data transfer - moved from Vista

[bigfeet]

This may be elementary to some, but not to me. I need to know the process involved transfering data from an old hard drive to the new one. Thank you

[Miz]

Transferring data - documents, pictures, music, etc. - is a matter of copying and pasting. The details depend on how you will have the two drives accessing each other.

You can network the two computers,

...or...

You can burn the data onto CD or DVD (depending on what kind of burner you have), then copy the files from the disk onto the new drive,

...or...

you can put the old drive into the new computer as a slave drive. The ease of this one depends on whether both old and new hard drive use the same type of connection. Older drives are probaly IDE and newer drives are SATA. Each uses a different kind of connection although adapters can be purchased so an IDE drive can be used in a SATA system.

You cannot move installed programs from one to the other. Programs will have to be reinstalled on the new computer.

[bigfeet]

The old pc is dead, probably the power unit, so the later of the three suggestions would be the only way, it seems. W/o troubling you any further, is there a resource I could get to help me do this? And thank you for your help!

[Miz]

Since I not an expert on hardware, I've moved your thread to the Hardware forum where you can get the skilled help you need to move the old hard drive to the new system.