cloning the HDD with a 128 GB memory stick? and other Qs

[onlycw]

What's up, everybody?

• would a large memory stick be useful for copying data onto a SSD?

• I have a 2009 PC. It used to be pretty good back then - Core 2 Duo CPU, NVidia 9600 graphics card

1. May I just use the case and PS and put in a new MOBO etc.?
2. Is there a market for such old PCs? Hate to junk perfectly good computers - remember the 386 I had paid $ 200 for a RAM upgrade of 2 x 4 MB for It ran a good DOS program and never let me down... ** Maybe someone wanting to surf the web will pay 900 B?
3. My Dad is 80. He bought a new PC and I'm disgusted with sales people selling junk MOBOs (2 GB RAM in, only 2 slots and a RAM size limit of, forgot 2 GB?) ** A Thai friend had 2 GB installed. I gave her 4 x 2 GB and now her PC is much faster. Well, I would like a PC that can be customized and upgraded.

Cheers!

[NeverSure]

What operating system do you have?

If you are going change computers, you probably can't just use your existing installation on the new one. You probably want to backup all of your important files and do a complete new OS installation.

There is a way to clone your hard disk and then copy it to another disk such as a SSD. That would work if you only wanted to change to SSD.

There is also a pretty sophisticated and complicated way to sysprep that drive so that it can go into another computer. This is how mass manufactures use one installation with their bloatware and push it to thousands of computers at the same time. I always have a sysprepped installation of W7 that includes Office, Flash, etc. etc. plus my settings that I can install as an image to any computer in about 10 minutes, but you don't want to go up the steep learning curve for just one installation.

Sysprep along with a couple of other utilities (which are found on an original installation disk) strips your installation of it unique identifiers such as the SSID etc. and lets that rebuild by itself upon first boot.

So if all you want is a SSD then yes you can image your drive to something that has enough room for it, and then use that image to "recover" to the SSD.

If you want essentially a new computer even in the old case, then new install and restore backed up files and folders.

I can't tell you the value of your computer.

Even if you have just two ram slots, I suspect you could stick a couple of 4 gig sticks in it, perhaps adjust something in the bios, and assuming you have a 64 bit OS, see 8 gig of ram. If you have a 32 bit OS you'll never quite see or use even 4 gig, but that might be enough for normal use.