Hard Drives

Dalarom1701

Baseband Member
Messages
23
Hi i have a question and i need help. I just built a computer piece by piece although i have not yet bought a hard drive and for now i want to take the hard drive in this computer a put it in that. What i need help with is having that work.
 
you can put the hard drive in the new computer and then put your o/s disk in and try doing a repair install. But unless the two computers are similar specs it prob won't work
 
You can put the old HDD in the new computer if the motherboard and processor are the same brand. IE: Intel to Intel. If you decide to do this, you won't see any increase in performance. Why? Well, the old HDD was installed to perform with the specs of the old computer. If you put it on the new one, it will only perform as good as it would perform on the old one. To actually use all of the new computer's performance, a reformat is required (not the quick one).
 
You can put the old HDD in the new computer if the motherboard and processor are the same brand. IE: Intel to Intel. If you decide to do this, you won't see any increase in performance. Why? Well, the old HDD was installed to perform with the specs of the old computer. If you put it on the new one, it will only perform as good as it would perform on the old one. To actually use all of the new computer's performance, a reformat is required (not the quick one).

I have no idea where you got this "idea" from, but it's wrong, the hdd has no bearing on the performance of the other parts of the computer, if two guys had the exact same hardware except one had an E2200 and the other had a Q6700 you could swap the hard drive back and forth and there would be a very noticeable difference in performance running the same programs on each computer...
 
If you're running Windows XP, you can easily swap a hard drive into a new machine. This will show you how:

Swapping your board without so much as a reinstall

I've used this method a few times without a hitch.

You could also simply do a repair install after installing the old drive. Just be sure to have the OS install CD in the drive at first boot.

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install

How to automatically repair Windows Vista using Startup Repair

Doing this will leave all your files and programs intact, but you will need to reinstall all drivers and updates.
 
While you can swap, it's not really worth the trouble... It can lead to driver problems unless the hardware is exactly the same. If the hardware was the same I wouldn't see a point in doing it as you aren't upgrading anything in that case... Just do a full reinstall. It takes like an hour or 2 at most normally and it's well worth it. I don't understand what's so scary about doing a dang Windows reinstall for everyone... Chances are you've been running on the same Windows install for several years now and it's full of crap that needs to be cleaned out so it needs a reinstall anyway. I reinstall 2-3 times yearly.
 
this is what i did when i had your situation
i made 2 partitions on my hard drive
one for the os and to install programs and one to store files such as movies music programs. now since i new i would eventually be moving over to a new computer i kept a notepad with all the programs i used and a download link to get them easily
when swap time came i just reformatted the os partition and installed my os
 
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