Installing old HDD into new laptop

Velti

Honorable
Apr 17, 2012
28
0
10,530
I broke my old laptop and bought a new one with an SSD. I salvaged the HDD from my old laptop and currently set it up like an external drive, but I would like to install it into my new laptop, seen here.

"Acer Laptop Aspire 5 A517-51G-54GK Intel Core i5 7th Gen 7200U (2.50 GHz) 8 GB Memory 256 GB SSD NVIDIA GeForce 940MX 17.3" Windows 10 Home 64-Bit"

I think I need to speak to Acer to figure out how best to physically install the HDD, but I'm wondering how I would go about, how to say... seamlessly integrating it into my laptop like it's a part of it. In an ideal world, it would be like I'm working on my old computer, just in a new shell.

Do I simply delete the folders where the old OS resides? (They're both Win10.) Do I tell my new laptop to refer to the old HD for the typically listed paths? (Documents, Pictures, etc) Can I still use the software installed on the old HD the same way? (Stuff like Git, Anaconda, and Launchy.)

I hope I'm describing my "problem" properly. Thanks!
 
Solution
It looks like there's a slot for a second HDD so installing it shouldn't be a problem. Once you install it your laptop will still just boot normally from the original SSD and you will be able to navigate to the newly installed HDD with windows explorer. You can specify different locations for Documents, Pictures folders etc but your old programs wont run.

slingsrat

Honorable
May 31, 2016
222
4
10,765
It looks like there's a slot for a second HDD so installing it shouldn't be a problem. Once you install it your laptop will still just boot normally from the original SSD and you will be able to navigate to the newly installed HDD with windows explorer. You can specify different locations for Documents, Pictures folders etc but your old programs wont run.
 
Solution

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