I’ve got a Windows 10 laptop that’s getting old and is not capable of handling Win11, so I’m going to need a new computer sometime soon. But I want to make the process of transferring all my settings and data as easy as possible. Is there a pushbutton “backup and transfer settings and data” application out there that I can use?
Any advice would be appreciated
Microsoft says this:
I recently purchased two new Windows 11 machines to do just that. Once I had a new Win11 up/running on my network, I just shared across my home network. But I don’t use the Windows defacto of anything. All applications where I can control their destination are in C:/applications/ Same for my files (documents, videos, music, etc.)
Just remember tariffs are kicking in. The longer you wait to buy a new machines the greater the chance a new machine will cost you 25 percent more.
How old is it? Because Microsoft’s “your computer can’t support 11” requirements are bullshit. It’s easy to bypass that: How to create Windows 11 bootable USB to bypass requirements with Rufus - Pureinfotech
If you still want a new computer, there’s Windows Backup. It’s available and easy. Generally speaking I recommend somewhat segregating your personal files from programs, so it’s easy to even manually copy an entire chunk of personal data to a new computer without relying on special transfers.
Some disagreement. Yes, there are ways to bypass, no they aren’t endorsed (by Microsoft, granted) and may or may remain effective on future builds of the system. For example:
IMHO, if you want to avoid buying a computer in the near future (and I agree with @Duckster that you’re risking a major cost increase) I’d probably buy the one year Win10 extension that should roll out late this year for $30 per Microsoft.
This will also bypass (back to the OP) the need to do a full transfer, but if you do a new device, I have done reasonably well with the built in Windows Backup (and now I’m agreeing with @thelurkinghorror), though I would do a physical and/or cloud backup of any key documents first, as well as making sure I had a good copy of all my passwords for applications, programs, and websites from the browser.
Personally, I had a Windows 10 laptop, quite nice with a dedicated video card and lots of RAM, and I had a friend who is a professional in the biz do a sideload of 11. But even he said it would be a conditional thing - he wouldn’t promise that the next iteration/major patch of 11 wouldn’t bypass the “fix”.
So on the most recent Black Friday sale I squeezed out enough funds to buy a new laptop before the tariffs I was afraid of went into effect. And of course, it was an older laptop, and the new one was much more powerful, but the $800 hurt a good bit, I fully grant.
I had to do this a year ago with my desktop PC, so all I had to do was connect up my old C drive and whenever I installed any new apps I just copied over the data and user settings from my Win10 drive to the same folder in Win11 and 95% of it transferred seamlessly.
Then I brute forced my desktop UI to also look like Win10 with various interface adjustments, which was a little tricky, and finally it felt like home.
Connected with a USB while the drive was still in the computer or pulled out the drive? (Just curious).
My old laptop is low on storage space and memory and a keyboard that’s a bit flaky. Thanks to you guys, I’m getting some confidence, and hope to go out this weekend to get a new one.
It was an SSD and I installed it as an additional drive. But it’s essentially the same either way you do it, I think.
Thanks
My Windows 10 box died peacefully in its sleep last December. I had turned off OneDrive a couple of years back for some reason that I can’t recall now (and had never used the Windows backup), so I USB’d the old SSD drive and copied the relevant files into my new Windows 11 laptop. It worked fine, but a word of caution. I decided that OneDrive was maybe a useful way to keep a backup readily available, and turned it on. To my surprise and annoyance, ALL of my files in C:\Users\name\Documents (as well as Pictures, Music and Video)
disappeared. Well, not really, they all got “moved” to C:\Users\name\OneDrive\Documents, etc. I had like decades of programs, files and data with internal references to C:\Users\name\Documents. I am not a Windows techie, and maybe I did something wrong here, but in my mind that is not the definition of backwards compatible.
Thanks for the title change @Aspenglow
No problem. 
I’m gradually coming to accept I’ll have to do this soon, as my computer is ageing. Should I be looking for a SSD rather than hard drive? And I hope there’ll be drivers for my existing peripherals…
One cannot “promise” anything, unless one is a Microsoft Windows developer who is in on future plans. A free operating system like FreeBSD is probably better for some professional deployments, but you cannot count on perpetual support for, let’s say, your Itanium processor either.
I was recently forced to waste my time on Microsoft Windows on some system so I can tell you that the Windows 11 Pro installer was complaining about some “minimum” requirements but Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC did not and worked flawlessly.
I can tell you from personal experience that you should be backing up your all of your data and settings anyway!
Theoretically/ideally you could just clone the entire drive and install it on a new computer, where it would boot and subsequently run the Windows 11 upgrade install. I have never tested how much work that would be on Windows 10 or 11, though. You would probably want the TPM stuff off, at least.
That’s because OneDrive is designed to replace your local “library” folders (as Microsoft calls them). You’re not supposed to care about the path or storage locations of those folders. They’re supposed to just be a floating abstraction meaning “here is where I store my pictures, here is where I keep my documents”, etc.
It’s your fault for knowing too much. 
They did something like this before, too. Changed the filesystem location of library folders. Between XP and 7, I think, they changed the name of the “users” folder. If you hardcoded that path, you became retroactively wrong.
I think there’s some setting to restore rhe localized libraries folders, although you may have to copy back contents. But I don’t know since I don’t use OneDrive on my home PCs and make a point of storing things locally on my work PC (where I can’t defang OneDrive).
Oh, I am
Definitely, at least for the boot drive. It makes a ton of a difference in boot up time and general operations. I’m not even sure if they still sell computers with HDDs as system drives, it just makes no sense anymore.
Thanks for this thread @Andy_L . I need to replace my laptop soon too.
(Oh hey the quote button is back!)
I went to a Best Buy the other day and all the laptops I looked at were SSD. No HDD, but they might be out there.
His concern was more with getting drivers for the older equipment to play nice with the hacks for the OS, rather than the OS itself going down. But he also commented that some of the stripped down Enterprise versions were much more of a joy to work with, and wished he could appropriate a few for his own personal use.
Report on transfer: I got a new laptop, had the store transfer all my files from the old computer (except for passwords which I had saved elsewhere and deleted from the old computer). Setting things up the way I liked them again took a little time but in general was less painful than I feared. Thanks for all the advice