Moving to a New Computer

In November, we bit the bullet and built new computers for the office (our current machines are five years old). The purpose of this article is not to discuss all the pros and cons of building your own computer, but rather to share our experiences in transferring files to the new computers.

As any geek will tell you, when you purchase a new computer it's always best to do a fresh install of all your software. One advantage of building your own machine is that you get exactly the components you need, no more and no less. Ditto for software. As a result, you can do a fresh Windows install, as well as a fresh install of all your other applications. This eliminates a lot of clutter from your hard drive, speeds up your computer, and frees up hard disk space. It also forces you to look at what programs you really need on the new machine, so you can toss the ones you no longer use. Once you complete the fresh install of Windows and all your other applications (which took me 2.5 days, but I use lots of applications), it's time to transfer your files. I'm talking about pictures, Word documents, and the like. You can buy a special cable to link the two computers and transfer the files. However, we all should have a portable hard disk drive for backup purposes, or at the very least an online backup subscription such as Mozy or iDrive. Once you back up all your important files to the portable hard disk or your online backup service, it's simple to restore them to the new computer. In addition to everything in My Documents, don't forget:

• QuickBooks files, which are usually not stored in My Documents.
• Your Outlook.pst file, which holds all your Outlook emails, contacts, calendar, and other data. Open Windows Explorer and search for "outlook.pst" to locate this file.
• Files from any other applications that might not be stored in My Documents. Look at your desktop and Start menu to see what programs are on your computer, then using Google find out where any of the important ones store their data.
• From how far back in time are you willing to enter historical transactions into your new QB file?
• Your Internet Explorer/Firefox/Netscape favorites.

When you've finished the fresh install of all your applications and the transfer of your important files, remove the hard drive from your old computer. It's a simple procedure to find the screws that hold the cover on your computer case, remove them and the case cover, and locate the hard drive (it's a rectangular box that is not the CD drive). Pull all the wires loose from it (they all just plug in), then remove the screws on each side of the drive and slide it out of the computer. Insert the hard drive into a device called a hard drive enclosure. This is a case you can pickup for around $30 at a computer shop. It allows you to run your old hard drive outside your computer. It comes with cables that allow you to hook it to your new computer and run it as a portable hard disk drive. This way, you can still retrieve files from your old computer and move them to your new computer. If you were planning to sell your old computer, you don't want the hard drive to go with it. A dishonest geek (aka, hacker) can retrieve important personal information from your old hard disk, such as credit card numbers you used while shopping online. If your old computer is fairly new, you can purchase an inexpensive hard drive at any office supply store to install in the old computer before selling it. Older computers, however, won't fetch much on the secondhand market anyway. Just be sure to dispose of the old computer in a greenwise fashion. Best Buy accepts old computer components for recycling, and there are other disposal options as well.