Windows 7 easy transfer wizard?

[MuleShack]

Dumb question here, but I cant remember which way to do this.

I am putting a new 500 gig HD in my laptop and doing the easy transfer wizard from my existing one to the new one. I cant remember if I should transfer the files back to the new hard drive immediately after installing windows 7 or reinstall all of my programs first and then let it copy the files over?

Any insight?

[upnorth]

I just did a quick read on it and it sounds to me it is more for transferring data from one PC to another rather than one disk to another, that could be accomplished by copy and paste if you can have both drives hooked at the same time.

[MuleShack]

Well in effect, i am transferring the same data from one drive(pc) to a new drive(pc). I dont know how to connect 2 hard drives to my existing laptop.

It puts the files back into directories where you had them on the original drive, but dont know if it will just put back the data files into the program folders or if it will overwrite the program folders? My guess is it will overwrite them if installed after the programs are installed. So would that be a bad thing?

I used it when i installed a clean copy of windows 7 on my laptop, but cant remember which way i did it...but regardless i was going from Vista to W7 so i guess that way it wouldn't have worked like it was suppose to anyway in regards to the program files folders.

[delcecchi]

You could pick up one of those cables or adapters that make an internal drive into an external. Or, since having an external drive for a backup is prudent anyway, you could copy your stuff tot the external and then back again. Or use backup/restore. You do have a backup right?

[MuleShack]

Yes, I have a 100 gig whiskey bottle type external drive that I will be using to move my existing data to using the windows easy transfer wizard. This in effect copies the data files of each user, compacts it, and moves it to the external storage. Then when its time to move back it places them back on the new HD in the same file system (allegedly).

Then when I install the new blank hard drive, I just install windows again and then the transfer wizard. Problem is I dont know if I should be moving the old directory of files back after I install all my programs again or before?

[upnorth]

After. If you made any changes to the config etc, a fresh install of an will overwrite what you put in there.

[delcecchi]

Sorry for the confusion. It had sounded like you were trying to go directly from old disk to new disk without any intermediate steps.