xp to windows 7

[paul0660]

A good friend of mine took my advice and got a new box, The old one is about 2005 vintage, AMD, XP, 80 gig PATA hd, which storage was adequate for her.

Her new one is a nuovo, or something like that. 1 TB SATA hd, windows 7 home premium.

I will use xp until they tear it out of my hands, probably, and I have these questions:

What is the deal with email? She has been using OE, can all those addys and messages be transferred to W7? Does she need Outlook?

Second, a single TB hd seems stupid for her situation. She does have important docs etc. that need to be backed up. Should I put another hd in there and do a raid 5 thing? That might need to be 1 tb to match hers, which is unnecessary. I have some smaller drives that would back up her important stuff.

Like they say......


thoughts?

[socalblue]

Windows 7 comes with some solid migration tools (User State Migration Tool (USMT) to move data, apps & email to a new system.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd671583

Better to get a cloud based backup from a reputable source than mirroring drives for a home PC. A fire/flood, etc could still destroy all the data. The key is to get important info off site.

[paul0660]

Thank you socal. Is there an email program integrated with windows 7?

[Peter.Steele]

Thank you socal. Is there an email program integrated with windows 7?

Windows Mail. It's Outlook Express for a new generation, with a different name to separate it in market segment from Outlook, which is part of MS Office.

[gschoelles]

Keep the terabyte drive and get a Carbonite subscription.

[iamgbot]

Omg, outlook express is junk! She would like windows mail better. But I'd rather go with something like Thunderbird. Just tell her to separate her important files so that she may back them up. And you can google how to extract her email data for either email program, then migrate. I don't understand why you would want to raid anything. What's wrong with going from 80gb to 1tb? Just partition so that she may use as separate storage. You could even back up her entire old drive on a 80gb partion just incase she forgets to back something up. I tell my customers who think everything needs to be backed up, "if you haven't used or accessed it in 6 months, you'll probably never need it". Cause some people become data hoarders.

[high_revs]

i can't recall if OE also utilizes pst files like outlook (just copy over and use windows mail to import). thunderbird, you just have to backup a folder where all the emails are and restoration is as easy as copying back the folder.

there are different strategies for backup. first i'd suggest utilizing a good backup program to recognize and only backup updated files. better than dragging and dropping all the time and that can take forever depending on amount of volume.

i'd back it up to an external drive also. if worried about it being lost/stolen/place burnt down, put it in a safe (fireproof to a certain time/degree if you can). you can also just make dvd/blu-ray backups of the data and put them in offline storage (bank safety deposit box?).

you can go the cloud route too. that was discussed not long ago. encrypt your data though prior to uploading.

the only thing about data is are you willing to be in a position where you need it but don't have it, or have it but don't/might not need it? the latter cost more money because you are keeping more data and you might need.

anything financial, i'll keep forever. but i've been in situations i've not touched the file in a while, deleted it, and scrambling later where to find it (just manuals and what not). data retention depends on the type of data.