I need to backup Gnucash to flash drive and restore on a different laptop

[John Smith]

This is my first post to the mailing list, so please pardon any errors and bring to my attention any mistakes in posting, etc.
I have been happily using Gnucash with Puppy Linux (Tahrpup) for over a year. I use an old IBM Thinkpad but my son recently upgraded to a new laptop so I'm using his hand-me-down Acer Aspire. The advantage is that  I can now use 64 bit Puppy Linux and the Acer is a much faster, more powerful machine. None of this impacts Gnucash, it's just background.
So I'll need to back up my Gnucash files from the Thinkpad and install them on the Acer Aspire. Normally this is a simple procedure, but the last time I performed a backup of my Gnucash files to a flash drive, when I again launched the program I had to put in the flash drive. What apparently happened is that I changed the seek location from the hard drive to the flash drive which, of course, I don't want. I was able to correct this, but this time  when I backup Gnucash to install on the new laptop, I want to make sure it looks to the hard drive to launch.
I will be grateful if somebody who has successfully performed this can provide step-by-step instructions. The fact that I'm using the Linux version shouldn't matter for the sake of this question.
Thank you.