Upgrading to Windows 10?

Have you received that notice from Microsoft: “Windows 7 has reached its End-of-Life… ” or something similar?

That prompted me to reluctantly upgrade my HP Elite desktop from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

You might find my experience amusing.

While we’re admonished to “Please Back up ALL of your files before proceeding.’, furthermore I do simply that, by using a program like Acronis True Image, but I also do one more thing to: I buy an alternative HDD or SDD, and clone an original mass storage device before upgrading.

In plain english, I clone my HDD, then upgrade the cloned disk, saving the pristine original because ultimate backup.

I had previously upgraded my computer at a 1Tb HDD (Toshiba) into a 1Tb SDD (SanDisk Plus). Using my BYTECC cloning machine, the procedure was easy, no problems. Went smooth as glass.

Then when I went along to use my cloning machine to clone that 1 Tb SanDisk Plus SDD to an alternative 1Tb HDD, I got the big mistake message, “Source is larger than Target.”

Unfazed, I tried a pristine-out-of-the-box 1Tb WD drive. Got the identical error message.

Concerned that my duplicator was for the fritz, I bought another SanDisk Plus 1Tb and inserted it during my duplicator.

Alas, got a similar error message.

Bummer.

So I went back inside my HP Elite archives, found a previously cloned HDD Win 7 disk for my P Elite from last April and properly cloned it onto that fresh SanDisk.

The cloned disk installed and worked with virtually no problems.

The upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10 was accomplished successfully.

My HP Elite desktop is currently at Win 10 and all’s well while using world!

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

Well, perhaps that is not a problem: I employ a secure storage of the installed programs, as well as all of my work: I use an outside WD MyCloud storage device on my small LAN. Any missing applications, I can just re-install.

Theoretically, the ‘original’ HP Elite SDD merely has copies of downloaded stuff (in the “Download file”), and zip of any real consequence within the desktop or perhaps in local memory.

But there’s still that niggling fear that somehow, somewhere, there’s on that original SDD that I might just need.

What to perform?

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

Perhaps that is used to examine and then copy over files and the like that are on that original SDD Win 7 installation for the HP Elite’s current Win 10.

Hooking inside the SanDisk SDD to your EZ-Connect, and after that hooking the EZ-Connect on the computer,!Viola! I can see all the files within the SanDisk!

Then it turned out an easy thing to locate and poke and prod to seek out whatever I wanted to transfer towards the new installation!

Fortunately, nothing of a typical real consequence had ben put aside. Now my new Win 10 installation is fully working and my ‘lost’ files are restored!

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