Migration to New Laptop and Windows 11

[BobH]

Having read Ken's posts in re battery life while experiencing what appear to be symptoms of a failing old HP laptop, I accepted an offer for an inexpensive replacement machine, scheduled to be delivered late next week.

I was wondering what advice you folks might give to ease the transition of applications AND what to expect - and need to know - about Win11.

[John Gray]

The general opinion seems to be that Windows 11 offers no significant advantages, but several minor user annoyances, over Windows 10. Presumably your new laptop is pre-infested with Windows 11?!

[DocAElstein]

I was surprised that I found windows 11 quite pretty and not quite as many annoyances as I was expecting. But I only have one because I have a few computers and like to have at least one fairly up to date to the newest stand.
But my 2 cents, if I only had one or two computers then I would stay with windows 10 at least as long as the end of 2025, which is currently the planned support end (14. Oktober 2025). I think Microsoft have shown in recent years that they are very keen to encourage updating such that they will likely make it easy to update to windows 11 from windows 10, if you really want to later.

Alan

[stuck]

My experience of Win 11 is that, out of the box, the changes to File Explorer were very annoying to me. Otherwise, I was hard pressed to find anything that was different to Win 10.

I 'fixed' the 'problems' I had with File Explorer by installing an application called Explorer Patcher. One of the regular monthly updates to Win 11 (can't remember which one) undid the changes I made using Explorer Patcher and to get them back I had to Install an updated version of EP but that was no big deal.

Ken

[stuck]

Regarding applications on Win 11. I had no problem installing any applications on Win 11. I even installed Google Picasa, which was retired by Google donkeys years ago, when Win 7 was a thing. However, I did install all applications from scratch / using the relevant installers, I did not try and migrate existing installations. Everything worked as expected, everything behaved just like on win 10.

The only files I migrated were data files and I did that via an external HDD.

Ken

[BobH]

Thanks, Gentlemen!

My new laptop is arriving today (supposedly), a week ahead of schedule.

[StuartR]

I recently had to replace my laptop and the new one came with Windows 11. It took me a few days to get used to some of the irritating changes, but it's pretty much the same as my old Windows 10 laptop now.

[JoeP]

I have had almost no problems with Windows 11 and I've been running it since well before its official release. I currently use Windows 11 Pro 23H2 with the latest cumulative updates as my primary OS and have a virtual machine running the latest Windows 11 Pro Dev Channel release. Some changes take a little adjustment period. I do recommend that you make frequent image backups during your setup process. That way you can get back to a certain point if something really bad does happen.

[BobH]

I have an HP ENVY laptop (that I've posted about elsewhere) to which I intend to make some changes.

As mentioned in other posts the network adapter has apparently failed because it no longer recognizes my 5Ghz network and only gives about a tenth the speed I should be getting. Of course, the fault might lie elsewhere; IDK.

I intend to replace the network card; and, if that fixes the 5Ghz and speed issues, I also intend to replace the HDD with a SSD. The laptop has very limited capability for moving data around, but it does have an SD card port that I confirmed works. I copied the entire hard drive (1TB but not fully used) to the SD card (512 Gb). I can access files on the SD card. Is there any reason that I should not be able to clone the HDD to the SD card and then boot from it successfully in order to clone back from the SD card to the newly installed SSD?

[StuartR]

I would be very surprised if the BIOS offers you the option to boot from the SD card, but it's easy enough to check

[JoeP]

Do you already have an external drive to perform image backups?

[BobH]

Yes, Joe, I do. It is a SATA hard drive that functions through a USB port. I think I can replace the HDD in it with the new SSD, but I don't know if I can boot from the SSD attached that way.

Another question, does the process of cloning a C: drive make the resulting drive bootable or do I have to do that when I format the drive being cloned to? It's been too long since I've done this and I ain't gettin' any younger.

[BobH]

Getting back to the original question concerning migration from a single HDD to a single SSD on my old HP laptop, I've worked out the hardware issues (I think). I had forgotten that I have an external USB disk enclosure that support SATA. I can and will put the new SSD in it to migrate.

I've read conflicting views about whether to migrate by imaging the existing HDD and restoring that image to the SSD or to clone directly from the existing HDD to the SSD placed in the external USB disk enclosure. My understanding is that imaging involves data compression and to get the image onto the new SSD requires restoring the image to that device which will entail using a separate bootable CD or USB stick to accomplish; whereas cloning is a one step process that makes and exact replica onto the new SSD. Once installed in the laptop, the new SSD will appear to the computer to be the same as the old HDD wrt booting, running software, and accessing data. Because the newly cloned SSD will be placed in the same SATA slot and will appear identical to the system and BIOS, it should boot without any BIOS changes or issues.

Is there any advantage to going the image/restore route over simply cloning (presuming that I make adequate backups before starting)? The only advantage I can see is that the imaging process would, putatively, create a backup from which a restore is possible. By cloning, the HDD retains its original contents and condition and could be replaced if a backup is needed.

Do I understand this correctly? Which would you do and why?

[JoeP]

I guess I should have asked first:

Have you checked that you can replace the HDD with an SSD?

And that you have the correct type of SSD for the ports you have in the PC?

[HansV]

I have merged the threads "Migration to New Laptop and Windows 11" and "Using an SD Card for Cloning" into a single thread.

[BobH]

@JoeP

Why would I not be able to replace a SATA HDD with a form-factor compatible SATA SSD?

Yes, I have checked and do have the correct form-factor SATA SSD for the laptop. I have not yet opened the case and might find surprises.

[JoeP]

Just double-checking. You should be fine hardware-wise.

I encourage you to make an image backup of your system no matter which way you choose. That way you'll be able to restore files later if you need them. Then choose which ever you are most comfortable doing.