Upgrade to Windows 10? My experience

Have you gotten that notice from Microsoft: “Windows 7 has reached the end of its useful life…” or something similar?

That led me to reluctantly upgrade my HP Elite Desktop from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

You may find my experience amusing.

While we are warned to “back up ALL your files before proceeding”, I not only do that, using a program like Acronis True Image, but I also do something else – I buy a replacement HDD or SDD. and clone the original mass storage device before upgrading.

In other words, I clone my HDD, then update the cloned drive and save the pristine original as the latest backup.

I had previously upgraded my computer from a 1TB HDD (Toshiba) to a 1TB SSD (SanDisk Plus). Using my BYTECC clone machine, the process was easy with no problems. It was smooth as glass.

Then when I went to use my clone machine to clone that 1Tb SanDisk Plus SSD to another 1Tb HDD, I got the error message: “The source is larger than the destination”.

Undeterred, I tested a pristine, out-of-the-box 1TB hard drive. I got the same error message.

Concerned that my duplicator was failing, I bought another SanDisk Plus 1Tb and inserted it into my duplicator.

Unfortunately, I have the same error message.

Journal.

So I went back to my HP Elite files, found a previously cloned Win 7 HDD for my P Elite from last April, and successfully cloned it to that new SanDisk.

The cloned drive installed and worked without any problems.

Upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10 was successful.

My HP Elite Desktop is now on Win 10 and all is well with the world!

But now, I have an older version of my desktop.

Well, maybe that’s not a problem: I have a safe storage of all installed programs and also all my work: I use a WD MyCloud external storage device on my LAN. Any app that is missing, I can re-install it.

Theoretically, the ‘original’ HP Elite SDD only has copies of downloaded stuff (in its “Download File”), and nothing of any real consequence on the desktop or in local memory.

But there’s still that nagging fear that somehow, somewhere, there’s something in that original SDD that you might need.

To do?

I have a KingWin EZ-Connect device that connects a SATA drive to my computer’s USB port.

Perhaps that could be used to look at and then copy files and others that are on that original Win 7 SDD installation to the current HP Elite Win 10.

By connecting the SanDisk SDD to the EZ-Connect and then connecting the EZ-Connect to the computer, Viola! I can see all the files on the SanDisk!

Then it was easy to search, poke and prod to find what I wanted to transfer to the new installation!

Fortunately, nothing of real importance had been left behind. Now my fresh install of Win 10 is fully up and running and my ‘lost’ files are restored!