>>>My daughter's laptop has become flaky to the point that I don't trust it and want to replace it before she goes back to Milwaukee for spring semester. Any recommendations on the most painless way to transfer her data files, desktop, and so on to the new laptop without having to reinstall everything? In this case I bet there really is a magic wand.
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>>What I always do when I buy a new computer, is to install only the programs that I really need on the new machine. Every program I rarely use, I don't install until I need them again, which often is never. That way I end up with a machine which starts up much faster, and is much "cleaner". And I am very careful to only install the programs on C:, all data goes to d:.
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>>I also always mount the primary hard drive from my old computer as a second or third hard drive in the new one. And I make sure that I do this
after the new one is up and running. If the new computer does not have room for the old HD, I mount the old HD in an external enclosure and connect it via USB. After some time, usually about a year, I reformat the old drive, and use it for data storage or for backups.
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>We are pretty much on the same page. I have done the let-them-down-easy thing with a number of old favorite programs which I realized I didn't use or need any more. A subcategory is two large plastic trays of diskettes. I don't even have a diskette drive any more. (Can you even get one on a new PC without special ordering it?)
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>You are a bolder man than me, using an internal hard drive for backup. Some of the things that can happen to the main HD -- theft, fire, electrical fritz, etc. -- are going to happen to the backup HD right along with it. These days my ordinary backups go to an external USB drive as well as an online, offsite backup service. Carbonite costs me $5/month. Given the value of the data to me, five bucks a month is a no-brainer. (You're a smart cookie so probably are already doing so, in addition to the internal HD).
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>UPDATE: I did not say that for this reason at all, but IIRC Carbonite does offer referral bonuses....
Bold, me? When I wrote backup, I really meant archive. I always store a complete set of my working data in a subdirectory on my second (or third) hard drive named something like 201010 for October 2010, in case I need to check some old data. I also have complete backups on my laptop and on my two servers, one at home and one at work. Plus a complete set both on my office machine and home machine. So in total I have five sets of data easily available every day. On top of that my office server is mirrored on a backup server in Denmark every 10 minutes. Paranoid? Not really, only careful.
