Easy Transfer & My Documents

[w7newbie]

My first post

I am using The Easy Transfer utility to make copies of the files I want to keep once I have installed Win7 on my WinXP PC and I will be making the file on an internal hard disk drive, which is E:

As the My Documents folder has been directed to my D: drive and WinXP is installed on my C: drive, do I have to include My Documents in Easy Transfer or will the clean install onto C: leave my D: and E: drives intact?

Thanks

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello w7newbie, welcome to Seven Forums!



I have no experience with "Windows Easy Transfer" so I have no first-hand knowledge but I believe I have seen people say it can't be trusted to transfer from XP to Windows 7 without error.

 

[Ztruker]

Are D: and E: separate drives or just different partitions on the same drive as C:?

If separate drives, the safest thing to do is to disable them when you install Win 7 by removing the IDE connector and Power cables.

Once Win 7 is installed, then reconnect and everything should be available.

If they are partitions on the same drive as C: then be very careful when you do the reinstall. I've done this several times successfully but I've read of other people who ended up losing the data in the other partitions.

You might be better off to buy an external hard drive and copy all your data there or do an image backup of all the existing partitions/drives. Then when you install Win 7, you'll be able to access everything that was there when XP was installed.

 

[whs]

And if you decide to go with the external hard drive, I suggest to use a large enough USB stick that is formatted in Fat32. Some people had problems with NTFS disks coming from XP.

 

[w7newbie]

Ztruker - Thanks for the reply. D: and E: are physical drives.

whs - Thanks for the reply. My internal E: drive is 1.5TB, so I'm going to give it a go using that. Hopefully, the W7 install will only touch C:

 

[Darryl Licht]

EZ Transfer is a godsend! It has saved me so much time in upgrading clients PCs over to Win7. You will love its ease and simplicity! It is a great utility for migration to Win7.

AS long as you have your docs on a seperate physical HDD I agree to just disconnect that and any other drives with data before you perform the EZ transfer and the actual upgrade to Win7.

After you are all done and have transferred the old files back into the new Win7 install then reconnect those data drives and everything will be where it was before!

Also, since you have your docs on a seperate physical drive you will have to configure your new Win7 Libraries to point to that drive and directory once you are all done.

 

[gregrocker]

You may also need to redirect the location of your Documents folder following this method: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/18629-user-folders-change-default-location.html

I also don't use Easy Transfer as it uses a shotgun approach not nearly as precise as simply dragging your active User folders to external and then into your fresh install.

A more critical issue I see as an installer is that the hidden AppData file imports settings which can be a corruption path from the old OS to the fresh new install, partially defeating the benefit of a clean reinstall.

 

[whs]

A more critical issue I see as an installer is that the hidden AppData file imports settings which can be a corruption path from the old OS to the fresh new install, partially defeating the benefit of a clean reinstall

That is an excellent point. Just shows that if you leave the task to a "tool", you never know what it is doing to you. With the good old "manual" approach, you know at least what you have done.

 

[Darryl Licht]

You may also need to redirect the location of your Documents folder following this method: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/18629-user-folders-change-default-location.html

I also don't use Easy Transfer as it uses a shotgun approach not nearly as precise as simply dragging your active User folders to external and then into your fresh install.

A more critical issue I see as an installer is that the hidden AppData file imports settings which can be a corruption path from the old OS to the fresh new install, partially defeating the benefit of a clean reinstall.

Agreed, but I pick and choose carefully what to export and dont accept defaults... it saves time when you have to do it over and over again!

 

[Ztruker]

If you have to do it over and over again, you can't beat a backup image. Restore it and you're done. Nothing else to do.

 

[Darryl Licht]

Its all dissimlar equipment and apps, so I dont think that would work for me. I run a consulting business and most of my environments are mixed SOHO's. Worst issue is lost or missing software that has to be tracked down.