Building a new computer and and thinking of reusing old HDD

[veryuninspiredusername]

Alright. So I'm going to be building a new gaming rig. I decided not to buy a brand new HDD, and I thought I would just use my current 1TB HDD(Hitachi), so I can save a bit more money for everything else. However I was wondering, how can I "re-use" this Hard Drive(I'm going to be buying a 128GB SSD(Samsung 830 series) for a boot drive)? Do I simply format the drive, or do I have to do something else? And if I have to format it, how exactly do I do that?

 

[ELMO_2006]

Hi...

You have many outs, you will obviously use the SSD as your primary boot drive however you can either mount the old drive in the computer case or purchase an external HDD case and connect it via esata, USB2 or USB3.

To simplify things, you may want to connect the old HDD after the main OS is up and running as I have seen the good folks of the "inter-tubes" experience issues when attempting to install an OS when multiple drives exist.

Once the OS is up and running, connect the old HDD via your preference and then use Computer Management to delete/format the old HDD.

Simple simple simple.

 

[RealBeast]

^ +1 definitely disconnect the hdd when doing the new OS install and then re-attach it.

 

[Paperdoc]

What they said ^ , but with one exception. IF there is data on the old HDD that you want, you do NOT have to re-Partition and Format that drive. When you do install it (AFTER getting it running with only the SSD, as suggested), you should find it in My Computer ready to access and use. Just to be sure, you can go into BIOS Setup and find the Boot Priority Sequence setting spot. Make sure that you are booting from your SSD, and the old HDD is NOT allowed to be used for booting.

 

[veryuninspiredusername]

OK. So to recap: I install windows on the SSD, after that I connect the HDD and then I format it using "Computer Management". lol That was easier than I thought. Thanks!