Can I use the old unformatted HD in a new system?

[ibex333]

Hello.

You can see my current system in the sig. The g80 is badly bottlenecked by the CPU so, I ordered a c2d 6300, a DS3 mobo and 2gig RAM. Today everything will be arriving, but I have so much stuff on the old HD that I dont know how I'll be backing it all up... It'll take me a whole day if not morwe to backup to DVDs. Is there any way I can AVOID formatting the old HD before placing it in the new system?


Also, if I do format it, will it work in the new system right away or I have to do something else to prepare it?

 

[lobbyone]

The best way I can think of is switching that HD to slave and use another HD as your primary, that way, no formatting.
You will need to reinstall the OS, since your going from AMD to Intel, different chipsets.

 

[bendixG15]

lobbyone got it right .... that would be my first effort

 

[Munkaz]

Yep, you can't boot off of that drive with a different system so you need a new HDD if you can't\won't format.

 

[RonAKA]

I've run a home network for quite a few years, so my normal practice would be just to copy the data files to another computer on the network. Alternately, do you know someone that has a network you can plug in to? When you back up data, there is usually more than what is in My Documents. Consider your PST if you use Outlook, WAB if you use Express, your personal dictionary if using it in MS Office. Also some apps don't save data in My Documents for some dumb reason.

Another, more expensive but potentially reasonable option is to buy a new HD. 120 is not so big anymore. Depending on where you are, $100 will get you a 320 GB or so, and you can use your 120 for backups. If you have two drives, and I assume the original OS disk, just install with the new drive connected as the master drive, and hopefully an optical drive on another channel. Windows should boot to the optical, and allow you to format the new drive and make it C:. Once you get past that, then you can connect the old drive, copy all the data. Then wait for a while and copy what you forgot. After that, format the old drive, and start using it as a backup.