How to transfer programs and files from old hard drive to new PC

In this article, we will see how to copy everything from an old hard drive to a new computer, including your programs (yes, not just files!), profile, settings, documents, pictures, music, movies, favorites and everything else – so that the old programs remain operational and old files go to their proper places.

Want to avoid dealing with crashes in the future? Get an automatic backup software.

This article deals with transferring directly from an old hard drive.
Need to copy programs and files from one computer to another using an external USB drive?
Click here for the USB drive tutorial!

We’ll be using an automatic hard drive recovery software, so it does not require a lot of technical knowledge for a successful transfer. A few examples where this kind of transfer is required:

Your old computer is broken, and you only have its hard drive to work with
You are sending the old computer back for repairs, and are using the hard drive as a backup
You have a cloned hard drive you need to migrate from

In a nutshell, what you need to do is connect the old drive to the new computer, and run the transfer software. It will recover your programs, settings, files and everything else, automatically and safely.

Already have the old hard drive connected to the new computer, and just need a way to recover programs and files from it?
Great! All you need to do is run Zinstall Migration Kit Pro on the computer, and it will recover everything from the drive, even programs.
Get the software here.

Video tutorial – how to recover programs, settings and files from a dead computer

Connecting the old hard drive to the new computer

The first step in rescuing programs and data from an old hard drive is to connect that drive to the new computer. There are several ways to do this:

You can use a USB hard drive enclosure, which is a special “box”-like device that you slide the old drive into. The enclosure then connects to the new computer via a simple USB.
You can also use a USB hard drive adapter, which is a cable-like device, connecting to the hard drive on one end and to a USB in the new computer on the other.
If the new computer is a desktop, you can also connect the old drive as a secondary internal drive, just as the one already in the new computer.

Once the old drive is connected to the new computer, in any of the ways above, you should be able to view the old files. At that point, you can proceed to the recovery stage.

Recovering your files, settings, profile and programs from the hard drive

At this stage, you can access the old files on the new computer. This already a big step forward! You can already see your old files, and even manually copy them to the new PC. This type of manual recovery is not the easiest job to do, but it will at least get you your files back.

Fortunately, there are tools to do an automatic recovery, completely and without too much hassle. The one we’ll use – called Zinstall Migration Kit Pro – will even recover your programs, and of course emails, personalization, settings, documents and all the rest. Plus, it’s automatic and you won’t have to hunt everything down manually. Let’s see how to do it.

How to copy programs and files from old hard drive to new PC

Now that you have the old drive connected, all you need to do is run the recovery software:

- On the new computer, run Zinstall Migration Kit Pro (you can get it here: Zinstall Migration Kit Pro)
- It will automatically detect the old drive. Confirm the selection, and press Next.

If you want to only recover some of the programs, or some of the files, use the Advanced menu to select which ones you want. If you want to just recover everything, simply click Next to continue.
You will be presented with a quick summary of what’s about to be recovery – press “Go” to start the process.

That’s it – once the recovery process is complete, you’ll have your apps and files rescued from the broken computer to the new one!

Ready to transfer programs and files from the old hard drive?

Get the recovery software here