I just received my new Paperwhite after bricking my 2012 - Gen 5 PW. I was pleasantly surprised that all of my personal documents & folders transferred via USB to the new Kindle, keeping all of my notes and highlights. I did not have any of these saved on the Amazon cloud and thought they would only be read by my old Kindle PW. I was prepared to email all of these to my new Kindle and start over on notes and highlights.
From what I've read, I didn't think this was possible.
The same applies for all of my eBooks that weren't protected or purchased from Amazon. I only had some issues with book covers, but Calibre handled that. Bookmarks and Notes were still there after a direct USB transfer. Amazing!
I expected a lot more work to switch to a new Kindle......
I have all of my old Kindle content back on a new one in just an afternoon!