Go through Windows setup wizard on the new computer followed by some initial steps.  Make sure you like the computer before you begin with the section below called “data migration and libraries on the old computer”  There are much more modern ways for transferring data but this will help individuals understand how to better organize their data and perhaps take on this task themselves.

 

Initial Program Cleanup

  • Remove anything McAfee
  • Remove Office 365
  • Remove OneDrive

 

Initial Desktop Customization

 

Data Migration and Libraries

In the corporate world, most traditional IT environments are preached to store in the server share location or “mapped drives”.   However, anything goes when you own your own laptop.  Some people use Acronis TrueImage for a snapshot back of your entire hard drive and a BCDR solution for servers.  For the rest of us, illustrated below are the typical locations for saving files, emails, pictures, databases, etc.

move data from an old computer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is location above is known as Window Libraries.  Unless you are organizing your data horribly wrong, this is where 99% of your Windows data is going to be located.   The path to the above location is…

c:\users\user_name

Files and Folders Backup Locations

In Windows 10, these are the most used default libraries:

 

 

 

Additional locations (c:\users\user_name)

 

  • Dropbox
    • Dropbox data is being synced to cloud. Not as important to be backed up but if you get ransomware you will sync ransomware.
      • This data will automatically be restored since its in the cloud. No need to copy.
    • OneDrive
      • Dropbox data is being synced to cloud. Not as important to be backed up but if you get ransomware you will sync ransomware.
        • This data will automatically be restored since its in the cloud. No need to copy.
      • Synology Drive
        • Synology data is bein synced to cloud. Not as important to be backed up but if you get ransomware you will sync ransomware.

 

 

  • Roaming
    • Outlook OST
      • Sometime lingering Outlook data is in this sub-directory. Be careful about not missing old archived data located here.  You may also want to take this time to clean up your Outlook messages and delete unnecessary data.

 

 

 

 

How to move data from an old computer to new laptop Summary

 

It’s time use your network or hard drive to transfer the data once you completed the steps above.  We prefer the network option to transfer data since network support is our jam and sneaker net is so 1982.