If you are receiving a replacement laptop here are some things you will want to do BEFORE saying goodbye to your old computer.

Briefly mentioning the obvious – make sure your documents and data are saved in a sensible & safe location. You should be doing that already, right!?
Something you can try even before you get a new computer, is to log in into another university computer, say in a general access PC lab. If you can find all the documents and data you expect that’s a good sign. Your new laptop is going to be a lot like that as far as what’s installed and set up for you to use. 

OneDrive users please make sure everything has sync’d! And you have the green “Your files are synced” icon in the OneDrive desktop app.
You can browse your entire OneDrive collection at https://westernsydneyedu-my.sharepoint.com/, look under “My files”.

Onto the more interesting things…

1. Make a list of the software and tools you have added to the machine
   
   One quick way is to run through all the Apps listed under “Windows Start” menu (bottom right), and write down which of these you may want to re-install on the new computer. There’s a chance some apps you only used a few times and have never thought about again. But there will be others you use on a regular basis. For those figure out where you got them from? Were they downloaded from the Internet? Did they come from the university in some way? Were they tricky to setup and get working?
   
   Think if there are any scientific tools you run from a Command Shell. You may have installed bare executables to help you process or analyse data either standalone or as a step in a R/Python pipeline. For example: cutadapt, basespace, blastn, s3 client, ..etc. Again try to get a list together.
   
   
2. Backup config for tools used to access remote data storage & Linux servers
   
   If you use the Linux storage servers and HPC environments, like hie-general2 or hie-storage or NCI, save the configuration from the applications you use to access those servers. The popular ones are –
   
   FileZilla – export the Sites and other Settings. See https://filezillapro.com/docs/v3/advanced/export-configuration-settings-filezilla-pro/
   WinSCP – export configuration. See https://winscp.net/eng/docs/config
   MobaXterm – export the Session configuration. See https://blog.mobatek.net/post/mobaxterm-restore-settings/
   PuTTY – list of Sessions could be in a simple .ini file or could be in the Windows registry. Depends which version of PuTTY you installed. Sorry, you will need to do some searching.
   
   You may not be using all of these, or you may be using different remote access and data transfer apps.  See if you can Export or save the Session information to a file you can Import later on. If you can’t that’s ok, try to make a list of the sites/sessions or take some screenshots so you have a reference for setting things up on the new computer.
   
   
3. Backup your SSH Keys << this one is important!
   
   If you use any of the tools above (FileZilla, MobaXterm, PuTTY) with SSH key rather than passwords, then also backup those SSH keys.
    
   In Windows the keys are usually stored in C:\Users\[login]\.ssh\ folder.
   
   Simplest thing is to make a zip copy of that .ssh folder and keep it on OneDrive.
   This makes things a bit more straight forward when it comes to reconnecting to services from your new computer.
   
   If you don’t save your current keys, you’ll need to make new keys and that’s going to delay you regaining access to those resources.
   
   
4. Check your stats, coding & data science toolkits
   
   RStudio – make sure your projects are saved to OneDrive or otherwise backed up off the laptop.
   Note the R version you are currently using, in case you need to go back to it. It’s also a good idea to grab a list of the existing R packages you have installed. In R run installed.packages() and copy and paste the list to a safe place.
   On your new computer be prepared that the first time you run your R projects, it will take extra time to install the libraries and packages your code needs.
   
   SPSS, STATA, SAS, MATLAB  – check where your projects or scripts are saved (.sav, .do, .sas7bdat, .m files). Is there any licensing config you need to keep?
   
   Python and conda environments installed on your laptop. Note python environments you are using on the HIE Linux servers, accessed through a remote shell sessions (point 2 above) won’t change when you get a new laptop. The python set ups are normally fairly easy to rebuild, but it may be useful to grab the current setup before it goes away.
   
   pip freeze > requirements.txt
conda env export > environment.yml

   Git/github/gitlab – check where your git keys and .gitconfig are stored and make sure you have a copy. Also please make sure you have done a final commit to git and confirmed your project repository is looking intact.
   
   JupyterLab Notebooks – check C:\Users\[login]\Documents\Jupyter
   
   Microsoft VS Code – save the config and extensions, if you’re lucky this may be stored in your roaming user profile. But it is also good idea to make a copy yourself. See https://superuser.com/questions/1080682/how-do-i-back-up-my-vs-code-settings-and-list-of-installed-extensions
   
   Any specialist analytics tools – ImageJ, FiJi, Imaris, CLC Genomics Workbench, Genious Prime, etc. At a minimum try and make a list.
   
   
5. Miscellaneous
   
   Web Browsers – Export the config from your browsers (Edge, Chrome, Brave, Opera, etc.). It’s a bit different for each so you’ll need to check this one yourself. Think about what you need to keep eg. bookmarks, saved passwords, extensions, browser history. With Chrome and Edge you can sync browser settings between multiple devices. You can search for info on this yourself eg. “google chrome browser profile sync”
   
   Bibliographic Tools & Reference Managers – such as Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote. You’re going to need to do some googling! For example https://support.clarivate.com/Endnote/s/article/EndNote-Moving-backing-up-or-transferring-libraries-to-another-computer
   
   Sublime Text, Notepad++ – save any custom configuration and/or additional packages, google this one.
   
   LaTeX authoring tools. For example for MiKTeX – Check C:\Users\[login]\AppData\Local\MiKTeX\
   Or even better switch to using a cloud-based LaTeX authoring platform like Overleaf.com, the university has a subscription for the Pro version if you require it.
   
   Random folders on C:\  – check any folders you’ve created on your C:\ that may not be backed up. It’s quite easy to start using a C:\Data\ or C:\Stuff\ folder and forgot this isn’t being backed up.
   
   Additional Internal Disks – Check if your laptop was setup with a second disk, perhaps a D:\? It’s unlikely to have been backed up without you doing something explicit about it. External plug-in hard drives should be fine.
   
   Local Virtual Machines. If you use local VM’s or other operating systems on your laptop, check you have backed up the config for that and/or have images of the VM’s. eg. Oracle VirtualBox, VMWare Workstation, docker containers, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), Cygwin environments. If you are dual-booting, i assume you are a super-smart user and don’t need my help!
   
   The tips here were written with Windows laptops in mind, but the principles apply to MacOS and Linux.
   
   I’ve definitely not thought of everything, if you have additional items for this list please let me know and I will add them. This will help everyone. And Good Luck!
   
   Alf (28 March 2025, updated 10 April 2025)