Avoiding permission errors when replacing computer

Hi,

Many times in the past when I buy a new computer, I backup the hard drive of the one I am getting rid of to an external drive, I then try to access from the new computer and I get permission errors.

I'm about to replace my computer yet again and I was wondering the best way to do this to avoid any issues.

This is the first time I am doing it between 2 W8.1 computers and wondering since I login to both with my microsoft account, if the issues will still be there.

Just looking for suggestions before I start the backup to hopefully eliminate any issues before they arise. Also, free backup software would help too. I usually use free version of Macrium but it has become a lot more limited.

Thanks.

Just log in with your Microsoft Live account and it should pull your Roaming Profile over to the new computer. Then you just need to reinstall all programs that you had on the other one. As for a backup. Unless they are the same model, same hardware. You will run into issues when trying to use a backup image from a different manufacturer, model, hardware. Unless you are using say a Volume license image that already has a preset software in the image.

EaseUS Todo workstation is probably one of the better hard drive imaging software out there.

I just did this and all my old backups and external drives ended up being owned by "Unknown User {S.....}" presumably as the SID didn't match even though the user id and machine name were the same and both were 8.1.

I didn't have any issues changing the ownership though.