Hey level1, new member here, I lurked around a little on this forum and others hoping to find some solid answers regarding windows 10/7 system image backup details.
My dilemma is I'm coming to the end of my hardware life cycle for this machine. Cpu, mobo, and memory will soon be getting upgraded and I'm desperately trying to hold on to this install of windows 10. Reason being, Ive made all sorts of tweaks and registry changes going back to this as an install of 7, several years ago, so things are exactly how I like it. In the past Ive swapped memory and hard drives before doing an image restore but never to a new machine basically. I'm sure that it "could" work but is this wise?
Yes I know I know, this is certainly possible in Linux, that's all well and good, but my daily driver is windows. Appreciate any feedback and experiences doing something similar.
sysprep the machine shut it down either clone it to a new hd (safer) or transfer the hd to the new system boot up and see if it worked or not (unlikely w/o also adding the new storage controller driver, which is complicated to explain how to do) If it works great. If not, then it is time to reinstall.
Be prepared to reinstall if sysprep fails or if Windows does not have the correct storage driver installed, but if it works great.
Windows 10 is going to fuss with a new motherboard and CPU. Your best bet is to run with windows backup tool, do a full system backup, and restore that onto the new machine.
good luck. from experience it does not go well. best bet will be to reinstall copy over all of the files from old install (registry included) and pray that its does not get borked.
Interesting, I never thought about sysprep. As contingency I'm going to write down all the changes I've done, or remember I did, but I'll let you know how this goes.
