Hi, I have an old HP Notebook - 14-an018au, which has 4gb ddr3 ram and runs windows 10 on a 10 ish year old 1tb harddrive. This is a secondary computer, but it has a lot of old files from when I was like 13 years old that I want to backup, but I also have like 300gb of space taken up on the harddrive. So things like my chrome history, app settings, and unique files I would want to keep, but the large apps themselves I don’t want to keep. Also this computer is impossible to work on with its current operating system, so something which is a quick solution please.

And also, what distributions would you recommend that would a) work on this old computer and b) might be kind of fun to mess around with, as a secondary device

Anyway thanks

  • stupid_asshole69 [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    14 hours ago

    You Will Probably Need To Spend Money

    Get an external 2.5” sata usb enclosure. It costs about $10. here’s one on amazon

    Get a 2.5” sata ssd. 512gb is about $20 here’s a sata ssd on amazon

    Optional, but recommended: get a pair of 8gb sticks of ddr pc3 12800 laptop ram, it’s about $20. here’s a 16gb kit on amazon

    Turn the computer on, let it boot all the way up, turn off fast startup and bitlocker if they’re on and then restart, let it boot all the way up then shut it down using start -> power -> shutdown and let it power off normally. Doing this makes sure the computers disk is in a safe state to be read later.

    Take out the old hard drive, put it in the enclosure, install the ssd and if you got it, the ram.

    Now your old files are in the enclosure.

    Install whatever you like onto the laptop. I always recommend Debian. It will run perfectly fine on your computer especially with the ssd and ram.

    Now plug up your drive and make copies of your files. They’re all on the old drive in the enclosure and the drive could die at any time so do this as soon as you can.

    The benefit of this approach is that it doesn’t rely on the speed of the computer or old operating system, preserves everything so you don’t lose something you didn’t remember to grab and minimizes the possibility of error.

    You also have the option of just plugging the old drive into the computer when you do it this way.