I think it's mostly that I'm not familiar with the language.Ģ. I have questions about what you have mentioned.

You're correct in your 2nd idea of transferring the data. Also, moving your document folders to the non-system drive makes it easy to use from a human perspective), install the laptop drives, take ownership of the files on it, transfer the necessary data, and if you require help with transferring operating system or program settings, post back with specifics. My recommendation is this: build your desktop to your liking (I highly recommend partitioning the drive to isolate data from the operating system. In fact, I would not be surprised if you could directly connect your laptop hard drives into your new desktop, take ownership of the files, and then transfer what is needed to your new drives. However, if you are speaking strictly about your data, then we are in a much better place. The second problem is that the operating system is highly configured for your hardware, and a direct transfer from one computer to another would almost certainly break the installation. The first problem is that the operating system on your laptop is almost surely an OEM copy, which cannot be legitimately transferred to another computer. I hate to be the pessimist, but I doubt this would work. In my mind, this is the process of taking an entire drive, and making a file out of its contents, so that it can be put onto another drive, with EVERYTHING intact, including OS, applications, and data. Click to expand.I'm confused by what you mean by 'cloning'.

64 bit hard drive