transfer hard drive

[steviieee]

is it possible to put ma old hard drive in a new pc and is it easy to do anyone?

[reddiesel]

Originally Posted by steviieee

is it possible to put ma old hard drive in a new pc and is it easy to do anyone?

Yes but i think you have to re register the operating system if thats what you want to use it for as windows wont recognise the new system, if your going to re install windows fresh then format it first.

[steviieee]

ok cheers.

[tiger56]

Originally Posted by reddiesel

Yes but i think you have to re register the operating system if thats what you want to use it for as windows wont recognise the new system, if your going to re install windows fresh then format it first.

re reg wont be the issue,when you transfer the old hard drive to a new machine you will lose most of the drivers and could have conflicts,as red says would back up what you need the re install,and i think windows ME was the only hot swappable windows os?

[steviieee]

ok, so i will reformat my pc with windows ME, and then i can transfer my old hard drive to new system am i right?

[Mickha]

Originally Posted by steviieee

ok, so i will reformat my pc with windows ME, and then i can transfer my old hard drive to new system am i right?

No, unless your old hard drive has Windows ME, or earlier, on it.
Which Operating System does your old hard drive have on it?

[steviieee]

windows xp

[leeds6]

unless you want to boot into winxp on your old harddrive i dont see any problem i have a win7 pc with an old xp hdd as a secondary drive and i can still access all the files on that drive i just cant boot into xp

[Mickha]

Some motherboard manufacturers do offer software, to enable what you're trying to do, switch the hard drive over and use it as your main operating system.
Of course this is easier if both motherboards are the same make with the same chip set.

Personally I would do as already suggested, run the second hard drive as a slave, unless it's SATA, then you can access the files.

[randolph]

Originally Posted by Mickha

Some motherboard manufacturers do offer software, to enable what you're trying to do, switch the hard drive over and use it as your main operating system.
Of course this is easier if both motherboards are the same make with the same chip set.

Personally I would do as already suggested, run the second hard drive as a slave, unless it's SATA, then you can access the files.

I have done as Mickha suggests above in the past, and found it worked really well as it gave me time to go through and just move the stuff I wanted over, rather than copying everything! (maybe its just me, but I often end up with lots of junk on my PC's!)

Then when you have all the stuff you need off the old drive, you can wipe it, and keep it for backup storage (I mean, you could make regular backups of your main drive to the old one, or just the important files, at least!).