Old hard drive, new parts

Mister Man

Hi guys,

I have a 80GB HDD in my current system and my PC is coming in the next day or two.
I would like to know how (If possible) to use the HDD i currently use, in my new system, to save me time re-installing apps/windows etc

Cheers

Kinetic^

What version of windows is it?

If you transfer it directly it won't work and you'll see bluescreens. You need to reset the HDC controller. If it's XP, a repair install might be the wise thing to do.

Fysh

I have had proven to me through experiment that it's surprising just how big a transition between systems a Win2k or WinXP installation will survive; you'll need to have drivers for your new hardware and be able to mount the drive from eg a BartPE disk in order to make changes to the registry that enable the system to not simply fall over and die when it tries to load the drivers for a hardware profile that's no longer relevant.

However.

It's not a good idea, partly because activation hilarity will likely ensue and partly because, well, a clean install on new hardware is always the best way to go. Yes it's tedious and time-consuming, but in the event that drivers for your new hardware are buggy how seriously do you think any issues you report will be taken when you explain that you haven't actually got a clean install and you may well have inherited your problem from the install that mongrelised over to your new hardware out of laziness.

Odaise Gaelach

I second what Fysh said about the benefits of a clean install over trying to lift a Windows install verbatim from one computer to another.

Capt'n Midnight

Don't forget the OEM / preinstalled windows license doesn't allow you to move to another machine and the one on the new machine won't have downgrade rights to the old machine's version.

this works well enough if you have the same version of windows on both machines , turn off AV and as many apps as you can when running the backup
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/249694

if you have a default install on both machines most of the steps aren't needed , the main thing to remember is to Always replace the file on my computer.

Mister Man

The current OS Is Windows 7 Ultimate.
Although I'm not to worried about re-installing windows itself, I just don't want to go through the trouble of downloading all games/apps again. For most of them I don't have the ISO File or a disk, mainly downloaded from Steam, and on my interenet connection, It's not much fun waiting for games to re download.!

I'll prob. just format the current drive, and leave it in the current system & just install win7 on the new one. Would increase the re sale value of the system if I include the HDD I guess.

Fysh

Mister Man wrote: »

The current OS Is Windows 7 Ultimate.
Although I'm not to worried about re-installing windows itself, I just don't want to go through the trouble of downloading all games/apps again. For most of them I don't have the ISO File or a disk, mainly downloaded from Steam, and on my interenet connection, It's not much fun waiting for games to re download.!

I'll prob. just format the current drive, and leave it in the current system & just install win7 on the new one. Would increase the re sale value of the system if I include the HDD I guess.

Steam now has a potentially very useful backup & restore feature, which should help you out. In this context I totally feel your pain - I've a pretty modest collection of games on my steam account, but when 4 games (Portal 2, Far Cry 1 & 2, Batman Arkham Asylum) can take up 26GB you can't just say "feck it, download it all again".

On a more general note, though, this sort of situation is why it's becoming ever more important to keep copies of your installation files (preferably both digitally and on physical media).

Mister Man

Fysh wrote: »

Steam now has a potentially very useful backup & restore feature, which should help you out. In this context I totally feel your pain - I've a pretty modest collection of games on my steam account, but when 4 games (Portal 2, Far Cry 1 & 2, Batman Arkham Asylum) can take up 26GB you can't just say "feck it, download it all again".

On a more general note, though, this sort of situation is why it's becoming ever more important to keep copies of your installation files (preferably both digitally and on physical media).

Cheers for that Fysh! Never knew about it!

But on another note. It looks like I'm going to need to keep the current install of Windows 7 On my drive as I've lost the Windows 7 dsik )= Can anyone help me out on what I need to do to so as not to get a BSOD?

Old rig - AMD Athlon II X3 435
4gb 800mhz ram - Kingston
ECS Elitegroup mobo
Seagate HDD - 80GB

New -
AMD Phenom II X4 3.2ghz
4GB Corsair 1333Mhz ram
MSI MoBo
Samsung Spinpoint F3

-Could I move my new HDD to the old system and just copy windows onto it like that?

Any help would be great guys!

demanufactured

Windows 7 is good at this , i did it with an amd athlon to an amdphenom no problem , you will have to install drivers and whatnot for your new hardware

If you can find your windows 7 DVD it would be a better option to do a fresh install

ISO files can be got from certain websites , if you have the serial key its still legal.

Fysh

demanufactured wrote: »

Windows 7 is good at this , i did it with an amd athlon to an amdphenom no problem , you will have to install drivers and whatnot for your new hardware

If you can find your windows 7 DVD it would be a better option to do a fresh install

ISO files can be got from certain websites , if you have the serial key its still legal.

Yes, because when you've not got the MD5 checksum for a legitimate version of the ISO image what you really want to be doing is downloading something with the same name from ReallyNotAtAllDodgyInAnyWayWhatsoever.net. Or, heaven forbid, the Bay of Pirates... :rolleyes:

Best bet would be to ask for a loan of the DVD off a friend who has a copy of the same version. Product keys can be recovered easily enough from an existing working install (I think MagicalJellyBean still works for Win7, for example).