Free Program Transfer & Backup Utilities

[ThisIsStellar]

Hi all. I just recently built a new machine and I wanted to transfer over some programs from my old machine to my new. One might say "just uninstall and reinstall" those programs. Well I don't know that I have the information in order to do a reinstall. So I was hoping to simply migrate them from one machine to another.

 

I've found a couple programs out there that claim to do this, but each of them cost $50 USD. Anyone know of a free or much less expensive option that works?

 

Also, I have 3 internal 1TB hard drives that I already had and just bought a new 4TB external drive. I want to use the external as a backup system for the 3 internal drives, making one folder for each of the internal drives and backing them up automatically on a schedule. Does anyone know of a program to do this with?

 

Thanks in advance. First time posting. <3 this YouTube channel and the community.

[Leonard]

You can just copy the installation folder from the C drive of the old drive and paste it in the new C drive and then just right open the copied installation folder, right click the .exe and say choose pin to start menu or make a desktop shortcut or pin to taskbar  and bam you have your old program, i do this instead of reinstalling programs when i do a fresh install of my OS.

[Enderman]

You cannot move programs unless you specifically installed a "portable version" which is meant to go on USB drives and moved around.

The only other thing that can "move a program" is cloning your entire hard drive which is a really bad idea and will likely cause issues in the future.

 

What you should do is install the programs on your new machine and then double check that everything works like it does on the old machine by having both open at the same time.

I don't know what you mean by " I don't know that I have the information in order to do a reinstall"so please elaborate on that part.

[ThisIsStellar]

31 minutes ago, Enderman said:

I don't know what you mean by " I don't know that I have the information in order to do a reinstall"so please elaborate on that part.

I don't have the product keys to put in to reinstall the programs. So I can't reinstall them without those.

[flowalex]

Take a look at Belarc, It can give some product keys when it is run, but I am not saying it will work completly

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

[Enderman]

1 hour ago, ThisIsStellar said:

I don't have the product keys to put in to reinstall the programs. So I can't reinstall them without those.

Why not just use a free keyfinder?

What programs are you talking about?