advice on moving to a new PC requested

Thanks for all of your comments (and criticisms of my approach, too). Very helpful to my understanding.

A few responses on my approach:

1. I have used CCleaner for a very long time with no problems. I rarely use the Registry clean. When I do, I carefully review the suggestions and limit them to things I understand and consider safe. This mostly broken links.

2. I agree that having a totally clean machine and reinstalling everything from scratch is likely to give a faster and cleaner new machine than copying old things over. But some things are not so simple to reinstall and copy their data. In particular, I am thinking of Thunderbird and Picasa. For T'bird, my file locations are non-standard but I don't know exactly why. When I asked about this on the T'b forum, no one could give me a certain way to transfer it. Laplink did it perfectly.

Picasa, long unsupported since Google bought it to kill immediately, has lesser problems but not trivial. Again, Laplink did the job perfectly.

I also have dozens of old utilities that are not readily available for download. I could probably find them, but not easily. Laplink handled all but one. Sorry, I forget which one.

3. I have always partitioned my drives. D: is for data. It gets a separate backup. The important data folders are encrypted with EFS. And those data folders are also copied into a Veracrypt envelope that is separately backed up to a USB SSD drive. I also use Macrium (paid) for imaging both partitions. When my C: partition crashed about 5 computers back, restore worked perfectly except that it wouldn't boot. Luckily, the Macrium fixboot utility saved me.

4. I am reluctant to simply copy the old C: drive to a new machine and hope the OS or Dell will update update every driver automatically. And separating out drivers is more than I want to spend time on.

Laplink will not touch any drivers on the new machine. Nor will it touch any installed programs, like the new version of Office that I purchased. It just copies apps and data, so the new machine is still relatively clean. And it copies shortcuts on the home screen. Again, not something that interferes with my having a relatively clean new machine. In fact, it's actually cleaner than it would be if I used an image of my old laptop to replace the C drive image on my new laptop.

It also copies my dozen or more wifi connections that come from travels to places I'm likely to revisit. I can see them in "settings . . . manage known networks".

Randy

RandySea said:

Just out of curiosity and thinking of Macs, if one of your machines went kaput/stolen, whatever, could you just by a new PC and have everything you lost automatically restored exactly as it was by going to your MS account and Onedrive? A friend with a Mac did that right in an Apple store when her Mac was bricked.

Click to expand...

When one of us buys a new PC, all that individual's data and photos are instantly available by simply logging in to their Microsoft Account because all data is kept in OneDrive.

All apps that were previously installed are shown as available icons that can be downloaded by clicking on the app icon. The Microsoft process can have much the same end result as Apple. I also have some Apple devices, so I'm quite familiar with how both Microsoft and Apple work.

TraderGary said:

When one of us buys a new PC, all that individual's data and photos are instantly available by simply logging in to their Microsoft Account because all data is kept in OneDrive.

All apps that were previously installed are shown as available icons that can be downloaded by clicking on the app icon. The Microsoft process can have much the same end result as Apple. I also have some Apple devices, so I'm quite familiar with how both Microsoft and Apple work.

Click to expand...

Thank, Gary. I'm thinking of my wife's machine. If I weren't around and something happened to her computer, it might be good for her to have this available. That could overcome our reluctance to storing anything in the cloud.

something to ponder

john1955 said:

Why are you buying a new XPS13 when what she already has is an XPS13?

Click to expand...

More memory.
Bigger SSD drive.
Faster CPU.
Better camera.
Wifi 7.
Availability of onsite service contract. We live 4+ hours each way from any place that could service this laptop, so we'd have to ship it for repairs. That could take a long time. Onsite service has saved me with my Lenovo's several times.

RandySea said:

More memory.
Bigger SSD drive.
Faster CPU.
Better camera.
Wifi 7.
Availability of onsite service contract. We live 4+ hours each way from any place that could service this laptop, so we'd have to ship it for repairs. That could take a long time. Onsite service has saved me with my Lenovo's several times.

Click to expand...

I concur! When I buy a new computer, I buy premium onsite service for the number of years I will own the computer. When the service expires, I buy a new computer. I like to always be fully covered.

RandySea said:

Thank, Gary. I'm thinking of my wife's machine. If I weren't around and something happened to her computer, it might be good for her to have this available. That could overcome our reluctance to storing anything in the cloud.

Click to expand...

I have a very similar setup to Gary's, except at home I use a NAS instead of the cloud. Nothing against OneDrive; I use it professionally all the time. I just don't need it at home, but if I didn't have local storage, I would use a cloud service.

My quest for this setup began years ago when I travelled all the time. I had a laptop meet its end thanks to an airline. Sure, they compensate you, and you get back up and running some time, maybe even "soon," but I needed to be up and running about 90 minutes after I landed. I was able to go to a popular electronics store, get a new device, and use the drive from the old laptop, but I was lucky, and I swore I'd never be in that pressured situation again.

pseymour said:

I have a very similar setup to Gary's, except at home I use a NAS instead of the cloud. Nothing against OneDrive; I use it professionally all the time. I just don't need it at home, but if I didn't have local storage, I would use a cloud service.

My quest for this setup began years ago when I travelled all the time. I had a laptop meet its end thanks to an airline. Sure, they compensate you, and you get back up and running some time, maybe even "soon," but I needed to be up and running about 90 minutes after I landed. I was able to go to a popular electronics store, get a new device, and use the drive from the old laptop, but I was lucky, and I swore I'd never be in that pressured situation again.

Click to expand...

I use OneDrive because I must have the security of one of my backups always being offsite and being mirrored in real-time no matter where I am.

Agreed, @TraderGary. I have my entire NAS backed up to Amazon. I can get to my NAS remotely if I go somewhere, but if I can't for some reason, I can almost surely get to Amazon.

pseymour said:

Agreed, @TraderGary. I have my entire NAS backed up to Amazon. I can get to my NAS remotely if I go somewhere, but if I can't for some reason, I can almost surely get to Amazon.

Click to expand...

That satisfies the offsite portion of the 3-2-1 Backup Strategy!

TraderGary said:

I use OneDrive because I must have the security of one of my backups always being offsite and being mirrored in real-time no matter where I am.

Click to expand...

As I said, I don't keep anything in the cloud. I keep a backup SSD in my firesafe and another one in a bank safety deposit box. Needless to say, the latter is far from a real-time backup. But then, I don't have time-critical needs for backups.

Well, actually, I do keep a copy of my password program data files in cloud storage because they are encrypted locally before uploading. At least, that's what the company says.

We all do things our own way based on our own experiences and our own peeves. If it suits you, more power to you.

RandySea said:

As I said, I don't keep anything in the cloud. I keep a backup SSD in my firesafe and another one in a bank safety deposit box. Needless to say, the latter is far from a real-time backup. But then, I don't have time-critical needs for backups.

Click to expand...

Of course, it's your data and your beliefs. No arguments there.

RandySea said:

Well, actually, I do keep a copy of my password program data files in cloud storage because they are encrypted locally before uploading. At least, that's what the company says.

Click to expand...

OneDrive data is encrypted both uploading and downloading and is protected by AES 256-bit encryption while on Microsoft's servers.

TraderGary said:

OneDrive data is encrypted both uploading and downloading and is protected by AES 256-bit encryption while on Microsoft's servers.

Click to expand...

That sounds good. But I'm still superstitious about letting anyone else handle my data. Too many stories of big companies and government agencies getting hacked. In my home, I'm a very low value target.

I keep all my stuff on my Phone(s).

RandySea said:

That sounds good. But I'm still superstitious about letting anyone else handle my data. Too many stories of big companies and government agencies getting hacked. In my home, I'm a very low value target.

Click to expand...

As I said, it's your data and your beliefs. No arguments there.

If you think about it though, it's Microsoft's Windows operating system and Microsoft's telemetry you're trusting to handle your data locally. If you don't trust Microsoft, maybe you should be using an operating system you do trust.

TraderGary said:

As I said, it's your data and your beliefs. No arguments there.

If you think about it though, it's Microsoft's Windows operating system and Microsoft's telemetry you're trusting to handle your data locally. If you don't trust Microsoft, maybe you should be using an operating system you do trust.

Click to expand...

You are right on that one. But not exactly my point. I trust MS not to be using my data the way, say, Google sells it for advertising $$. But it's a question of total exposure. The less data I export, the less exposure I have to hackers going for high value targets. I could say the same about government websites, but they don't give me any choice.

And who knows what exposure we have with all our hardware made in China. That includes an awful lot of our military hardware. What little switches are buried deep in their firmware. Rhetorical question, of course.

When I used to pass sensitive things to clients, we would use an encrypted container for which we determined the keys offline (e.g., a phone call). You could encrypt the data yourself and then send it to the cloudy storage. If someone gets Microsoft's keys, so what... they can decrypt your Microsoft blob into another encrypted blob.

I think Microsoft and Apple are trustworthy companies, but the fact is that if you didn't set the keys yourself for OneDrive or iMessage or whatever, that company has the keys. Someone has to have them or it doesn't work. If that someone isn't you, it's them.

RandySea said:

You are right on that one. But not exactly my point. I trust MS not to be using my data the way, say, Google sells it for advertising $$. But it's a question of total exposure. The less data I export, the less exposure I have to hackers going for high value targets. I could say the same about government websites, but they don't give me any choice.

And who knows what exposure we have with all our hardware made in China. That includes an awful lot of our military hardware. What little switches are buried deep in their firmware. Rhetorical question, of course.

Click to expand...

I do understand your thinking.

I've used OneDrive for over 18 years and couldn't imagine using my systems without it. But there are a lot of forum members that the first thing they do with a new system is remove OneDrive. You're not alone.

I think, for me, it's a reliance thing..., I can't see relying on 3rd party or cloud storage when I have physical storage right here in my hand!
I've got 1TB of cloud storage but I don't use it!

Because I use OneDrive:
I have a complete local real-time copy of all data and photos on System One.
I have a complete local real-time copy of all data and photos on System Two.
I have a complete offsite real-time copy of all data and photos on cloud OneDrive.

Key for me is having a real-time copy of all data and photos offsite.
My data and photos are that important to me.
For me it's purely a security thing.