# Easiest/best way to move data to a new computer? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 16, 2018, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-best-way-to-move-data-to-a-new-computer/823044 "2018-10-16T16:52:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2018, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-best-way-to-move-data-to-a-new-computer/823044/21 "2018-10-19T18:31:12Z")
> [@filmstar-en](#): > > Backing data up to a cloud drive is a good idea if you trust google or whoever supplies the service and you don’t mind paying out every month for the foreseeable future. I get 2GB (which is all I need) free. N.B. It’s worked perfectly for 3 years now. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2018, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-best-way-to-move-data-to-a-new-computer/823044/22 "2018-10-19T19:13:21Z")
> [@StarvingButStrong](#): > > I’m leery about cloud storage. What if the internet goes down JUST when I need my tax records or something? Plus companies sometimes just vanish, they can get hit with viruses same as the rest of us, and… basically my data is more important to me than it will ever be to anyone else. Basically lots of different things can go wrong so you need multiple backup methods to deal with the different possibilities: You can have a hardware failure (disk drive…). You can have a lightning strike and resulting massive electrical surge can knock out everything currently connected to your electrical system. You can have a malware/ransomware attack and lose everything currently connected to the network. Your house can burn down. You delete a file and this deletion is propagated to your other backups and you don’t realize it for awhile. So there are several different backup techniques you can use (external drive connected to network, external drive not connected to network, flash drives stored in house, flash/external drives stored in car/outside of house, separate computer/laptop, cloud storage…) So while simply connecting your current external drive with Win 7 backup to a new Windows 10 computer should work; most of us in this thread feel with a computer going bad and just one external Windows 7 backup drive you just don’t have adequate protection in case Murphy’s law happens (what can go wrong will go wrong). ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2018, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-best-way-to-move-data-to-a-new-computer/823044/23 "2018-10-19T21:41:36Z")
For future reference, for Windows XP, 7, and 10, when I plugged the PCs into the same router and turned on the operating system’s built-in file sharing, I was able to copy files directly from one PC to the other. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2018, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-best-way-to-move-data-to-a-new-computer/823044/24 "2018-10-21T05:12:33Z")
Look into [data transfer cables](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=Data+transfer+cable). In the past year, I have upgraded my main desktop and my father’s computer. In the case of Dad’s, there wasn’t a whole lot of data to move, but my data topped a terabyte, and moving that up to the cloud and back would have taken forever (especially the upload, which is much slower with most Internet plans than download). It also would have exceeded my plan’s data cap for the month, resulting in additional charges. The transfer cable did it all in minutes instead of hours, and for a total, one-time cost of under $20. The particular cable I bought is not currently available, but there seem to be many that work similarly. They include their own software and are quite simple to use. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-best-way-to-move-data-to-a-new-computer/823044.md?page=1)