Replacing motherboard, CPU, GPU, and OS: what to do with old HDD?

Vorsar

Honorable
Dec 17, 2013
6
0
10,510
I'm upgrading my system with three new parts, and plan to replace the three parts listed:

Motherboard:
Pegatron 2ACF -> Gigabyte GA-Z97-HD3

CPU:
AMD A6-3650 2.6GHz -> Intel i5-4690K 3.5 GHz

GPU:
Nvidia GTX 560 -> Radeon HD 7970

OS:
Windows 7 -> Windows 10

With all of these changes, I was assuming I would have to atleast wipe the old HDD. I have Windows 10 on a USB drive to install/boot, will it automatically clean the drive upon installing/booting?

I'm also curious as to if I will be able to move installation data to a backup drive to restore, such as downloaded games, in order to save some time and avoid downloading them again.

And finally, will I be able to just simply drag and drop files that I've moved to an external drive back onto my system after the hardware is installed, without conflicts?

Thanks for any assistance!
 

rujoesmith

Distinguished
Jun 27, 2010
474
2
19,160
You can either format the driver during install, or install windows while preserving files. Everything from the previous installation will be in a windows.old folder. You can drag and drop what you want and delete the rest.