clone all files from old PC to new one

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Austen Robinson

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Apr 1, 2013
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So just got a new machine and need to get all of the files other than the OS from the old one to the new one. Checked out Clonezilla but not sure that is what I am looking for. Also want to copy browsers favorites to new machine as well. Old machine Win7 new one Win10 Pro

What is the best tool for the job?

 
Solution
SkyNetRising
Cloning is not meant for that purpose, you want to achieve.
You can clone either entire drive or entire partition/s. You can't clone part of a partition. And entire target partition gets overwritten.

For your purpose best would just be connecting old drive as secondary and copy necessary data over manually (or you can copy it over network also).

Favorites links live in C:\Users\YourUserName\Favorites
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SkyNetRising

SkyNetRising

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Cloning is not meant for that purpose, you want to achieve.
You can clone either entire drive or entire partition/s. You can't clone part of a partition. And entire target partition gets overwritten.

For your purpose best would just be connecting old drive as secondary and copy necessary data over manually (or you can copy it over network also).

Favorites links live in C:\Users\YourUserName\Favorites
 
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Solution
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Landstander

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If any drive in your system is a Western Digital (even if you have an old one laying around somewhere you can temporarily plug into your PC while you're working), you can use WD's free version of Acronis True Image to clone your drive.
Once you've done that you can just delete the files from your new clone that you don't want.

Edit: You'll want the link, won't you. https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=119
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Cloning is not what you want to do.
Browser data...they each have their own export function. Do that.
Other files, just connect that drive as a secondary, and copy stuff over.

Cloning will NOT do what you seek.
 
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L

Landstander

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It's not stated, but I'm wondering if Austen is installing Win10 on an SSD drive and needs to keep everything BUT Windows on the new drive.
If that's the case, cloning and then deleting the windows folder would be more effective as long as he points the new Windows installation to Users, ProgramData and My Documents to his cloned drive so it isn't looking on the Windows installation drive.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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You can't "clone" parts of it like that.
Cloning consumes the whole target drive.

And "Windows" is much more than just the windows folder.

And moving the /Users/ folder etc, brings all sorts of permissions issues.
Far simpler to just copy the individual files.
 
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RolandJS

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If one is not yet adept at file managment using explorer or any third party file manager -- one can enlist the help of any local computer guru who is familiar with such, let that guru walk you through a few folder and file copies, then you can go from there. Copying, pasting, making sure target has the material/then deleting the source's material, that process, takes a little bit of practice.
 
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Landstander

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Not to nitpick, but technically you CAN clone only the parts you want. Using Acronis, choose to manually setup the clone, just before you finish you can go to Advanced options and choose folders to ignore.

If the goal is to turn the existing drive into a non-system drive, that should work fine. He could probably just in-place reinstall most programs to the new clone to fix registry pointers and such while keeping settings.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Which is a very complex way to just copy some files.
 
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