s_b2013 :
I have an Acer X3400G that I'm replacing the motherboard, CPU and OS but planning to reuse the existing hard drive. My question is will I have to reformat the hard drive and loose all the data on the drive or will my data be able to stay intact? I think I will be reformatting and should plan on backing up all of my data.
Thanks
Steve
(EDIT: popatim is indeed correct and I have edited accordingly. The annoying thing is that I should have known better)
This is exactly why I have found it a good reason to have at least 2 physical drives or failing that, to partition the 1 drive in to 2. You use one for the OS and the other for your data and if you take 2 minutes or your time when first setting up your OS you can change the locations of all the default locations for 'Documents', 'Music'... etc by right clicking on them in the start bar (not sure how to do it in Win 8 but I am sure you can). So then when you choose to reinstall or upgrade your OS you don't have to worry about your data being wiped as it is on a different drive or partition.
Back to your specific question, I see there are two ways to go about a solution. 1) Use a different drive to install your chosen OS on, then when it is set up you can just access the older drive and retrieve your data and copy it to the OS drive temporarily while you then format the older drive and then once that is nice an clean you can then copy back the data to the now 'Data' drive. 2) Use partition software such as Paragon's Partition Magic to create a new partition on the same physical drive from within windows (will require at least one reboot during process) and then just make sure your data is on one of the partitions and then format the other and reinstall windows.
I hope that all makes sense for you.
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