How to save programs and keys on backup?

thetasigma1412 · 01 Jan 2014

Hello everybody,

As my first posting, I'd like to say hello and thank you in advance to helping me out. I currently have an Alienware M17, way too big for my liking. I plan on switching to a new laptop, but not without selling this one to afford one I want. I will be getting a internal terabyte of memory to do a disk clone, but I am also backing up to my 1 tb external WD drive.

In essence my question is.....

"What would be THE BEST way to ensure that when I re-install everything on my new laptop, that all my programs and their keys will be on the disk? I know I can take out my current harddrive (maybe) and swap it out with the new one, but I will not have my current one, and would like to sell it with the harddrive. I have programs such as Microsoft Office, CS5 Master, SketchUp, Revit, etc.

Would it be possible to simply take everything from my current laptop, and without any modifications, place everything on my current drive, to the new laptop?

Thank you!

whs · 01 Jan 2014

You can do that with Macrium imaging. But you need the Pro Version which costs $59 - but sometimes they offer it for less. The function is called: " Restore to dissimilar hardware ".

Brink · 01 Jan 2014

Hello thetasigma, and welcome to Seven Forums.

To have everything backed up, you could create a system image.

Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup

System Image Recovery

Another option would be to use the free 3rd party program Macrium Reflect to create images with.

Imaging with free Macrium

Hope this helps, :)
Shawn

Mark Phelps · 03 Jan 2014

Would it be possible to simply take everything from my current laptop, and without any modifications, place everything on my current drive, to the new laptop?

As WHS mentioned, you CAN do this using MR Pro version -- and I have actually done this and confirmed it works.

You will need a USB stick or CD with the drivers for the new PC -- as this tool needs those available to replace the older drivers with the new one.

The process would be as follows:
1) Connect the old drive to the new PC
2) Boot from a CD/USB containing the MR software
3) Run MR
4) Choose the option to Restore to dissimilar hardware
5) Insert the CD/USB stick with the new drivers, or point the app to the directory containing the new drivers.

MR will then install all the new drivers, replacing the old drivers in the process.

When you reboot, you should be OK -- except you might have to reactivate since your hardware "hash" will have changed with the new hardware.