Backups. Oh lordy, have I have been doing backups.

I have one PC that has a cloud backup account -- the service I use permits unlimited backup storage per PC. I'm cheap, so only that PC has the cloud backup account.

The device was running Windows 10, which is going end of support in October 2025. The primary storage drive has been running for seven years nearly continuously...and hard drives tend to fail after five years. Yikes.

There is a way to upgrade the PC to Windows 11 anyway, skipping compatibility checks. That worked. I added more SSD storage, and that worked. I copied all the data from the seven year old HDD, and while that took a long time, that worked. I removed the old HDD, re-labeled the appropriate SSD to have the old drive letter, and that worked too.

So this was tedious, took a lot of careful research and planning, and was worth it. Because a few minutes ago I concluded all functional testing, and everything works the way it's supposed to.

If you have important files, back them up.