New OS on New ssd will my old hard drive be read still?

HyouinKyouma

Commendable
Jul 26, 2016
4
0
1,510
So recently my hard drive with windows on it died. I plan on buying an ssd then installing my new copy of windows 10 on it. Thing is i've got a second hard drive with work in it, will i need to reformat the 2nd drive so it can function on windows 10? It was formatted by windows 8.1 by the way, never bothered making partitions. life sucks.
 
Solution


windows 10...

Morten Jespersen

Honorable
Mar 11, 2013
42
0
10,540
a dead harddrive is unrecoverable, unless you send it to a special service where they take it apart and read the discs to recover the data.

are you sure the drive is dead? have you tried to connect it to another PC and attempt to open it, if the PC registers it at all?

formatting a hard drive isn't different between different versions of windows software.
 

HyouinKyouma

Commendable
Jul 26, 2016
4
0
1,510

You misunderstand me, I'm not trying to resurrect my dead drive, I'd honestly have a better chance at summoning the demons selzar. I've had another Hard Drive for work related files. All I want to know is if I install an ssd with windows 10 on it, will I still be able to access the files inside the drive?
TL;DR Can windows 10 read Files written by Windows 8.1
 

Morten Jespersen

Honorable
Mar 11, 2013
42
0
10,540


windows 10 can read files all the way back to windows 95, but it won't do it any good if the harddrive is physicly dead or too corrupt digitally as it won't even send a signal to the PC.

if you happen to have a pc nearby (spare pc, work-pc, friends pc) then you could check if it can see the harddrive or access it. if that happens, then it's propable that the windows OS is just broken and fails to start up and then it can be recovered.
 
Solution

HyouinKyouma

Commendable
Jul 26, 2016
4
0
1,510
Just finished installing windows on the new ssd , i kept my work drive unplugged during the process. Once I plugged my drive back in and set it up using disk manager I was able to get all my files back. Works fine so far, looks like the old drive keeping my os was the only one that failed.