Comment by _carbyau_

I keep my gaming machines for a long time and usually only upgrade the gpu in that time so the main "fast SSD" is much smaller than the "storage disk" of my new machine. But yes, I get rid of the Steam directory entirely and any large media files.

If I wanted to be more careful I could probably just do a full registry export and keep C:\Users\[username]\AppData. But rather than dig around trying to recall and export MORE stuff (when I want to be playing on the new machine...) I'll just keep a copy of the whole thing for reference.

And it'll get deleted down the track when I'm happily bedded into the new machine.

Other tips: if you moved your license for Windows to the new machine, run the VM without networking...

If you are wondering how to get stuff off it with no networking - because you are using (inbuilt to Windows Pro) hyperv instead of vmware - you can mount the VHD disks directly on your new machine while the VM is off.