Transfer Win 7 Image to a New Win 10 Laptop

Ron, welcome to these user forums.

It may be possible to do what you are asking, i.e. to transfer your Windows 7 OS from your old Toshiba laptop to the new Dell laptop, however you will face several challenges in doing so, which will also require the use of Acronis Universal Restore.

I personally would recommend getting a spare internal disk drive (HDD or SSD) for the Dell laptop and working with that, not the supplied Windows 10 drive provided with the laptop - this will give you an 'out' in the event that you cannot get this working.

There are a number of requirements that you need to understand and satisfy to get this to work.  

Both systems need to be able to boot in the same mode, i.e. if your Toshiba laptop uses Legacy BIOS and MBR formatting for the drive, then the Dell needs to be able to support the same, so if it comes defaulted to UEFI with Secure Boot, then you need to be able to change this to use Legacy / CSM and turn off Secure Boot.

Next, the drive controller type used in both laptops should match, i.e. if the Toshiba uses AHCI for SATA, then the Dell should do the same - some systems are being provided defaulting to RAID even though only one drive is installed.

If you are not going to attempt this with a spare drive in the Dell, then make a full disk & partitions backup of the supplied Dell HDD before making any changes, plus make notes or screen shots of the BIOS settings before changing that too.

The process in brief terms does not involve using cloning because you need to restore your backup image from the Toshiba to different hardware.

The steps are: First make a full disks & partitions backup of the Toshiba drive to an external drive, including all hidden partitions.

Second make the Acronis bootable Rescue Media on either CD/DVD or USB memory stick (1GB minimum size - 32GB max size).  Test this to ensure that you can boot both machines using it, and do so in the same boot mode, i.e. Legacy for both machines.  
Make the Acronis Universal Restore media on CD/DVD or USB memory stick.  Add any specific Chipset and Drive controller device drivers that may be needed for the Dell system.

Boot the Dell laptop from the Rescue Media with the external backup drive connected.  Check that you can see all drives, i.e. the Dell internal and backup drive.  Restore the Toshiba backup image to the Dell internal drive..  When complete, Shutdown, eject the Rescue Media and disconnect the backup drive.

Boot the Dell laptop from the Acronis Universal Restore media and select the restored Windows 7 OS to be prepared by the utility, this will try to set the device drivers to generic ones that Windows provides, or can be automatically detected and installed when Windows boots.  If any additional device drivers are required, AUR will prompt you for these.  Note: if needed you can repeat this step after adding more drivers.

Shutdown, remove the AUR media and attempt to boot Windows 7 on the Dell to see if any errors are given.

Thanks for the quick response!  I can't afford to buy a separate HD for the Dell, so I'm going to have to be extra careful.  I was hoping it wouldn't be this involved (I seem to remember being able to transfer images between machines in the past).  

I really appreciate your help and will let you know how it turns out.

Agree with Steve.  You really don't want to be doing this on your one and only drive from Dell.  1) the OS and license key is tied to the system with windows 10 being installed by default.  You won't be gettinga Windows license key from Dell with it.  2) the Toshiba OS license, if it is an OEM license will not activate on the Dell if/when you get the OS transferred and running.  3) At a minimum, backup the new Dell drive in it's entirety before you do anythign to it... use Acronis offline recovery media so you if things go south, you have that image to restore to.  4) not sure of the new system drive that is coming with it, but if you ordered it with an NVME PCIE hard drive, that's going to make it difficult to transfer your old legacy OS in ACHCI mode (hopefully not IDE) to this newer technology, which comes from the OEM in with a SATA RAID mode (even for a  1 disk setup). 

The good thing with Dells is that they usually support legacy/CSM and UEFI booting and can be configured for either or both and the F12 onetime boot menu makes it easy to boot recovery media in the correct manner.

Ultimately, I'd pay the $60 for an external 1TB hard drive and take an image of the Dell before doing ANYTHING, if you don't have space somewhere else already to put the image.  Without at least a factory image taken with Acronis, you're asking for trouble in the event you wipe everything off that disk and your old image doesn't restore for some reason. 

I agree that it is a high risk stratery if you do not have a backup image to restore the orignal OS to the Dell.

I would also create a system restore USB stick for the Dell - you will probably need a 16gig USB stick to do this. Go for USB 3 as it will be much faster.

Ian

Hi Guys,

I can't thank all of you enough for the help.  I've been on Amazon, and it appears Steve and Bobbo are correct.  I can get a new 1 TB internal drive for the Dell for ~$56.  Although I'm on a fixed income, I think I can swing that; I didn't realize they were that inexpensive.  I admit I'm a NOOB, but I'd find it hard to believe (but I've been wrong before) that a $600 Dell laptop would be outfitted with RAID capability.  The drive I was looking at on Amazon is SATA.  I'm trying to get into the Dell site to get the exact specs for the laptop but they want the service tag # and I don't have the machine yet (it's coming this Thursday).  Thanks again for all of your help - hopefully I'll be able to follow the steps and not come back begging for help!

Ron, we may be at cross purposes. We are suggesting a USB HDD to be used to store a full Acronis HDD image of the new Dell PC, not a new internal HDD. The USB HDD should (preferably) be USB 3 rather than USB 2.

I do not know the specifications of the Dell you have on order. My understanding is that optimal performance with SSD (solid state drive) the internal drive is set to Raid in Bios/UEFI rather than AHCI used for mechanical HDD. Dell may use Raid despite the system having an HDD rather than SSD. I will depend on the chiset used. This does not mean that you can have a raid array; just that the chipset supports raid so that SSD (particularly M2 SSD) operate optimally. This area is all ver confusing and I do not fully understand it myself. My Dell Inspiron 13 7000 has a SATA SSD, never ckecked the setings to see if it is set as AHCI or Raid - just checked it appears to be AHCI.

Ian

Ron, what model Dell did you pick up and what type/size of hard drive? For a backup drive (one you can take system images to for safekeeping and recovering those images to the existing internal hard drive), something like this USB 3.0 external would be be good:

1TB WD Black my passport USB 3.0 - $49.00

Alternatively, depending on what comes with the Dell and the size of that drive (or the size of the amount of data you plan to put on it, if came with an SSD drive, an SSD replacement to swap back and forth for testing without messing with the original would be to go with another internal SSD drive).  Or, even if your system didn't come with an SSD, you could put a new SSD in it and use the one that came with the Dell as extra storage.  

Let us know what your Dell came with (size of hard drive and if it is a spinning drive or SSD).  If it's capable of taking an SSD (and doesn't have one), going with a 250Gb Samsung EVO 850 for $80 could be a way to supercharge the performance.  Or for a bit of a drop in performance, but still leaps and bounds beyond a spinning drive, a PNY CS1311 240Gb for $60.

And I know you're on a fixed income, but if you do buy an internal SSD and want an easy way to use the old internal drive as external storage, a simple SATA to USB 3.0 adatper for $10 can be very useful! 

There are economical options out there for both spinning drives (external and internal) as well as SSD's.  The difference with going with SSD is you get MUCH better performance with an SSD, but less capacity ...at the same price point...  that you can get with a spinning drive with more capacity, but reduced performance.  

You guys are awesome!  I've had the Toshiba laptop for ~10 years and love it.  I've replaced the HD, the screen, the keyboard, numerous batteries and power supplies, but - I came back from travel a while ago and somehow while I was gone the case developed a crack at the top right corner.  My step son says he has no idea how it happened.  Anyway, the situation is now that if I try to close the lid I lose the video, and I'm afraid I'll end up cracking the motherboard.  I'm actually amazed that I've been able to cobble it along.  The Tosiba has a 750 GB rotational drive, with ~425 GB used space.

The new Dell has a 1 TB rotational drive.  I ordered it from Wally World;  I know, kinda like buying a John Deere tractor at Home Depot.  The model number is i5559-3347SLV.  I tried finding it on the Dell website, but they want the service tag number; and since it hasn't been delivered yet I can't provide it.  I've also bought a new 1 TB internal HD for the Dell from Amazon as Steve Smith suggested, and will use that in the new machine to try to get it going without wiping out the Win 10.

I also have a 1 TB external HD that I've had for years that I use for my backups.  Believe me, I'd love to have a SSD, but the original point of the exercise was to move the Win 7 image from the Toshiba to the Dell - and what I have on the Toshiba won't fit (at least not economocally and allow for some growth).  I looked at the SATA to USB adapter you provided the link for, and it's a great idea.  I have one that's in a case for a standard hard drive, but I haven't used that one in years.  

Thanks again.  I'll keep you appraised of how it goes.  Happy Holidays!

Ron, thanks for the update, we wish you luck with the project when you get all the parts together.

I did a search of the model number and came up witj Dell 15.6" Inspiron 15 5000. No SSD, just 1TB HDD as indicated above.

Ian

This is turning out to be more of a challenge than I thought.  If I leave win 10 on the Dell, do you think I could clone the Toshiba HD onto my external HD, plug it into a USB port on the Dell and be able to access my programs that way?   Probably not the most elegant solution, but would it work?  

Ron, sorry but Microsoft does not permit the booting of Windows from external / USB drives, which would be required to access your programs from the external drive.  Just having those programs on an external drive connected to Windows booting from a different drive would not work.  Most programs write information to the Windows Registry or have references within Windows files that would be missing for the programs on the external drive.

My thought wasn't to boot windows from it - I just wanted to connect it to the USB port on the Dell and run programs from it.  I haven'the tried it yet; the spare HD is installed, and the Win 10 drive is in esd wrap.

Ron, you would only be able to run any programs from the external USB drive if those programs are totally standalone and don't need to be installed.