How Easy Is It To Copy An Existing Laptop To A Higher Version One ?

[Old_Geezer]

Ok, something which, when younger I'd be advising others on but these days I feel I'm no longer as knowledgeable as I once was. (That's retirement and stagnation for you.)

 

My woman has an old laptop which struggles due to present day common specs now being far higher than they used to be. I am contemplating getting a Windows laptop replacement but would need to get all settings/data/etc. copied across automatically to the more recent Windows version.

 

How simple would that be to do, and what would be a good method to achieve it ?

 

TIA

[Buenchico]

You can theoretically clone your old hard drive (or SSD, as applicable) and load a copy of the clone onto the new drive:
https://www.techradar.com/best/best-disk-cloning-software

However 
(a) if, say, you're copying from a Windows 10 laptop to a Windows 11 one, you risk over-writing the newer operating system with the older one, leaving you with a second Windows 10 laptop ; and
(b) the settings on the old disk might relate to hardware that's only available on the original laptop, rendering them incompatible with the newer one.

My preferred method is always to accept that I'm in for many hours of hard graft and to get on with installing all of the same software onto the new computer that I was using on the old one.  Then I simply copy all of my data files (such as documents, spreadsheets, images, videos, etc) from the old computer onto a USB drive and use that to copy them onto the new computer.  There are other methods though, such as using a direct cable connection:
https://www.computerworld.com/article/1638368/how-to-migrate-to-a-new-windows-pc.html

Remember that (as mentioned in the above link), you'll also need to copy all of your browser bookmarks between the two computers (unless you've got them 'synced' somewhere).  That simply involves exporting them to a file which can then be imported into the browser on your new computer.

My own experience of transferring data from one PC to another is that it can be incredibly tedious but certainly not difficult!