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moving content between laptops
Old 05-17-2019, 04:44 AM   #1
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moving content between laptops

I have a laptop that the won/t charge and did all the checking I could. figured it was the plug in in the actual laptop, not the battery or the cord that is defective. is there any way to transfer all my content from the old laptop to another one? old laptop still has some battery life left, so I have an hour or two of run time left before it goes dead. any suggestions on programs or procedures to accomplish this? thanks

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Old 05-17-2019, 06:43 AM   #2
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You have a few options.
- Restore your backup on the new computer.

- attach a USB drive & copy all your data over. Then copy it over to a new laptop.
- If you are using windows, microsoft has a program to do this. I think its Easy Transfer. There are other programs available that will move your settings too. You may not have enough battery power to do this.
- Remove the drive from the laptop, buy a compatible drive carrier & connect it to the new laptop & suck your data over. This seems to be the safest bet since you're not relying on your old notebook battery.
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Old 05-17-2019, 06:46 AM   #3
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I can't recall the technical terms for the parts, but it's pretty easy....

Take apart the laptop and the hard drive will be removable. It plugs in to a long parallel series of pins on the end of a wiring harness. Remove that wiring harness, and remove the hard drive. On Amazon, you can buy a $10 USB cable that will plug into the old hard drive, essentially making it a portable external USB hard drive for any computer with a USB outlet.

Does it work as long as it is plugged in? If so, you might just have a battery that no longer will accept a charge. You may want to simply get a new battery, and keep on using the old laptop.
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Old 05-17-2019, 06:47 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by walkinwood View Post
You have a few options.
- Restore your backup on the new computer.

- attach a USB drive & copy all your data over. Then copy it over to a new laptop.
- If you are using windows, microsoft has a program to do this. I think its Easy Transfer. There are other programs available that will move your settings too. You may not have enough battery power to do this.
- Remove the drive from the laptop, buy a compatible drive carrier & connect it to the new laptop & suck your data over. This seems to be the safest bet since you're not relying on your old notebook battery.
if you run out of all options go to a local repair shop & get a new power supply. IIRC these used to go out all the time. I think they used to be a very common issue
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Old 05-17-2019, 07:02 AM   #5
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If you can still use the old laptop, (sounds like you can) just copy your personal files to a USB or external HD and move them to your new PC. If you have an hour or more of battery life remaining you should have a lot more than enough time to move the files unless you have massive amounts of personal data.
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Old 05-17-2019, 07:11 AM   #6
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Originally Posted by frank View Post
I have a laptop that the won/t charge and did all the checking I could. figured it was the plug in in the actual laptop, not the battery or the cord that is defective. is there any way to transfer all my content from the old laptop to another one? old laptop still has some battery life left, so I have an hour or two of run time left before it goes dead. any suggestions on programs or procedures to accomplish this? thanks

frank
If you're DIY, remove the drive and put it in case like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Tool-...e-ef9578b5d282

Or try a flash drive in the old computer. Problem that may arise is that you run out of power during file copying.

With the external case for your hd, you're pretty much assured that you can continue to search the drive for files into the future. You may need the account and password, so make sure you write that down for the future.
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Old 05-17-2019, 09:52 AM   #7
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I vote for removing the old laptop hard drive, they are usually easy to remove. You can look up on the internet by your model version how to remove hard-drive.

Once that is done, you have all the time in the world to copy over with a cable. And you have a spare handy drive or external drive to use for backups.
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Old 05-17-2019, 11:32 AM   #8
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I also recommend removing the HDD from the old laptop and connecting it to a new computer as a secondary drive. It will probably take more than an hour to transfer all the files, and if you try to pick and choose, that itself could take an hour, plus you risk missing something. That's how I used to upgrade computers in the pre-laptop days, I would take the old C: drive, and install it as a D: drive in the new computer, then delete the system directories and work my way through the rest of the files.
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Old 05-17-2019, 03:18 PM   #9
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Originally Posted by target2019 View Post
If you're DIY, remove the drive and put it in case like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Tool-...e-ef9578b5d282

Or try a flash drive in the old computer. Problem that may arise is that you run out of power during file copying.

With the external case for your hd, you're pretty much assured that you can continue to search the drive for files into the future. You may need the account and password, so make sure you write that down for the future.
do you know if this comes with the cord? it looks like what I need.
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Old 05-17-2019, 04:10 PM   #10
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Originally Posted by frank View Post
do you know if this comes with the cord? it looks like what I need.
Quote:
What's in the box?
  • Sabrent EC-UASP Hard Drive Enclosure
  • USB 3.0 Cable
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Old 05-17-2019, 04:19 PM   #11
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do you know if this comes with the cord? it looks like what I need.
The item in your link does have a cord and will work, but I wouldn't even worry about a case. Check this out.
https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-2-5-I...J06EHRQ1B86X5X
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Old 05-17-2019, 04:38 PM   #12
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Whatever solution you use to fix the immediate problem, once you have the new computer working, spend an hour or so learning how to get Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox to make continuous backups of your important files so you don't have to worry about this again.
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Old 05-17-2019, 07:40 PM   #13
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Originally Posted by Car-Guy View Post
If you can still use the old laptop, (sounds like you can) just copy your personal files to a USB or external HD and move them to your new PC. If you have an hour or more of battery life remaining you should have a lot more than enough time to move the files unless you have massive amounts of personal data.
+1

What's most important right now (it seems to me), is to back up all of those unreplaceable personal data files on an external USB hard drive or thumb drive and get them over to the new computer.

If the old computer dies right after that, then you can always just install your programs on the new computer and reconfigure it, and at least you will have your photos, documents, and other files that cannot be replaced.

If it doesn't die right away then you can do whatever else you want to do for a backup, knowing that you at least have those files.

This is what I have done just about every Saturday for the past 40+ years - - make backups of my data files (which for me is everything under C:\\users\myname ). These days I back them up onto each of two different USB external hard drives in different locations. That's really all I need to set up a new laptop since I have, or can download, the various programs that I use. So, even when I am in no rush, I don't bother to transfer anything else to a new computer.
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Old 05-18-2019, 10:27 AM   #14
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turns out my son had one of those hard drive cases and we got the info on my wifes computer for now. interestingly enough, when we got the computer apart I found that the plug port for the cord was just a plug in piece. I ordered a new on online and now will have to see if I can reassemble the computer with the new cord jack. I will be definitely be checking into an external hardrive. thanks for all the help.

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google drive, one drive, dropbox
Old 06-11-2019, 06:01 AM   #15
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google drive, one drive, dropbox

recently having had problems with my laptop, some of you recommended google drive, one drive, or dropbox as a place to store information. Which one is the easiest to use, least expensive and most secure? Would I be better to get an external hard drive? thanks

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Old 06-11-2019, 06:21 AM   #16
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Would I be better to get an external hard drive?
Yes. They are relatively inexpensive and they work great for moving and storing data. Even if you end up using a cloud storage provider, having an external drive for backup is a good idea.
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Old 06-11-2019, 06:37 AM   #17
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I agree with Jerry1. I just bought a 1T external drive from Amazon for less than $50. Just plug it in and you are all set.
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My backup routine
Old 06-11-2019, 07:23 AM   #18
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My backup routine

I don't have a specific recommendation for your situation, but I'll describe what I do...

My desktop PC has three internal 1TB drives. One is strictly for the OS and programs. I don't worry about that one. If it fails, I just buy a new drive and reinstall everything. The second has all our data and files. The third is a nightly backup of the second. I use an old Win7 utility called SyncToy.

In addition, we have all tax and financial files on a USB flashdrive in the fireproof box with other important documents. And finally, everything else on the second drive (excluding tax/financial files) is also backed up to Amazon Drive cloud storage. This is mainly photos/videos as well as miscellaneous documents and spreadsheets. With our Prime account, we get unlimited full-resolution photo storage. Everything else fits into a 100GB subscription for $11.99 per year.

I think it's a good idea to have both on-site and off-site (i.e. cloud) backups.
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Old 06-11-2019, 12:21 PM   #19
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When I used to travel (away from home, not on the job) often and didn't have my remote access to my home PC working, I'd bring along an external HD for my data from my desktop.

My data is stored on a folder on the desktop. Before going on a trip, using free file syncing software, I'd sync my data from desktop to external HD. Use my laptop and whenever needed to access my data, use the external HD. When returning, I'd sync the desktop's data folder updating any changes.

I got some extra 2.5 " HDDs around. So, I've bought an external enclosure. Optionally, I also have an interface cable that plugs into the HDD to treat a bare HDD as an external HDD.
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Old 06-11-2019, 12:51 PM   #20
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I have about 7 different laptops. One with Windows 10, an old MacBook Pro (circa 2012), a system with Linux as the primary, a Hackintosh clone (Mac OS running on a Leneovo X220), ... On top of that some of these are running virtualbox w/various guests.

I do local backups to external drives (when I do an initial set up and then occasionally). I also use OneDrive extensively for cloud based mirroring (note that isn't the same as backup).

I have three different OneDrive accounts:
1) A school provided one, which I use to hold all of my school related files. That way I can access things like saved grade books, instructors guides, etc from any of my laptops (or in fact from any system via the web interface). This allows up to 1 TB in data in the cloud.
2) A personal OneDrive account. Every once in a while Microsoft Office Home goes on sale for around $50 which includes up to 6 OneDrive 1 TB accounts. I use this for all of my personal data including pictures.
3) I have an "ebay acquired" business OneDrive account which allows up to 5 TB. Since there are some circumstances where the overall owner can access it, I use it exclusively for encrypted backups, including backups of my Personal OneDrive folders. I use Duplicati 2 (free) to do nightly incremental backups. This gives me some versioning on files.
4) For source files (programming), I use Git in conjunction with the above. So, I have local versioning and the source repository is incrementally backed up nightly.
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