How I upgrade a computer
 

So my giant tower with the 18 monitors has gotten a little long in the tooth. It's been operational for 3+ years, and has been experiencing blue screens of death lately. After so much time, you accumulate a lot of programs and data which you hate to lose, thus I have created a complete VMWare clone of this computer (operating system drive only), purchased a new (twice the size OS Drive "Samsung Pro SSD 860 2TB")

I install the core apps that I use (office, corel, zoom, vmware, ...) and away I go. I have a fresh computer, insanely faster than the old one, and I still have 100% access to the old one as a VM. This computer is too young to replace, but it needed this type of service. When I replace it, it too will become a VM and both VM's will be moved to the new tower.

If you say so. :lol:

you filled it up already?! :faint:

naa.

doubled the capacity of the OS drive from 1 to 2 TB, and maintained the other 6 internal drives (8TB, 8TB, 10TB, 10TB, 10TB, 10TB)

Cleansing the OS drive from time to time pays huge dividends. :yesnod:

So when I replace my Windows XP some time after the pandemic with Windows 10 I can VPN or whatever you said my XP hard drive to it?

vpn, no, run a clone of the xp system on the new system via vmware, yes. :yesnod:

It is idme, if I'm staying that right, patch cord between the two?

LOL no. When you upgrade, there is still only 1 PHYSICAL machine. The machine going into retirement is converted to a virtual machine, software is installed on the new physical machine, and the virtual guts of the old machine are copied onto a drive of the new machine.

Inside of the new machine, you run software that launches your old machine and lets you access everything on that old box. :seasix:

:withstupid: On my laptop, I run VMWare Fusion and have XP, Win 7 and Win 10 VMs.

Even deleted photos?

Only the deleted porn gets preserved. :yesnod:

fascinating, i have no idea what you are talking about.

If they are deleted on your old box, they won't exist on the new VM version of that box.

See post #2 . I am in the same boat as you

i read once that it involves cats in tubes.

there must be some hidden button on the keyboard that you push twice.

I concur. :leaving:

I also use a VM, but I use the free one - Virtual Box from Oracle. I have a Win10 system with a VM machine for Windows XP, 7, and Windows 10 LTSC. It's an easy way to test software to see how it works. With Virtual Box, if the software screws up the VM, I simply reinstate it using a snap shot and I'm back in business.

That’s one way to do it, I assume there wasn’t any documents just installed programs?. I recently pushed everything to the cloud so I could easily move between PCs with the hope Im buying a new beast soon.

Making a backup and putting your data and stuff back onto a new system is really easy in Linux. Pretty much blows in Windows.

:iagree: Ubuntu ftw