New HD, how to use old one?

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Skpstr

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Oct 9, 2013
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I recently purchased and installed a new HD w/Windows 7. I want to use the old HD as well.

I want to use the new (faster) HD exclusively for games, and keep the older one for everything else, including movies and music. I have quite a collection of these, and would like to avoid formatting it if possible.

The old HD also likely has a lot of crap from websites and old toolbar downloads, etc., and I don't want any of that affecting my new HD.

How can I do this?

 
Solution
lonewolf7
Make the new HDD as first boot device in BIOS. And use the old HDD as a secondary drive.

This way you can use the new HDD for OS, and the old HDD for storage. Wont affect your new HDD.
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siddharthmukul007

siddharthmukul007

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Sep 16, 2012
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plug the old drive along with the new drive and set the 1st boot preference to the new hd.

boot into windows of the new hd and format the system drive (the partition that contains windows)of the older hd (make sure you do mot have any important data in that partition that you might need later)
 
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Chicano

Chicano

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Aug 29, 2011
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The safest way to scan the old HD would be doing it with a Antivirus in Live CD, mose known antiviruses have one for download.. also the Hiren's Boot CD and other Live CDs of the type.
1. I would start by removing the New Hard Drive
2. Installing the old hard drive, I suppose you have a Windows installed in it, so it would help to disable System Restore and scan it as well with the installed antivirus after scanning it with a Live CD antivirus... and follow with antimalware applications doing Full Scanns everytime, follow with Malwarebytes Antimalware, ComboFix, HijackThis, an Antirootkit, you can also do Online Antivirus scanns, also remove system crap like temp files (where bugs can hide), log files, delete Recycler and System Volume Information folders from every partition with a File Shredder. And after you are certain no more malware is present you can then format the OS partition if you want, and finally follow with final qwick virus and malware scans to make sure nothing survived. All this may sound like overkill but some viruses and malware are not detected by all security applications... I haven't checked the figures recently but some years ago it was said that only 80+% of all existing viruses were detected because newer virus deffinitions were still not included in their updates, so the more and different applications you use, the better the chances of removing every possible bug... it also depends on how bad you think your Hard Drive is infected, so you may not have to do everything I suggest but they're all worth considering.

After you are convinced all bugs were removed, install the old Hard Drive in the second SATA port or as Slave if it's a IDE system...
 
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popatim

popatim

Titan
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Dec 2, 2009
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Since you dont want to lose these files, how about you plug the old drive in and copy those things you dont want to lose to the new harddrive and then take the old one out and set it aside as a backup.

Anything you dont want to lose should be backed up to more than one device. I suggest you make another backup of these files to dvd as you said this is already an old drive...
 
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