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Windows 7 Pro to Windows 8.1

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I really am a newb at this so please bear with me.

My work pc (win 7 pro) has has many issues with it recently and i have bought a new windows 8.1 pc to transfer everything over, including, hopefully all my applications/software etc so I dont have to install them again.
However Im at a loss at to which tools I should be using. I did an 'Entire PC' backup but even with the videos Im not sure what I need on my windows 8.1 to be able to restore my complete backup.
On another note, I did a backup yesterday which was 226gb, and then did another one last night but that was only 1.3gb ? Im not sure which to restore ??

Any help would be most appreciated. Many thanks Phil

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Hello Phil,

if you created an entire PC backup, it contains all data which was on your internal disks including operating system and installed software. 

You should be aware that if you restore this backup in disk mode onto the new machine, all data on the new disk will be overwritten with data from backup. As a result you will have again Windows 7 operating system. Applications can be restored only along with the operating system.

Alternatively you can restore files and folders only. In this case you will have on the new machine Windows 8.1 operating system with your files and folders from old machine but without old applications. You will have to install them anew.

As for backup files, i suppose you've create one full and one differential or incremental backup. In this case you can restore either of them. This article explains why these files have different size.

Thank you.