luck for them when we have around 22k desktops to manage.

Oh yeah, it's fine - nothing important is stored locally, so it's their own bad luck if they have stuff saved there and there's then a Win/hardware problem

...Windows Easy Transfer does work well though

I have to absolutely disagree!

I had to do the same thing last week and though 'oh yes, Windows Easy Transfer sounds like it is easy' . . . well it is NOT! When it works it is fine. When it doesn't it is a bluddy nightmare. It will package your data up into a .MIG file that is all well and good if the new PC will unpack it OK. If this fails you're left with around 200GB of useless data and about 6 hours wasted writing to and copying from an external HDD and having to so it all again using a different method. A quick google will bring up lots of very unhappy people who have lost all their data this way.

The safest, less fuss, quickest way is to use Micrsoft RichCopy - free download from MS. This wil copy (mirror) your files from your current HDD to the external and you can specify which to copy and which to leave out. You can then use the same program to transfer to the new PC. Also, you can further use this to sync the new PC data with the external to keep a rolling backup of your files. RichCopy is quick as it doesn't just copy one file at a time, but uses multiple threads to transfer the data much more quickly.

It wont transfer your settings/favourites/email accounts though - but since you are migrating from an older OS (XP) to Windows 7 (I'm assuming here) then you might want to start afresh with the newer software as some will be incompatable anyway. You can import favourites if you want, but on an old machine you probaly have 1000's that are now out of date and useless anyway. Best to start anew IMHO.

Just my experience from this weekend (and 6+ hours wasted). Also look for SyncToy again from MicroSoft which you can use as an easy way to sync files from the new PC to the external HDD.

An idea that's cheap and keeps your old HD from the tip . Every so often , a HD starts to act up and if you run Powermax ,you get te message to back up regularly . Now's the time to nip out and get a new one . But don't throw the old one out . Don't do anything with the old one .Just re-install on the new one . Plug the old one into the secondary IDE slot ,take off the stuff you want to save .Then format the old HDD in FAT 32 (one reason I keep a partition with w98 )and save the stuff on it .Put old HD to one side -it'd fail if used constantly ,but if not if constant use - it'll keep your data safe . I've got two set up like this -if onegoes "clank,clank, " - I've got another .I also keep acopy on a flash drive - old habit of telecomms (belt ,brace ,and a bit of string)