This article explains three ways to replace your hard drive and move your data and programs to the new one. It includes information on selecting the right replacement hard drive.
How to Move Everything from an Old PC to a New PC
Replacing the hard drive on your laptop or desktop computer is one of the best upgrades you can make; it can especially extend the life of an aging laptop. Upgrading to a larger drive will give you much-needed extra storage space, and you can also get a big productivity boost from faster hard drive speeds.
If you have an external hard drive or a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device lying around, you don’t need to buy anything other than the new hard drive. Using commercial backup software like Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office or a free backup app like Clonezilla Live, you can save an image of your current drive to an external drive.
The software can create a mirror image backup of the drive, meaning it makes a complete copy of everything: Windows and all your data, applications, and settings. You can then physically swap the old drive with the new drive in your computer, re-run the cloning software on the new drive, and install the cloned image you saved with the backup program.
