Will new homebuilt system work with old HD?

GregSX

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May 29, 2001
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I've just ordered a new motherboard and CPU, but plan on using my current hard drive (with Win98 and lots of installed applications and data) for my new system. Will I need to make any preparations for my hard drive to boot up with the new mobo-cpu?
 

Arrow

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Dec 31, 2007
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Usually, you can just plug the hard drive in and all the new motherboard drives will be automatically installed. *You may need the motherboard drivers disc.


Rob
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ejsmith2

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Feb 9, 2001
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If it's a rather old hard disk (<10meg/sec sequential reads), you're not likely to notice the speed increase unless you work from memory a lot. Hence, when you upgrade a computer to a 600mhz+ processor, you have to get a new hard disk that can feed information fast enough to take advantage of it.
 

kanute

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May 6, 2001
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I tried doing exactly what you are trying to do with my new system, and all hell broke loose. I had a PIII 450 system with a 440BX mobo and I swapped those out for an A7V133 and an athlon 1.2. The system booted fine with the old hard drive, but that's about all it would do. The CD-ROM wouldn't show up, the sound card didn't work, and the video card drivers wouldn't work either. I tried for hours and hours to sort things out, but eventually gave up. I had another hard drive already, so I just dumped all the stuff I needed on to it, reformatted, and reinstalled windows 98SE fresh. When I did that, everything went perfectly fine. But this was just my expierence. I would suggest you try it the easy way first, and if things just aren't working out, go the format and reinstall route.