I bought a new harddrive. How do I clone my old harddrive onto

anyone? Internet searches keep trying to sell me something.

>>264383
If you have an external hard drive, make a system image backup using windows backup, make a Windows 10 installer USB using the media creation tool, then swap the drives, boot from the USB, and restore the backup to your new drive.

It's possible to do it without a third drive, but not possible to explain how in a single sentence. Also you should be making a backup anyway.

>>264470
>buy a 3rd harddrive
goddamn it.

>>264499
You can do it without it, but nothing is as straightforward as saving your entire computer to a file, then loading that file to your computer.

File: 20170209_124700.png (43KB, 1345x439px) Image search: [Google]

43KB, 1345x439px

Your most important stuff (documents, pictures) should be in C:\Users\Your Name\, the other stuff is reinstalling programs and vidya.

So, copy this folder over (will likely take up much less space than cloning the entire drive), reinstall Windows 10 (or 7, or Gentoo), ctrl-a and ctrl-c inside the Your Name folder (old drive) and ctrl-v inside Your Name inside the new Windows installation (new drive), format the old drive and use it for mongolian basket weaving caricatures.

I think Windows has a standard back up program: make an image of your old drive with that, boot into Windows installer (https://youtu.be/9GblKZO-smU) and use the program used to make the backup to restore it.

Though I think there's an option to restore from backup as of 7 during the installation process.

>Copy everything inside C:\Users\Your Name onto new drive
>Freaking unplug the new drive to make sure Windows doesn't screw with the files you just copied
>Install Windows 10 on old drive
>Plug new one back in
>Copy stuff in D:\Your Name this is the backup\ to C:\Users\Your Name
>???
>Profit

I thought about telling you to just copy everything over from he old one to the new one, but I think the OS wouldn't work.

Sorry if I'm repeating myself:
>Make sure new drive has nothing on it
>Unplug old drive from computer
>Grab Windows 10 installation CD or USB
>Boot into it (Youtube link)
>Wait for it to do everything by itself
>Plug the old one in
>Copy stuff over
>???
Keep the old one as a redundacy copy somewhere away from your computer, it's good practice, in case you fall for something like ransomware.

cloning hard drives is called "imaging". google it, a lot of programs do that.

>>264383
Is the new hard drive larger?

>>264383
OP I use Macrium free all the time: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

>>264383
OP Macrium instructions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0PyZIqecII