yes. You can do this and the result will be a system that looks exactly like your old system, same programs, same tweaks, same settings, same data, but runs at the speed of a new system because its on new hardware. To make this transfer everything below must be heeded. Otherwise your only option is a Clean Install on Win7 on the new system.
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Make sure the new machine has an SSD drive, which is the number one thing that will speed you up.
The below specs are not in production as of 2019 so you should probably buy a used or refurbished system.
Make sure the new machine has an intel skylake cpu and NOT a later cpu (like intel kaby lake, intel coffee lake, or amd ryzen - all of which present annoying driver challenges for win7, plus, the fastest skylake cpu is very close in single-user speed to the fastest cpu of 2019 anyway. skylake = 6xxx, kaby lake = 7xxx, coffee lake = 8xxx. I recommend the i7-6700k)
Make sure the new machine does NOT have a motherboard chipset of 370 or 390. Go with 170 or 270, both of which are driver compatible with Win7.
If you follow the above, you can clone your old hard drive right onto the new system's ssd drive. The only requirements to ensure compatibility are:
- make sure your new system's drivers are downloaded onto your old hard drive's desktop before the clone. That way you can load them easily once you boot from the new system.
- BEFORE shutting down the old system one final time, change its device driver hard drive controller to the "Standard AHCI 1.0" driver. The way to make any Win7 boot drive able to be rebooted on any different win7 hardware system is to make sure you are using the universally-compatible hard drive controller, which is the Standard AHCI 1.0 driver.
- make sure the hard drive bios setting in your old machine AND your new machine is AHCI. That is, not raid, and not IDE.
