I have a temporary PC with a secondary hard drive that i use basically for everything. The temp PC uses the primary drive as the boot of course but it didn't have much space which is why i bought the a secondary one. Secondary has programs and games installed (Steam and some games dependent on their own client). Now finally building my own PC along with another hard drive that i will use to install windows and boot all that. My question was, after i'm done setting everything up can i simply bring over my secondary drive and have all the programs on there working?
Old secondary hard drive to new pc
- Thread starter Thehobo
- Start date
jdcranke07
Honorable
- Feb 10, 2014
- 1,346
- 2
- 11,965
You would have to back it up and reformat the drive unless you want to look and possibly pay for programs that will allow you to do otherwise. Btw, it's also not good practice to bring an old drive into a new system unless it is an SSD.
k1114
Titan
- May 2, 2010
- 14,240
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I think he said to reformat because he thought you were reusing the boot drive. All other non boot drives make no difference what's on them. I even have my old boot drive as a secondary and can still switch to it and boot windows off there. The software on it may not work because the registries are in the windows folder which would be on the boot. Steam is able to verify the files so that should work when you launch the games.
wolfbm09
Honorable
- Mar 16, 2013
- 108
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- 10,710
I have 3 drives in my rig (500gb HDD, 1tb HDD, and 120gb SSD). I recently installed the SSD with the intent of making it my C: drive. I figured ,much like you seem to b thinking, that I would be able to install windows on it and all my steam stuff would just carry over. Sadly this wasn't the case as at this moment I am still installing all the games over again (even though they were already on my 1tb drive). For some reason the drives didn't communicate well enough to make it a simple process. I ended up formatting my drives and starting from square one.
I know there is a way to make the programs communicate but in the end it just became easier to just start fresh (believe it or not). I personally don't see a problem with brining your old HDD to your new pc but I do agree you will be better off just to format it first.
I know there is a way to make the programs communicate but in the end it just became easier to just start fresh (believe it or not). I personally don't see a problem with brining your old HDD to your new pc but I do agree you will be better off just to format it first.
I'm not the person who originally answered, but I'll put in my two cents...
Any programs or games that needed to be installed will need to be reinstalled on the new computer. The installation process enters information in the Windows Registry, and a new Windows install will not have that information in the Registry.
As for installing the drive itself, there is nothing wrong with doing so.
Casey
Any programs or games that needed to be installed will need to be reinstalled on the new computer. The installation process enters information in the Windows Registry, and a new Windows install will not have that information in the Registry.
As for installing the drive itself, there is nothing wrong with doing so.
Casey
Ahh see, i learned something. That's what i was looking for, well i wouldn't mind having to install my games again. I don't even play all of them so no problem it's more all the shows and stuff i have on my secondary that i won't want to get rid of.
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