The best way to upgrade without losing software?

Blond

Hey peeps. I just received the prompt to upgrade to Windows 10 and thought to myself it was a good time for me to get legal(for my OS at least) . I have a bunch of softwares with their respective scripts and add-on I'd like to keep.

Is it possible to upgrade your OS without losing all of my data? Have any of you ever experienced some problems doing this? Any known probs with Photoshop, Maya, Unreal Or Blender on W10?

I'm kinda scared, these types of things never worked for me...there's always a moment where I screw up and lose everything.

By the way, I'm of course thinking of doing a back-up..however, which methods should I use?

Should I copy-paste manually my files into my hard-drive or use the window back-up system which creates an image file? Last time I tried restoring from a system image, things didnt go that well...

Mr.Moose

Er, as far as I know I just hit that win 10 button, panicked, then when it finished everything was still there. 
You could always back it up to an external and restore.. But win 10 didn't remove anything from anyone i've spoken to yet

Blond

Is the registry the same or it cleans it up?

JedTheKrampus

It's not going to change any registry entries that aren't Windows-related. If I were you I would make backups of all of your personal data and stuff that you're working on. Programs don't need to be backed up because you can usually go and download them again if something goes wrong. The Windows 10 upgrade process is pretty reliable in my experience but you should always back up personal data before upgrading the OS.

Joopson

I've had no issues upgrading; no problems with software or anything, and definitely didn't lose any files. I know in theory a clean install of the OS is better, but, for me, it just wouldn't be worth the effort; so I'm glad I haven't had issues.

Tekoppar

Backup your data before upgrading, in case something happens you don't want to loose everything. My friend upgraded to Windows 10 and the installation ended up getting corrupt, which put it in an endless loop forcing him to do a clean install.

Bartalon

I've heard upgrading to Win10 is super convenient (sort of like Vista to Windows 7), but I'm personally always paranoid that I will lose everything in some freak accident.  It might be wise to have all your software / OS installed on a separate drive, and have all of your projects and other archives saved to other slave drives. 

This recently saved my ass when I replaced all of my hardware and inadvertently killed Windows (due to new motherboard's driver incompatibility, but ultimately a lack of foresight on my part).  I lost a few things like whatever was saved to my desktop and some browser bookmarks, but 99% of everything I've ever worked on was safely stored on those other drives which were immediately recognized when I reinstalled Windows.  Even Steam didn't have to reinstall anything   It only took a few hours for me to recuperate and reinstall my art software despite not being able to prepare for the reformat at all.

It might be a pain to set up something like that if you're doing it for the first time but it sure does save time in the long run not having to back everything up.

Blond

So things went out better than expected. After restarting my PC, it automatically began the W10 installation (which scared me) . Sadly, I din't have the option to clean install so it just upgraded keeping my actual files intact.

Everything works lie a charm...Damn..this UI feels....so fresh..

Kel-Shaded

The only software licenses that complained for me were Unity and Marmoset but both only take 30 seconds to reassign,
That said W10 itself is bugging me >.<

LMP

Now that you're Upgraded, you can go back and Clean Install anytime and you won't have to worry about the product key... as long as you haven't changed motherboards... your Windows key is locked into your motherboard.