@elbanditoroso You are better off making copies (or better yet, backups) of all your persoanl files – usually held in your Downloads and/or Documents (or Music, or whatever) directories.
Oh, been there and done that. Unless one is very meticulous and have very good records, there are always files from years back you hardly used that seemed to be forgotten at the time of the move.
But for all your programs – reinstall from download or from CD. It’s much cleaner; you’re not bringing over trash, and you are assured of having the latest versions.
Yeah, I have gone from scratch, from the chipset drivers, video, LAN, etc. all the way back. With many programs you have no choice but to reinstall because copying doesn’t copy the .ini files so there is always an error or the program doesn’t work at all. Trouble is, if you have an older program that is useful, or one you no longer have the disc to, then you are screwed if you can’t clone it. Depending of the size of the file, it can take a long time to load once you save it off one computer to paste it in the new. Last time I had to do it in that manner to put all the system files (chipset, video, etc.) in, the OS, all the aftermarket programs and gatekeepers, it took about 3–4 days and that was putting hours in at a setting.
@jerv Personally, I prefer to do a clean install of the OS and reinstall the applications I use anyways, then plug my old drive in as a secondary drive to copy documents over.
On a laptop I found that to work fairly well, I would just stick the old drive into a USB connected enclosure, and treat it as additional storage to pull files off and hold junk I don’t use every day, like setup files. Still, some programs you can’t copy/cut and paste to the new drive because they for some reason, don’t bring all the hidden files, or .ini files with them. I do have to say, depending on where you go online, you are adware and popup free for a time; but they always seem to come back, not all, but some always slip by the gatekeepers.