Using old HDD for new motherboard

Tebberz

Commendable
Aug 19, 2016
3
0
1,510
I know there are a lot of these on here but I can't find one that actually says yes or no to my questions.

So I'm new to PC building, I had my buddy build this one for me 5ish years ago and it's been having lots of problems recently so I ordered some new parts and am going to build a new PC and upgrade it along the way. I just got a new motherboard, Asus Z170-A, CPU and ram. The thing is I don't really have the money for a new HDD right now and I just bought this HDD about 5 months ago so I wanted to use my old one.

And from what I've been researching is that I can't plug this HDD into my new motherboard without reformatting it first and I don't have another HDD to format this one with. So is there anything I can do to reformat this HDD in my old Mobo without installing an OS so I can plug it in and install the OS in the new motherboard all while having just the 1 HDD?

Like from what I've read, a lot of people tried plugging in their old HDD into their new Mobo and just nothing pops up on the monitor when they try to start their PC. Does anyone know if that's true or not? Like if I plugged the old HDD into the new Mobo, would I at least be able to get into the Bios screen to switch the boot to my windows disk or usb so I could reinstall Windows and reformat the HDD that way?

If I didn't explain those questions well, let me know and i'll try to explain it better. Any and all help is welcome and needed and great thanks to anyone that helps.
 
Solution
you don't need a hdd to format an hdd.

bios and selecting a bootable device have nothing to do with the hdd. bios is on your motherboard. you'll see the same thing with or without a hdd installed.

all you need is a bootable installation of windows. when you power the machine you should see an option to hit an f key, usually f11, and select the install media there.

you are correct with a full reformatted install needing to be done. this is for many reasons.
you don't need a hdd to format an hdd.

bios and selecting a bootable device have nothing to do with the hdd. bios is on your motherboard. you'll see the same thing with or without a hdd installed.

all you need is a bootable installation of windows. when you power the machine you should see an option to hit an f key, usually f11, and select the install media there.

you are correct with a full reformatted install needing to be done. this is for many reasons.
 
Solution

Tebberz

Commendable
Aug 19, 2016
3
0
1,510


Thank you for the reply. I know I don't need bios for the HDD. Just from what i've read people say they can't get to the bios when they plug an old un-formatted HDD into a new motherboard so either they did something wrong or I misunderstood them. That's what I was worried about since this would be my first real solo PC build(ish) and I wasn't sure what would happen. Again thank you for the help.
 
"I know I don't need bios for the HDD."
again, bios has nothing to do with a HDD. bios is integrated with your motherboard. You can always access your bios and with or without any form of storage installed, internally or externally. Having an unformatted or formatted drive had nothing to do with your bios or the ability to access it.