New laptop

Hi Balc,

Well @Jocko did cover it in his answer, but a couple of things might help.

Your new hard drive, assume its a SSD can be Partitioned into two parts, drive C for Windows and the remainder becomes drive D for your data.

However with your old HDD free its generally much better to install that in a spare bay and use that for most of your data.

What we have done is as above making the SDD drive C and D and the HDD as drive F , G, H ( eg photos on F and Music on G and H for system backups etc.)
We use D to store backups of the data from F&G.

You can re-partition your new drive with either the Windows Computer Management tool or easier with a free program like Aomei AOMEI Partition Assistant - A Safe Partition Manager for Windows PC and Server
Would suggest you allocate 100GB to Windows the rest to drive D.
However you must do two things first, Do a system image backup of your SSD so if anything happens you can restore to the original state, you need to have a USB bootable stick for that, which you create from the backup program you use.
Also when in any partition manager, first check what other system partitions are around and do not change them, just the area used by drive C.

You old HDD will just be seen as the next logical drive and the Windows 7 file will not be seen as a bootable system so you could just delete the bulk of the windows files though it might be equally as easy to do as Jocko suggests.




You can format any drive by just right clicking on the drive and secting Format or from within any partition manager.
Just make triple sure you selct the right drive and have a backup if its any imprtant data.

 

@Jocko @ricky101 Thank you both for your answers! The new PC will have the traditional HDD. I couldn't afford a SSD! Re the laptop with Win 10 I didn't think to check if it could be upgraded for free. I just assumed it could be done & was cheaper than buying a Win11 one. As we've bought them at the same time our budget was rather s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d!

 

@Balc shoudn't worry to much about a HDD, modern cpus and motherboards are so much faster anyways, doubt you will notice the difference.

Also contrary to what a lot of the web says, we have found SSDs are not as long lasting, on our third now, the previous two expired just after their 3 year warranties, this time we paid extra to get a model with a 5 year warranty.
The guy at our local big supplier did not seem surprised when we mentioned the old one failed shortly after the 3 years. Cannot remember ever having a HDD fail, think our data HDD is about 10 years old.

With the new W10 laptop after you have done all the 'new' Windows updates it will soon tell you in the Update page if you can or cannot update to W11.

 

I bought an external SSD and it didn't work right from day one. It would lose connection part way through data transfer.
I returned it, got a refund then the item was returned to me as the customs form Amazon had provided me with wasn't accepted by the EU. It went in the bin.

 

Would always stick with a HDD for external storage , as above find they are much more reliable than a SSD.

The one problem we do find is the connecting usb cable, too long or poor quality and it can cause all sorts of strange problems, the shorter the better and directly plugged into the PCs socket, not an unpowered USB hub.

 

My experience as well.

 

I'm finding eMMC memory being quoted.
Also any thoughts on Chrome book.

 

eMMC is a slower and cheaper form of memory -



Chrome books are quiet popular but it has some potential problems.

The key one is its supported life, ie security updates, but its life starts when its made in the factory so if its been at the wholesalers etc for a long time its 'life' is already reduced.
See this link, but believe uk Life is about 5 years.
What to Do with Chromebook After End of Life?

As all the programs come from Googles site not sure if all programs can run on them ??
plus not everyone wants everything they do monitored by Google ?!

Like @Sheal , there are lots of decent Windows11 laptops around the £400 mark, well worth that bit extra imho.

 

@ricky101

 

I'm not seeing much HDD memory quoted.

 

Thats because the cheaper ones do not use them , just the eMMC memory.
Reason, Chromebook runs most program from the 'cloud' and saves most of your work there so you don't need a lot of fast memory.

Have a read at this, its just another means, more half way between a Windows PC and an Android Smart phone.
Chromebook Review (2023) — All the Key Pros and Cons

Never used one, so cannot really say how good or bad they are, perhaps other can help there ?

 

I'm kind of put off by too much talk about the cloud, not something I know anything about.

 

What I actually mean is I'm only really seeing eMMC and SSD.

 

The eMMC is used for storage on the lower priced ones, the SSD to the higher priced ones.

Lots of folk use the Cloud but there is always the risk of the data being lost or stolen, we would never use a Chromebook for that reason.
There are Windows programs that use the cloud be we never put anything private up there and always keep a copy on our PC as well.

Think you would be better off sticking with Windows as its a system you know.
Windows 11 is just a slightly different screen layout and generally we do not use the Tiles, just our progam icons on the mains screen like on W8.
Its just a case of arranging it how you want.

As said you can get some half decent laptops for around £400 which are so much better than the lower specifed cheaper ones.
Getting a new one while your old one is still working means you can steadily get used to the new one at your own pace and move your old programs and data across at your leisure.
Always keep your old one as a working backup.

Can you get into a larger Currys and have a look at some of whats on offer in that price range ?
Have a look the models @Sheal was mentioning.

 

My new PC tower arrived this morning just as I finished getting the HDD out of the old one! Timing couldn't have been better! I wanted to put it in the new tower before doing anything else. Imagine then how annoyed & frustrated I felt when I couldn't see a way to put the drive in the new tower! At least without breaking anything! There are connections for a second HDD but it would have to go in UNDERNEATH the installed HDD! I couldn't find a way of getting to it so after more than 30 mins of frustration I gave up! I then connected the cables to the new tower & switched it on.

The monitor screen lit up for brief moment with the DELL logo then there was nothing else happening. For a good 10 mins I waited but nothing happened! I saw myself having to get in touch with the seller & ask for a refund! AS it wasn't working I turned it off with the power button - that being the only option open to me. After another ten minutes I had a second go & this time everything went well, for the first few set up screens! I got as far as having to enter my MS email. That's were I got stuck! MS wouldn't recognize it! I tried about 4 times - the last 2 taking every care possible to enter the password but to no avail. My wife said, "Why don't you take out a new MS email account?" I didn't want to do that as I have 3 or 4 different programmes on my computer, my phone & the other 2 laptops & it would mean I would have to change the accounts on them as well! I did a password reset & it was accepted. I went back to the lock in screen & put in the new password - lo & behold - it wasn't accepted either!
I tried it again & again, like the first time, with lots of care & verifying the characters all the time - but no luck! "Wrong password" kept coming up! In the last two attempts I was told that I had used too many codes & to try again tomorrow! Unable to do anything & getting more & more frustrated by the minute I turned it off again! This time I disconnected all the cables, put the HDD back in the old tower & reconnected all the cables again!

I have now created a new email account but I still can't get into my old accounts as they want the original email address & password!!! So I'm now locked out of all the MS accounts because they won't accept the old passwords or the new password or the new email address!