Clone an hdd

[bgibbz]

I have a bit of a dilemma right now which I am out of ideas on. I am replacing the PC for an elderly family member who has severe OCD and uses her computer constantly. She uses some system of desktop icons and Firefox bookmarks in order to organize her computer. I need everything to appear on her new computer exactly as it is on her old computer. Normally I would just create a system image, but I am convinced that there are some malicious stuff hiding in her old hardrive so i am reluntant to transfer it over. What would be the easiest way for me to replicate her current setup? Simply recreating all of her icons is not practical, as she literally has every single possible space of her desktop full of links, files, and programs, all apparently organized in some way that I don't understand. Her Firefox has about 200 bookmarks all arranged into folders and also organized in some strange way that makes no sense to me. what would be the best way for me to backup the old system? 

[ARikozuM]

Go to Kaspersky and download the Rescue Disk. Run the virus scan. Do a "chkdsk" after rebooting.

[Enderman]

You should be able to log in to firefox and have all bookmarks and stuff sync to any PC logged into the same account.

[bgibbz]

45 minutes ago, Enderman said:

You should be able to log in to firefox and have all bookmarks and stuff sync to any PC logged into the same account.

Thanks, thought that was an exclusive chrome feature. I never use Firefox. That is probably the biggest problem solved. 

[Enderman]

15 minutes ago, bgibbz said:

Thanks, thought that was an exclusive chrome feature. I never use Firefox. That is probably the biggest problem solved. 

For the other stuff there might be some special windows thing that allows you to "migrate" settings and files and where the shortcuts are and everything, like for windows XP there was "easy transfer" but I don't think that works on windows 10. Maybe research options like it.

 

Other than that, the best thing I can recommend is taking screenshots of what the desktop and start menu looks like, then for documents just transfer the parent folders so that everything remains in the same place. All the other stuff you can replace manually from the screenshots.

[ARikozuM]

1 hour ago, Enderman said:

For the other stuff there might be some special windows thing that allows you to "migrate" settings and files and where the shortcuts are and everything, like for windows XP there was "easy transfer" but I don't think that works on windows 10. Maybe research options like it.

 

Other than that, the best thing I can recommend is taking screenshots of what the desktop and start menu looks like, then for documents just transfer the parent folders so that everything remains in the same place. All the other stuff you can replace manually from the screenshots.

To add to Enderman's post. There should be a user folder called "Desktop". The contents should be the folders on the desktop. I would create a screenshot (Win + PrtScr) and move it from the Pictures folder to Desktop.

[bgibbz]

1 hour ago, Enderman said:

 

 

30 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

 

Thanks to both of you fro your help- so here's what I think I'm going to do. Make a Firefox account and sign in on both devices to maintain bookmarks, manually backup all essential folders, like pictures, documents, and desktop, and then through screenshots manually re arrange the files to match. 

[Enderman]

10 minutes ago, bgibbz said:

 

Thanks to both of you fro your help- so here's what I think I'm going to do. Make a Firefox account and sign in on both devices to maintain bookmarks, manually backup all essential folders, like pictures, documents, and desktop, and then through screenshots manually re arrange the files to match. 

Also since you're using a separate HDD to install windows, as long as you don't format the first HDD you can always go back and take a look at the files if you realize you missed something  

[ARikozuM]

Practice Safe Formatting should be a thing.