Hard Drive Backup

MikeB1424

MikeB1424

New Member
Hello

I need to backup my computer files, but I don't exactly know how to go about doing that.
I plan to upgrade motherboards and a few other things, but I only have one hard drive and it's nearly full. I don't know how to backup my files, because the new motherboard won't be compatible with the other hard drive slots available on my current one.
I would like to know what I should get in order to do what I'd like.

My motherboard now can have 1 6GB/s and 5 3GB/s hard drives.
The new motherboard can only have 6 6GB/s hard drives.

Thanks
 
your new motherboard should be backward compatible to use the older hdds.the best way i know to do a backup is to clone your hdd to another hdd using a program like macrium reflect.
 
Your hard drive will work in a 6GB/s port, don't worry. :) It will just run at 3GB/s speeds.

If you want to back up the data on your HDD you can simply copy the files to another drive using something like Ycopy or SyncToy (both are free) or just by copying and pasting in Windows Explorer like you normally would. There's no need to buy software to do it for you unless you need an exact clone of the disk with all of the partitions (usually you only need this if you want to clone a drive with an OS installed on it). If it's nearly full then I'd suggest that maybe you need to see if there's anything you can delete.
 
How long do you think it will take to back up 300GB of data from my hard drive onto an external hard drive thru USB 3.0
 
Thanks I'll do that then, how do I transfer the files when I get my new one? Or can I have 2 copies of the same thing on my PC, I'll have 3 hard drives (My one now included). Can I just copy all the files over to my new main hard drive and still keep everything?
 
MikeB1424 said:
Thanks I'll do that then, how do I transfer the files when I get my new one? Or can I have 2 copies of the same thing on my PC, I'll have 3 hard drives (My one now included). Can I just copy all the files over to my new main hard drive and still keep everything?
Click to expand...
You would install and connect your new hard drive, as well as your old hard drive to your motherboard. When you go to install Windows, tell it to install on the new drive. When you boot up, you'll see both drives and then you can move them from the old to the new drive and reuse your old drive.
 
Sweet thanks, so I can just do that instead of backing it up on another hard drive when upgrading my motherboard?
 
Geoff said:
You would install and connect your new hard drive, as well as your old hard drive to your motherboard.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't connect the old drive until after you installed windows. The reason being the boot files may end up on the old drive and you don't want that. If that happens and the old drive goes out then windows won't boot.

Keep the old drive disconnected until after windows is installed on new drive and then connect old drive.
 
Sweet thanks for the help, so you don't recommend buying an external hard drive and putting my files on there too?
 
Never connect two HDDs at the same time while installing Windows.

You can use sysprep to use that HDD in your new motherboard. Google and read up on sysprep.

You can use AOMEI and clone the HDD to another. Just need to provide a link to social media since this program is free. I've used it to clone an older laptop SSD to a new SSD. Like nothing changed.
 
There's no harm in installing both as long as you don't accidentally install Windows on the wrong drive, and make sure you set the boot drive priority correctly. To be safe though, installing it after you install Windows would be the safest.
 
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