New build questions

[Joshua_01]

I am building a new computer. It is based with a Biostar T-Force TA790GXA2+ MOBO. It will have an AMD Phenom X4 9550 CPU and Saphire (ATI) Radeon HD 3850 Vid Card. From what I understand it will be a real sweel system.

My one question is this. I am taking the Hard Drive from my old system and using it for now as I do not have the money for a new os or hard drive.
The old hard drive is an Western Digital 80 Gig hard drive. With win. XP Home 32 bit in it. but it is a sata hard drive and the new mobo is configured foe a SATA2 3gig hard drive.

Will the mobo be backwords compatible for the old sata hard drive? And if so how do I go about it?

 

[aevm]

Try to get a HD 4830 instead of HD 3850. Twice the power and only a few bucks more.

The new mobo should be able to use the old hard drive, but I've seen exceptions. Most likely it will work.

You need to reinstall Windows, otherwise drivers and config files will not match the new hardware and you'll have lots of headaches.

 

[Joshua_01]

I do not have an install cd for my windows xp home Ma I going to be out of luck just slaping the old hard drive in to the new MOBO?

 

[Joshua_01]

is it not possible to reconfigure the files and drivers so that they operate right?

 

[Proximon]

No. There is something called the Hardware Abstraction Layer that needs to be configured at installation time.

You might be able to avoid a complete re-installation, but you would still have to have the XP CD.

 

[theAnimal]

is it not possible to reconfigure the files and drivers so that they operate right?

Yes.

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/77909774/m/1400925745