Getting new rig: best way to transfer data?

[LetalisK]

I'm getting a new PC soon, but I'm dreading the thought of transferring all the data. Last time I upgraded was many years ago and I remember it being an annoyance then, but now I have a terrabyte of music, movies, games, random ass yet important documents, website bookmarks, etc that I'll need to transfer and I'm absolutely dreading it. Have things gotten better in the over half a decade since I bought my current PC? What's the least painful way to go about this? If it makes a difference, I'll be going from Windows 7 to Windows 10(is it possible to run both at the same time with the old basically being an external drive so I don't have to transfer anything?).

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

You can keep all that stuff on the external. As long as there are no programs running off it, should be fine. Heck, even smaller programs can run off the external without any serious issue, but just be wary about the drive paths.

I just did a massive migration last night, after one of my drives gave up and died. I have partitions pretty much how you describe:
Music / Movies / Photos / Images / Docs. Sized as and how I need. You can use a hard disk caddy or something, try to go for fastest connections where possible (SATA or eSATA, USB 3.0, etc). With a hard disk external case, you can convert your internal hard disk to an external and just stick it on whatever computer you want, or even a server/router type situation so any computer in the house can access it.

In the last half decade, things haven't changed all that much, unless of course you want to go wireless, of which there are better options available now (screw putting your stuff on the cloud though, I wouldn't trust it).

 

[MercurySteam]

Basically all the advice you need has already been said. If you hook your old drive up to your new PC via SATA you can transfer stuff across pretty quickly. Of course if you want to keep using the old drive just hook up the drive and delete the old Windows and program folders (as they won't work anymore) to free up space.