How do I transfer to a new laptop

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Fordsabroad

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I have a new laptop on its way and am do not know the best way to transfer my programs and data from my old laptop. I have NIK software and various additional brushes in PS that I would like to be transferred onto the new laptop. Is it best to buy one of the do it all programs to achieve this. I am a bit of a computer numpty so it has to be safe and foolproof!
 
why not download onto a dongle and use that , came my first thought
 
Usually you need to re-instal programmes, there is no simple way to copy a programme across.

Your data you can just copy from your back-up.
 
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Data is straightforward i.e. copy onto a USB stick or external drive and>>>>> attach to the new PC and copy across to the folder location of choice.

Programs are different kettle of fish:-
IOM....

  1. Firstly check the license conditions e.g. can it be used on more than one PC? If not you might(?) have to check with the software maker e.g. Adobe how to transfer the license to the new PC!

  2. You will have to have the the installers copied on a USB stick or external drive for installing afresh on the new PC
    NB I have read in the past that it is possible to export the likes of the LR Catalogue to be used on the new PC

Basically it will take time but preparation is key ;)
 
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Fordsabroad said:
I have a new laptop on its way and am do not know the best way to transfer my programs and data from my old laptop. I have NIK software and various additional brushes in PS that I would like to be transferred onto the new laptop. Is it best to buy one of the do it all programs to achieve this. I am a bit of a computer numpty so it has to be safe and foolproof!
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Is your NIK software the older free collection?
Had to hunt around a bit to find it when I replaced my defunct desktop.
Lightroom was also a bit troublesome due to the license issue outlined above.
 
Use Macrium Reflect to clone the drive.

I've done it lots of times because I'm lazy and it's quick.

It is best to rebuild your drive from scratch, but that's a long job and you'll often encounter problems.
 
Use Time Machine ;)
 
My first thought was to make a drive image or clone as if you were adding a new hard drive.
I suspect that your new laptop will have Win11 and if you are not using that already then I would be unsure if you were to clone the old drive what would happen if you went from Win 10 to win 11 (it will be worth finding out )
Safest bet to install the programs from scratch on the new m/c and copy the data via cloud or USB.
If you are using adobe you may have to deactivate it on the old m/c if you are using it on two machines.
 
Sky said:
Use Macrium Reflect to clone the drive.

I've done it lots of times because I'm lazy and it's quick.

It is best to rebuild your drive from scratch, but that's a long job and you'll often encounter problems.
Click to expand...
If you cloned your previous Windows OS drives and put the drive in the new PC with its likely different hardware......how did you overcome driver differences and possible registry incompatibles???
 
Box Brownie said:
If you cloned your previous Windows OS drives and put the drive in the new PC with its likely different hardware......how did you overcome driver differences and possible registry incompatibles???
Click to expand...
That is a very relevant point.
It used to work with XP as it would just find new hardware and install the drivers.
It didn't work for a long time, but I have tried it a couple of times on w10 and it seems to sort itself out OK.
I used to use Ghost at work, but for the last few years I have used HD Clone.
Most times it is to upgrade the HD, but I have tried on a couple of different machines and been lucky.

However, as has always been the case with windows, it is better to start from scratch
 
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Box Brownie said:
If you cloned your previous Windows OS drives and put the drive in the new PC with its likely different hardware......how did you overcome driver differences and possible registry incompatibles???
Click to expand...

As Steve says above 'it seems to sort itself out OK'. :)

There are often a few issues that need sorting out, but they don't all show up at once. It's just as you start to use different programs faults appear, but again never anything too difficult to fix.

Obviously, this will never be as good as a fresh installation of Windoze, but it does make it a lot quicker in the short term. :)
 
Licencing of Windows itself could be a problem. If old and new laptops are on the same version then it should be okay but if, as already mentioned, the new one is on W11 then we'll whether it will downgrade gracefully or not.....
 
Thanks for all the advice. The new laptop is here and so far installation of PS and LR have gone smoothly, adobe just asked me to sign out on the other account. Win 11 was pre installed. I will try to download the NIK plugins later. I have decided to transfer my pictures on LR manually, they are all over the place at the moment and it will give me an opportunity to cull many thousands of unwanted images. I am going to dump everything on a 5TB hard drive as a back up before I start. There is nothing that would cause me real problems if it went wrong as I am a hobbyist so do not have to explain to clients how I lost their pictures. Hopefully this new laptop will last for a good few years. I have promised myself that going forward I will cull unwanted images as I go...but I said that last time!
 
Fordsabroad said:
Thanks for all the advice. The new laptop is here and so far installation of PS and LR have gone smoothly, adobe just asked me to sign out on the other account. Win 11 was pre installed. I will try to download the NIK plugins later. I have decided to transfer my pictures on LR manually, they are all over the place at the moment and it will give me an opportunity to cull many thousands of unwanted images. I am going to dump everything on a 5TB hard drive as a back up before I start. There is nothing that would cause me real problems if it went wrong as I am a hobbyist so do not have to explain to clients how I lost their pictures. Hopefully this new laptop will last for a good few years. I have promised myself that going forward I will cull unwanted images as I go...but I said that last time!
Click to expand...
Until a few months ago, I had photos all over the place, lots of discs taken out of past machines, cloud storage, several PCs in the house.
I had made several attempts to sort them, which had just made things worse.

Two programmes I use now, to sort them I used https://www.mjbpix.com/upgrade-to-photomove-2-0-pro/ it allows you to select a drive or folder, and it will find all the photos on that drive or folder, and move then to a destination, sorted how you choose, I chose camera model and year. It then creates folders for each model of camera, and within those folders, folders for the years in which photos were taken. That works for me, but there are other choices.

Once I had that done, and copied to several locations, I then use SyncFolder (available from the MS store for free) to sync all the directories on the machine I am working on to a 2TB USB drive, I then sync that to a server, and from that to two NAS drives. All my photos are in one "parent" folder, makes it simple to sync it all.

Now everything is sorted in a way that I can find things reasonably quickly.

There are dedicated programmes and systems for professionals, but nothing I could justify the cost of, or that I found easy to work with
 
If you copy the lightroom catalogue and original folder structure you can then move images with lightroom and it will know where they are without having to be told.
 
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