michael diemer
must be an inside joke.

Ha!  Not really, in the context of Jack's law, don't be Jack!  Simple!

fireberd
Another reason to have a (current) full disc backup (disc image).  With a backup, to an external drive, with a program such as the free and popular Macrium Reflect its a relatively quick task to get a new hard drive configured, even in a laptop.
 
Jack's law:  Backups are not for IF they are ever needed, but for WHEN they are needed.
 

As someone else mentioned in this thread, even if you backup your hard drive (and mirror it, I use Acronis True Image), the way Windows works, you would still need to reinstall all the programs and plugins because they need to be registered on a new machine.   I have tried this myself, several times over the years, by backing up an image file of the entire hard drive, but in the end I still had to manually reinstall most of my software and plugins, which took several days....a PITA.

If there IS a way to copy a hard drive, without having to reinstall everything, I'd love to know about that.
I never tried Macrium Reflect, but I'm guessing it's the same type of backup system as Acronis True Image.

I believe it is possible to do it, if you put the new drive in the same computer as the old one came from. My suggestion was based on the assumption that the OP would be buying a new drive to put in the computer. Trying to put it into a different machine, yes you would have problems with authorizing. 

Moving an image to a new machine can cause problems with activations.  But replacing a hard drive and restoring a full drive image to the original machine that the image was made on should work.

Ok guys. Thank you I appreciate everyone’s info here! Especially jacks law! Lol

My drive isn’t bootable.. I’ve certainly been up and down toms hardware website. As well as a possible way to fix the drive my self, but scared to do so till I try to get my song first..

I have a complete backup of all files on my external hard drive which I’m pretty sure I backed up using acornsis or something of that sort with system image.. just not the most recent song I’ve been working on the last few weeks.. need to meet a dec 12th deadline. worst case I can start over but was trying to avoid it.. it’s mostly the midi I need as I hadn’t got to the audio portion yet..

My intentions were originally to hook the drive via usb to my desktop. Get my most recent save of that song. Put it on my external hard drive. Wipe my failing hard drive clean, or replace it and put everything back on my laptop from the external hard drive..
Well, with fear of my laptop failing again in some way since it getting aged my minds changed..

I just order a cs100 through sweetwater to get me by for now.. it has windows 10. coming from Windows 7.. so this should get real interesting now..

Now I’m going to have to figure out how to transfer these files to a different windows.. as far as I’ve looked into it, it doesn’t look to be easy..
I literally only use my laptop for music and personal music files/music video work. And I still have my win 7 desktop if for some reason I need to use it as my system image restore, THEN move stuff to win 10..

So I guess my question now is, once I download splat/bandlab/addictive/waves/izotope etc to the cs100.
Will I then be able to drag my projects into the cakewalk projects folder and boom all my music/data is now on windows 10?? Or is this a matter of those files only working on windows 7??

Hope this makes sense!
Also, you guys are saying “image”. I used backup software that I believe made a system image besides the most recent song I need. So yes I believe I have that but it’s not gonna help switching to windows 10 now I don’t think??

Actually I found an email, pretty sure I used NTI as my system image backup

A system image is not your usual backup. It is an exact copy of your C drive, and is an iso file. It is bootable once you put it on a hard drive. A regular backup is just of your files. Hopefully you do indeed have an image.
 
Going from W7 to W10 does complicate things. By the time you figure out all that you need to do, you might be better off just starting the song over again. Especially with a deadline looming.

Wise words man and I appreciate that.. I was reading some more.. and I’m thinking along the lines of that deadline like crazy lol..

But if I get a new hard drive, install it in the laptop, restore from the system image on my external hard drive. Then I at least have ALL my projects things back to normal at that point and everything but the one song.

Then upgrade the laptop to win 10, then transfer all its files over to the new cs100 desktop with win 10!
Lol
Complicated and still researching! But this seems almost seamless. That way all activations and extensions would still be there.. (besides the ones that allow only one computer, which is a whole other hurdle)

I’m waiting on the cable to come in the mail to see if my hard drive is completely bricked.. something tells me I’ll still be able to access them though.. wishfully hoping I suppose.

So I guess my question now is, once I download splat/bandlab/addictive/waves/izotope etc to the cs100.
Will I then be able to drag my projects into the cakewalk projects folder and boom all my music/data is now on windows 10??

 
Yes.
 
Some points to keep in mind:
 
1. Install your DAW and plugins on your new computer.  If you're going to migrate to a new computer, you will need to install and activate things from scratch.  Restoring your laptop first with a new hard drive via image would get the laptop running again, but would not spare you the pain of migrating things to a new computer.  It would still have a different computer ID even with the same OS.  The best you could still hope for would be transferring your data and projects.  All applications would still need to be installed and activated on the new computer.
 
2. If you have a system image, you should be able to mount the image file on your system as a virtual drive.  No need to restore the image to another drive to get to your backed up data in the image.  Once mounted you should be able to browse and copy just the files & folders you need over to your new computer using Windows file explorer.  Your old Cakewalk projects should just drag & drop into place on your new install of the Cakewalk software.
 
3. If your unbootable C: drive still spins up when attached via USB, you should just be able to copy your latest project files from there.  Hopefully your old C: drive only developed Windows boot errors, and is not physically bricked. 

You mentioned your files where only midi. What I do now when at that stage ( just did 90 backing tracks) is I make One Drive my working folder. The files are always up to date locally and on the cloud. This wouldn't work very well with audio. At that point I copy over to my DATA drive and carry on. Those midi only CWP files are where I put the most of my work so to me they are most valuable to have as back ups. 
 One drive will store a lot of these projects and these songs all have at least 4-6 VST instruments and then some. All sorts of plug ins etc. But as you see 90 songs only used 44 MB. They load fast and never had anything not work. I highly recommend this plan to those working with midi as a pretty bulletproof backup system.  I of course also back up to external drives out of habit.