I just got myself a W10 laptop. I also have a w10 tower and a vista tower. I also have a perfectly good hdd with w8.1 which contains a full backup of the vista pc, and is currently installed in the aforementioned new laptop.

I'm trying to figure the best use of the hardware.

w10 tower =1 tb-used for TV/dvr almost exclusively
w8 hdd 500gb was unused for 3 years currently in new laptop
vista tower 320gb- backed up on the w8 disk
w10 hdd 320gb practically unused (came with this lenovo thinkpad t420)

Ideally I want to get w10 on the 500gb drive, and have the 320 drive for backup, and be able to restore the vista data onto the w10 laptop.

Not sure if this makes any sense. Thoughts appreciated.

Unless there are good reasons to stick with Vista why not put the second Hdd in the old VISTA TOWER and use a system like FREENAS to make it into a backup machine. (this can be installed an booted from a USB stick).

Thanks for this.

Questions:

1 What would be good reasons to keep Vista? I don't think I have anything critical that won't transfer to w8 or w10 (or w7 - forgot about another dead laptop with a good w7/250gb hdd.)

2 Are you saying replace the Vista drive, or add the spare hdd(s) to the tower?

3 I guess I want to consolidate all the data from 4 disks with 4 OS onto one - ideally W10 on the 500gb hdd - is it possible to move the OS between disks?

4 Can I "restore" the vista backup that is on the W8 disk, onto the W10 disk without zapping what is already on the 10? Never done a restore before! It's just data right , not the vista OS as well?

5 The freenas doesn't require a windows OS on the disk - that's what the USB install/ boot is about - right? So I would copy any data to the w10 & reformat the vista and maybe the 7&8 drive/s, losing the OS, for max backup capacity? Then backup the 10 onto the blank disk/s.

Thanks again. Sorry if I'm way off!

1. Keep it simple
2. There is no point in backing up old Operating Systems
3. Copy the USER directory and DOCUMENTS from each system you have and make a backup.
4.Migrate to one system.

I'll have a play around this weekend. Thanks

I have a 8-9 year old 13" netbook which originally came with XP, later converted to W7 - which ran very nicely with it even though it's a 1GHz Atom. I converted it to Mint as an exercise and it's been inactive now for over a year.

However, having reluctantly and for about the third time made my desktop into W10 I found I had to install a hack of Windows Media Centre to continue recording TV - then I discovered that W10 has discarded the facility to convert the media centre recordings from .wtv to .DVR-MS files, a halfway house to editing them (ie., getting rid of the commercials) in .mpg.

I tried using AnyVideoConverter, which worked well, if slowly, on W10until some recent update but now it pumps up the CPU (an i7 quad core) to a frenzy and after a couple of minutes this shuts the computer down.

So I reconverted the netbook "back" to W7 which now enabled me to use the built-in .wtv - .DVR-MS converter and here's the weird thing: it does the conversion in a fraction of the time of AVC and doesn't even tax the CPU though it's a fraction of the speed of the desktop!

So my "old" netbook is back in regular use as a single-program device (although I might have to put Microsoft Money onto it if W10 decides to disallow that too!) The only downside is that it has to be plugged in as its battery is shot.

The moral of the story is don't scrap a working but old computer if it runs essential programs that Micro$oft in their "wisdom" have decided you are not allowed to.

A new battery should not be too expensive. You'll find that with a new battery the performance improves also, even when 'plugged in'..

Dont forget:

HANDBRAKE (conversion)

VLC (Player)

and KODI (Media Player) of course..

You may also want to extract license keys