Transfering Old Hard Drive to New Computer

Mcpepsii · Dec 3, 2014

I am currently on my old computer which has a new hard drive i put in it as my old one crashed a few months ago. I just scrummed up some cash and put together a 1200$ computer, but didn't purchase a hard drive or PSU as they both work fine in this one. However i was doing some research and it seems as though i might run into some problems with programs interfeering with eachother such as from my old graphics card and old mobo mixing with the new software of my new mobo and gpu and such. Not only that but it seems as though everyone is talking about not being able to move old hard drives to new computers as it will say invalid key and such if i somehow manage to wipe my hard drive prior to placing in the new system. I have the windows 7 disk and key, if i do a factory reset on this hard drive and put it in my new system and place the windows cd in it and type in the key, will i be set or will i run into issues? The windows cd i have is actually from an earlier computer i had before the one i am right now and it worked fine when i installed it onto this hard drive. Hopefully someone can help, im trying to figure this all out but it seems an amateur like me wont ever be able to.
thanks-

Mattios · Dec 4, 2014

I would suggest moving your files (documents, photos etc.) to another drive, then wiping the hard drive and reinstall your OS onto it whilst it is plugged in to the new system. Then, move your files back onto the drive.

Hope that helped.

Phillip Corcoran · Dec 4, 2014

Mattios is right. You need to wipe the hard drive, put it in your new PC, then install Windows on it. You may have to call Microsoft to get it activated since it's been previously activated on different hardware.

Mcpepsii · Dec 4, 2014

thanks guys

hang-the-9 · Dec 5, 2014

Buy a new hard drive, install Windows clean on that, keep your current one for backups. Spending $60-70 on a 1 TB new drive when you spend 1200 on a system vs possible data loss because you don't hae a backup or forgetting to copy something before you wipe the drive is silly.

Mcpepsii · Dec 5, 2014

do you think i could place the old hard drive in my new computer, let everything boot and such and make sure everything is running fine, and then put in my windows 7 cd and reformat the hard drive and start new?

hang-the-9 · Dec 5, 2014

Mcpepsii :

No, it will likely not boot at all due to the motherboard chipset differences and could just make it not boot in the original system either. Unless you want to deal with issues, spend the extra 5% of your system budged on a new hard drive, which is really THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE SYSTEM as that is where all of your files live, install Windows on that, put yours aside for backup use.

You can recover from any damge to a computer, except to a hard drive when your files are unreadable and you dont have backups or even have backups but never tested to see if they were usable. Your $500 gold plated 6 core video card dies, eh.. you can get a new one no loss except for the money. Your $50 hard drive dies, now your emails are gone, your pictures are gone, your saved games are gone, your saved passwords are gone, your music is gone, etc... no amount of money will bring them back outside of sending the drive to a data recovery shop which will chage you that $500 or maybe more to recover the data off that $50 drive.

So I suggest you buy that new drive for your $1,200 system for 50-100 and be happy that you did LOL

I have upgraded my system maybe 3-4 times the last 10 years. You know how many drives I have from those upgrades? About 6 since I never re-use the old ones but keep them for backups. How many times did I lose a drive? Maybe twice. How many times did I lose any data from that? 0. Because I can go back to any one of those drives and get most if not all of my files from that. I've even accidentally wiped the wrong drive, probably more than once, but it's never an issue because I keep my data far away from me when I work on swapping systems. If you re-use the same drive and click Yes when you meant to click No at some prompt, your data is gone in half a second.

Mcpepsii · Dec 5, 2014

hang-the-9 :

Mcpepsii :

No, it will likely not boot at all due to the motherboard chipset differences and could just make it not boot in the original system either. Unless you want to deal with issues, spend the extra 5% of your system budged on a new hard drive, which is really THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE SYSTEM as that is where all of your files live, install Windows on that, put yours aside for backup use.

You can recover from any damge to a computer, except to a hard drive when your files are unreadable and you dont have backups or even have backups but never tested to see if they were usable. Your $500 gold plated 6 core video card dies, eh.. you can get a new one no loss except for the money. Your $50 hard drive dies, now your emails are gone, your pictures are gone, your saved games are gone, your saved passwords are gone, your music is gone, etc... no amount of money will bring them back outside of sending the drive to a data recovery shop which will chage you that $500 or maybe more to recover the data off that $50 drive.

So I suggest you buy that new drive for your $1,200 system for 50-100 and be happy that you did LOL

I have upgraded my system maybe 3-4 times the last 10 years. You know how many drives I have from those upgrades? About 6 since I never re-use the old ones but keep them for backups. How many times did I lose a drive? Maybe twice. How many times did I lose any data from that? 0. Because I can go back to any one of those drives and get most if not all of my files from that. I've even accidentally wiped the wrong drive, probably more than once, but it's never an issue because I keep my data far away from me when I work on swapping systems. If you re-use the same drive and click Yes when you meant to click No at some prompt, your data is gone in half a second.

thanks that makes alot of sence, ill go out and get one!

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Transfering Old Hard Drive to New Computer

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