Best way to migrate software to new drive?

[atlau]

So i need to change out to a bigger hard drive since my current one is out of space. Id like to reinstall a fresh copy of windows. What is the best way to migrate all my software afterwards? Ill have the ability to see the old hard drive since it will still.be connected but if it is no longer the boot drive will that cause problems?

I assume i cant just copy my office folder or ah folder over...

[The Fugitive]

You didnt say which version of windows your running so things may be different, but all the time Ive added a new drive the programs on the old drive still all work. Ive done it both ways, new drive gets new windows, or new drive becomes second drive and all data is moved there to free up space on the old drive to continue to use as the "main "C" drive".

[atlau]

But my old drive will still have the old windows on it. Can i just delete that folder?

Its windows 10. Reinstalling everything isnt a huge deal except id just like to save some time. And ill have to be sure tonsave my ah setttkngs lol

[Bizman]

I've witnessed the same as Fugi, but to be honest that just doesn't feel right. What's worse than the feeling is that the old disk will statistically fail someday which will leave a ton of orphaned data behind. If at all possible just reinstall everything from scratch, possibly reducing the total amount of programs installed. That will clean up your Appdata folder as well, making the system run smoother.

Transferring settings and other user data for your applications from the old disk to the new one is of course essential, especially the AH settings.

There's programs that can transfer even programs from an old system to a new one, but the results vary. If they were fool proof, they'd be commonly used by everyone.

[The Fugitive]

Im not positive with Win10 if you can just dump the windows folder on the old drive. Im thinking yes, but not sure.

Another option is to install the new drive, and create an image of your old drive on the new one. I used https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree to do mine and it worked great.

Then once the new drive is set up you can blow away the old drive and use it for what ever you want after.

[Skuzzy]

Short of doing a complete image copy of the drive there is no way to reliably migrate applications from one drive to another.  In order to insure the proper operation of the applications you must install them on the new drive.

What I have done, over the years, is to keep any number of DVD's with the installers of the software I use on them.  When I have to install again, I just stick those discs in and install until I am done.

I have always kept the data separate from the install location so that has taken care of itself.