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How to move User data, reinstalling or replacing a PC?

Tags: Microsoft, Windows

In our Helpdesks we use a lot of time securing data on peoples PC’s when PC is reinstalled or replaced and also setting up things making the user comfortable..

We spend much time moving stuff over and setting up mail etc again…
Also, it is really annoying that we we get many complaints about missing Browser favorites cached (forgotten) homepage passwords etc.

We do not currently use OneDrive due to the nature of our data (GOV).

I see there are different tools out there that claims to do this but as some are really pricey and testing is time consuming I hope for some advice?

Perhaps a bit in-depth on why you like this or that tool?

Topic

Re: user data

In reply to How to move User data, reinstalling or replacing a PC?

That’s difficult, since you have no control over where the users store their data (pictures of their cats, the phone numbers of their friends, their Facebook password or the administration of their baseball club) on the company PC. And if you don’t know that, you can’t copy it.

All you can do: make a list of data you copy. Like their My Documents and their Appdata>Roaming folders. Data that’s not on that list is their own responsibility to backup and restore.

How did you organise the backup and restore of their My Documents and such in case of hardware failure? You wouldn’t want company data to get lost, would you?

Reply To: How to move User data, reinstalling or replacing a PC?

In reply to How to move User data, reinstalling or replacing a PC?

Go to C:\Users\X (since X is the name of the user profile)
Copy the folders inside X folder to an External Drive.
Connect the External Drive to the new PC and Copy & Paste X folder wherever you want.

Several tools are available migrating user data

In reply to How to move User data, reinstalling or replacing a PC?

There are several:

ForensIT User Profile Wizard and FABs backup I tried and both had shortcomings. Both in handling, licensing etc.
Also one would do some things, the other some other things. But not all.
Other programs were ditched simply due to hilarious costs.

We ended up using a suite from Ehlertech containing two major tools:
1. USMTGUI is a local migration tool that lets you backup a user profile locally to a temp folder or a USB drive.

2. User Profile Central is a remote management console that lets you backup user profiles from any domain PC on your LAN and saves the backup on a network share. We use UPC daily, picking up the existing profile for the users new PC when replacing, prior to them picking it up 🙂

Both programs grabs the profile(s), including all data, recent files list, Explorer quick links, theme, mail settings, browser favorites from Edge, Chrome and Firefox (even cached passwords but only from Chrome and FF)
Both programs can also scan the entirety of the drive for known document types if needed (on messy systems).

ALSO:
USMTGUI migrates to Azure user profiles and has a disaster recovery function for non bootable systems.
Another unique feature with both programs is licensing as the corporate editions are unlimited in number of migrations.

Really is a no-hassle very complete software package and saves us a bunch of time.

User profile Central vendor

In reply to Several tools are available migrating user data

Thanks dcunnings

I gather User Profile Central is this https://ehlertech.com/upc/ ?

So, you install the console on a server or?

UPC runs from a (number of) standard PCs

In reply to User profile Central vendor

Hi Larry

UPC can be installed on any number of technicians PCs, provieded they have access to the computers on the LAN they need to migrate profiles from

Point UPC on all to the same network storage location and all techs will have access to all the backups.

Simple and straight forward usage as you simply select the wanted PC in the indexed list, select the user(s) you want to backup and click Run 🙂

Reply To: How to move User data, reinstalling or replacing a PC?

In reply to UPC runs from a (number of) standard PCs

I can only concur on using User Profile Central (UPC)
and USMTGUI.

Both products do utilize Microsofts officially approved migration tool USMT and therefore is the reference.

[Author]

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