Hard Disk Transpant into New Build

[heroesneverdie]

My question is, I'm guessing, pretty simple to answer. Im building a new system, but as I am on a budget, I'm going to transplant my currents HDDs into it when it is built. I have two drives I use for storage, and then the boot drive. I'd like to know if there's a way I can simply install the O/S and get everything configured in the new box, and then just move my two storage drives without having to reformat or lose any information. Both systems will be running Windows XP. I could probably learn this through testing, but I thought it was better to ask first than lose anything in the attempt. Thank you.

 

[Kaldor]

If all you are doing is bringing the 2 drives over as storage there shouldn't be an issue. However if you plan on bringing one of the drives over with the OS already installed, think again. The drive that has your OS on it, boot drive, needs to be a clean install for a new machine. My advise is to put the boot drive in new machine, format, install windows, run updates, install drivers, then install your storage drives.

 

[aevm]

+1

If the old drives are IDE, keep in mind that most recent motherboards allow 2 IDE devices and 4 or 6 or 8 SATA devices. That is, I'd very surprised if you can reuse all 3 IDE drives. If at least one of them is SATA you shouldn't have problems.

Edit: if you're using encryption on the old drives, decrypt them while still in the old PC.

 

[Shadow703793]

^+1. Also considering HDD prices now you might be able to get a 40/80GB SATA 1.5 drive for $20-25 or so, which helps when it comes to installing the OS.

 

[heroesneverdie]

Thanks much for the prompt replies. I was indeed planning to move the two storage drives just as storage, and reformat the boot drive. The boot drive is a SATA, the storage drives are both IDE. Either way, it sounds like it will work out just fine. Thanks again. Now I just need to impatiently wait for the parts to arrive.