Migrating to Windows 10 or 11

[Four]

How can I migrate my OS from W7 to W10 or 11 without losing all of my drivers?
Will those same drivers be compatible with W10/11?
Can I make a separate partition within my destination drive and install W10/11 on it, then move the rest of my stuff across?

I also have about 4 hard disks with user data on them, what is the most efficient way of compiling all of that data together into a single place to go onto the new, larger drive?
Is there a program that can compile all useful files (by their extensions) from those 4 locations, into the destination or do I have to do it manually? When I scour the drives for the data I am always afraid I will miss something

I recently tried deleting all of my UserData from an external Disk which also deleted the User Data from my Local Disk!!! (which puzzles me, although I have since restored it)

[dr_st]

There are options for an in-place upgrade:
https://pureinfotech.com/upgrade-to-win ... windows-7/

Windows 10 will use Windows 7 drivers to the best of its ability. Some will work out of the box, some won't.

[ZaZ]

Perhaps you want to try to find if Windows 10 or 11 drivers exist for your machine. In my experience clean installs typically work better than in-place upgrades, where there's usually something that doesn't work properly.

[mikemex]

It's super easy to install Windows 10 and 11, much easier than earlier versions. I just replaced the 256GB SSD on my X1C9 with a 1TB one. Installing Windows and all drivers didn't take much time, maybe two or three hours. And that's because I only had the old version lying around (21H2). With the 22H2 install media, I'm sure it could had taken less.

And yeah, it tends to work much better on a fresh install. The upgrade option doesn't always pick up everything and you'll be left with weird quirks. The last time I upgraded from WIndows 10 to 11, the suspension stopped working (I fixed it switching to S3 suspend and back to S0ix).

In short, I'd just install Windows fresh and let it download the drivers from Internet, if I were you.

It takes much more time to install all your applications back and tweak it the way you like it. What I do, is to backup a machine into the cloud and let it copy all the information back. That ensures you have a third copy in case something goes wrong.

It helps to make a list of the stuff you want.

[dr_st]

And yeah, it tends to work much better on a fresh install. The upgrade option doesn't always pick up everything and you'll be left with weird quirks. The last time I upgraded from WIndows 10 to 11, the suspension stopped working (I fixed it switching to S3 suspend and back to S0ix).

In short, I'd just install Windows fresh and let it download the drivers from Internet, if I were you.

It takes much more time to install all your applications back and tweak it the way you like it. What I do, is to backup a machine into the cloud and let it copy all the information back. That ensures you have a third copy in case something goes wrong.

I only did an in-place upgrade once. It was from Vista to Win7, and it was because I had an almost 12-year old installed application base that I absolutely did not want to reinstall manually.

I was honestly surprised at how smooth it went. Of the few things that stopped working, most of them I was notified about upfront by the compatibility assistant. I had to get updated versions post-install for these few things, and that's it.

However, Vista and 7 are essentially the same OS. From Win7 to Win10/11 - the gap is significantly larger.

Just for drivers - I would prefer a clean install anyways - because if something will break during an in-place upgrade - it's likely to be the drivers.

And, yes - backup before doing anything, in either case.

[TPFanatic]

When setting up your new system i advise make extensive use of system restore, it’s not uncommon for things to just start breaking and there’s no way to go back. Eg. my W530 22h2 config needs a particular obscure nvidia gfx driver to have a functional control panel.