Transferring HDD to a new PC (no OS on this hard drive!)

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Rooster9456

Commendable
Oct 24, 2016
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Last week, lightning ran in on my PC and fried a lot of things. Long story short, I'm getting a new PC, but the 3TB hard drive on my old PC is still functioning properly. The operating system is on a different hard drive, so the 3TB one is entirely for storage. My new PC will have a separate SSD for the operating system as well. So will I be able to just transfer the 3TB HDD from my old PC to the new one? Or do I need to reformat it first? I have a huge load of games on this hard drive that would take months to redownload due to my atrocious internet. It'd be so much better if I could just transfer the files, but I don't want to corrupt anything. And I have backed up the game saves & important stuff from that hard drive should anything go wrong - just a side note. Thanks in advance.
 
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Lutfij
You could migrate it to the new system as is without any issues(for now) but I think over time it'll fail and you're going to have to replace it. Lightning strikes take out anything and if your system didn't survive then the drive will follow suite. It's going to be a nightmare if you end up having critical data like personal/emotionally valuable content on the drive.

I think you're good to go. You may need to re-download the game library when the drive decides to croak.
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PC Tailor

PC Tailor

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Jun 29, 2017
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You should just be able to transfer it over a long as it isn't the boot device.

If you wanted it for the OS, that is a different story, but just as a secondary drive it SHOULD swap over no problem. As long as you're absolutery confident it hasn't become damaged in any way.

But always keep the backup in case, as ultimately, things can go wrong.
 
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Lutfij

Lutfij

Titan
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Oct 7, 2009
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You could migrate it to the new system as is without any issues(for now) but I think over time it'll fail and you're going to have to replace it. Lightning strikes take out anything and if your system didn't survive then the drive will follow suite. It's going to be a nightmare if you end up having critical data like personal/emotionally valuable content on the drive.

I think you're good to go. You may need to re-download the game library when the drive decides to croak.
 
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