Any newly purchased PC lets you zip through different tasks quickly and do other work at a good pace. However, there’s nothing more daunting than moving all your important files and documents from your old computer to the new computer.
Luckily, there are several ways via which you can safely transfer or migrate files from your old computer to your new one. Here’s a roundup of how to transfer files from an old hard drive to a new Windows 11/10 computer.
How to transfer Files from Old Hard Drive to new computer
Whether you have purchased a new device or just planning to move your files and folders from an old Windows PC, the methods described below will help you do it easily.
- Use the OneDrive app.
- Clone the hard disk of the source computer into the target computer.
- Transfer your data over WiFi or LAN.
- Using an external storage device or flash drives.
- Use free data transfer software.
Read the detailed description of the above methods.
1] Use the OneDrive app
Select Start, type OneDrive in the search bar, and choose the OneDrive app.
Sign in with your Home, School, or Work account and finish setting up OneDrive.
Once done, go to File Explorer to view the syncing files.
Drag and drop the desired files from your computer to OneDrive.
When done, click the One Drive icon on the Taskbar and check the status of the files.
2] Clone the hard disk of the source computer into the target computer
This is one of the quickest methods to migrate data (files & folders) from an old PC to a new PC. It creates a one-to-one copy of a source disk and duplicates its data onto the target device. So, when you put a cloned drive into a computer, you can start it up and use it normally. Before starting, make sure you clean or remove temporary data, cache, and duplicate files or apps you never use since the process can take a significantly longer time if there are tons of unnecessary files.
3] Transfer your data over WiFi or LAN
If both your old and new computers are on the same network and within range, you can create a local area network (LAN). With this, you can use one PC to search the other PC’s hard drives and select which files you would like to transfer.
A major benefit for Windows users here is that Windows 11/10 supports a setting through which users can set up a Home network. This makes the devices on the same network discoverable. So, you don’t need to set up a new connection each time you want to transfer files from one PC to another PC.
4] Using an external storage device or flash drives
You can send files over email, but it has one very severe shortfall – The file size is limited up to 25 MB. Flash drives remove this shortfall and so it’s considered one of the most popular ways to transfer files from one PC to another PC. Just complete a few steps and get your job done. Here’s how!
- Plug-in USB flash drive to the old computer
- Copy your files and applications to it when recognized.
- Eject the flash drive with care (do not remove until files have finished copying).
Plug in the flash drive to your new computer and begin transferring the data using the copy-and-paste method.
If both computers are equipped with USB 3.0 ports, use a USB 3.0 flash drive as it has a very speedy data transfer rate.
5] Use free data transfer software
There are many freeware tools available to transfer files & applications from one PC to another PC. Some of them are – Samsung Data Migration, AOMEI Backupper Standard, Seagate DiskWizard, Renee Becca Data, etc. You can use one of them. Zinstall WinWin is a good paid option you may want to check out.
On a side note, in comparison to external hard drives, flash drives usually have limited storage. As such, many users consider upgrading to an external hard drive to move files.
Also read: How to move Program files from SSD to HDD in Windows?
