How do i transfer everything from my old laptop to my new laptop? I want all my blender projects exactly like they where on my old pc. I tried transferring one blend file, but it ended up missing some textures, and looking a bit different.
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$\begingroup$ @DuarteFarrajotaRamos is there a way to merge these question with the proposed duplicate. The answers are quite different and they complement each other. $\endgroup$– susuJul 17, 2020 at 23:52
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$\begingroup$ Hi. Mods can merge similar questions when they are identical, but it hasn't been used much around this site as far as I've seen. Answers here do seem to cover more or less the same procedures as the linked duplicate. You can link to them from the comments or answers themselves for more details $\endgroup$– Duarte Farrajota Ramos ♦Jul 18, 2020 at 0:10
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The easiest way to transfer your .blend files and any external data associated with it is to open the .blend files, go to File > External Data > Pack All Into .blend, and then transfer the files. All of your external data (images, textures, volumes, mesh data, etc.) will be packed into the .blend file to prevent it from relying on external files. This way, you don't have to transfer the files associated with the .blend file as well.
If you want to unpack the files from the .blend after they have been transferred (.blend files with all external data packed inside are quite big), open the transferred .blend files and go to File > External Data > Unpack All Into Files. This will unpack all the previously packed data into files.
Here's a little visualization:
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The least troublesome way to transition from one computer to the next is to copy the contents of all folders used for your blender projects in the same file structure you had in the old computer.
As you learned already images used as textures are not saved as part of the blend file unless they are packed. But even if the textures are packed, any link or reference to other blend files will be broken if the file does not exist in the specified place.
That is also true for the cache files for physics and other simulations. If the files are not found you will need to bake them again.
Note as well that for video files and image sequences and audio files there is no way to pack them into the file either.
A partial solution is to use relative paths, where the file structure doesn't have to be the exact same, as long as the assets are all all within the same folder as the blend file. But again, all relevant files have to be copied over to other computer.
A different approach would be to remove the drive from the old computer and make it available to the new one as an external drive.
As a last resort, if you don't want to copy all of the files, you can use the old computer as a network drive, through which you can access your files directly without having to copy them over. But the access will be slower.
