# Transferring old Hard Drive to New Computer?



## diamondrajoor (Jun 17, 2009)

I just bought a new computer, and was wondering if I could simply transfer my old hard drive to the new PC. FYI, my old computer was a Dell Dimension 8300, Windows XP, with an 80GB HD. My new computer is a custom Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition, Vista Home Premium 64, with a 1TB HD. Basically:

(1) If I physically remove the old Dell HD and put it in the new computer, will I be able to access my files?

(2) Will I be able to boot from the Windows XP operating system installed on the old HD? (And not compromise my ability to alternatively boot from Vista 64 on the new HD)?

(3) Can I copy the contents of the old HD to an external HD and achieve the result in #2?

Any advice would be appreciated!


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## freaksavior (Jun 17, 2009)

diamondrajoor said:


> I just bought a new computer, and was wondering if I could simply transfer my old hard drive to the new PC. FYI, my old computer was a Dell Dimension 8300, Windows XP, with an 80GB HD. My new computer is a custom Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition, Vista Home Premium 64, with a 1TB HD. Basically:
> 
> (1) If I physically remove the old Dell HD and put it in the new computer, will I be able to access my files?
> 
> ...




1) Yes

2) probably but dont expect it to work well

3) Do you mean an encloser?


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## Papahyooie (Jun 17, 2009)

Yes you'll be able to access your files no problem (from within the OS on the new hard drive). However dont count on it booting from that hard drive. The driver issues will most likely be too much, and it will just blue screen. Theres always a chance it will boot, so try it out, but its going to be a mess uninstalling all the drivers from the previous computer then installing the new ones. It wont be clean, thats for sure. Better to put the old hard drive in the new machine, back up your files to the new hard drive, then reinstall xp on the old hard drive from scratch, if you are able to do that. Ive tried transferring hard drives between computers several times, and most of the time (unless the computers are very similar hardware-wise, i.e. two dells of the same series) they just blue screen. A handful of times though, it has worked, so try it out and see.

As for the external, no it will still have the same effect, as the drivers will kill it (once again, most likely)


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## hat (Jun 17, 2009)

You'll be able to access your files but don't try booting off of it... it won't work too well lol. Maybe if you could get into safe mode and uninstall the drivers off of it and install your new ones but even so that probably just won't work too well and the 1TB drive is faster anyway.


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## mlee49 (Jun 17, 2009)

I've heard cases where you can uninstall every driver from the previous motherboard and boot onto the new board.  But that was merely mythical and with ancient boards(nForce4 chipset).


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## twilyth (Jun 17, 2009)

Sorry for going against the trend, but I've transplanted mobos and left the HD in place and it booted fine.  I've done this about 2 or 3 times over the past 6 months or so.

In one case I went from a Q6600 with an nvidia 7xxx series card and MSI mobo to a Q9450 with an ATI HD4850 and MSI p45 platinum.

On others i swapped out the mobos and maybe the memory.  One went from a Gigabyte P35 DQ6 to and MSI Neo2 FR and the other from a gigabyte P35 DS4 to another MSI Neo2 FR.

Most recently, I flashed the bios on an MSI K9N2GM-FD and dropped in a Phenom II 940.  Although I guess that one doesn't really count.

I've done this on other machines too with no problem - just can't remember specifics since it was over a year ago I would guess.

The only thing that will happen is the video will default to whatever level is supported by the generic driver that Windows uses.  But the video will probably work.  You'll just have to have the drivers handy.  Of course you also have to install whatever drivers you need for the integrated peripherals like network adapter.

I don't have enough experience to be sure, but I think there is a good chance it will boot up fine.  You'll just have to install the necessary drivers.  

As for the old drivers, I've never bothered to remove them and AFAIK, they haven't caused any problems.

good luck!


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## Papahyooie (Jun 17, 2009)

Twilyth is right, it does happen, and he's been pretty lucky. But on the average that happening is few and far between. That first example is just nuts, I wouldnt even have bothered trying on that one lol, unless it was a brand new clean install in the first place. Once its been used for awhile it gets messy. But just goes to show you... try it first and see. You may get lucky.

Edit: looking at the first example again, i take that back, the mobos were both from MSI, so maybe they shared enough characteristics to work (though im not knowlegable about the boards themselves, so I cant say that for sure). Bottom line again, try it and see.


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## DonInKansas (Jun 24, 2009)

Is it necromancy if the last post was less than a week ago?

This is similar to what I'm going to attempt to do with the new comps we got here at work.  I'm going to clone our old drives to the new ones, then boot the new drives on the old comps long enough to wipe the mobo drivers, then try to boot new drives in new comps.  From what I've read, if you get rid of most of the mobo/video drivers it can be pulled off with a reasonable success rate.


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## Melvis (Jun 24, 2009)

diamondrajoor said:


> I just bought a new computer, and was wondering if I could simply transfer my old hard drive to the new PC. FYI, my old computer was a Dell Dimension 8300, Windows XP, with an 80GB HD. My new computer is a custom Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition, Vista Home Premium 64, with a 1TB HD. Basically:
> 
> (1) If I physically remove the old Dell HD and put it in the new computer, will I be able to access my files?
> 
> ...




(1) Yes, you will be able to get to all your files.

(2) Maybe, as stated before^ it can happen, but also a good chance it wont happen. Best bet to make sure it does boot is to uninstall the Graphics drivers first (main one to uninstall), and also if you can the Chipset drivers and sound drivers. After this is done since its a older computer my guess it runs IDE? so you will have to connect your HDD using the old IDE cable not SATA and then select in your BIOS the HDD that you wish to boot from First, otherwise it will just load your main OS. Then install all the drivers needed that your computer uses (Graphics/Sound/Chipset etc)

(3) yes and is the easiest way to do so IMO lol

Good Luck


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## ShiBDiB (Jun 24, 2009)

#2 u will likely encounter some weird problems because of a drastic hardware change. Give her a try tho and let us know


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## digibucc (Jun 24, 2009)

it's entirely possible to switch motherboards and still run the same HDD - the problems get caused by the gpu mostly - if you are staying with a brand , it might even still work.
I recently switched my win7 boot drive from an ASRock to an Asus board - and it booted fine.  I am actually still running it weeks later no problems.

that being said - I have tried to do the same thing many times before with no luck.  I have had it work 3 out of maybe 8 or 9 times - so the chances aren't great.


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## Geofrancis (Jun 24, 2009)

i find it rarely works if the chipset is different it will usualy BSOD before it gets to the desktop. 

the way i usualy do it without a spare hard drive is to get some sort of live cd that can read a ntfs file system. i have seen some xp live cd's on various torrent sites and most linux live cd's can also read it but few can write to it reliably then move all your important files to a folder on the C drive then delete the windows folder, program files and the documents and settings folder. that should be your hard drive cleared for you to reinstall windows.

REMEMBER when selecting the partition to reinstall windows to. once you have selected it it will ask you if you want to format the partition select LEAVE FILE SYSTEM INTACT! or you will lose everything.

once it has installed all the files you have backed up to the folder on the C drive will still be there and you can put them back to my docs or whatever.


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## mordant80 (Jun 24, 2009)

With xp, if it doesn't boot in the new system, all you need to do is a repair install of xp.  That will get you in to windows, and then it's just a matter of installing the drivers for the new system.  Had to do that many many times on customer pc's that had a bad motherboard or something like that and had to replace with something completely different.

There's a option to repair when you boot of the windows disc..  it will keep everything intact.


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