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Moving a hard drive into a new computer

A

aajabu

Junior Member
Maybe someone can offer me a little advice, I was recently given a computer and I would like to move the hard drive from my current computer into the new one and make the HD from the new one a slave (second HD, I'm not sure if slave is the right term). Would this work without reformatting both drives? I assumed I'd need to reformat the new drive that I want to make into a secondary drive, but I was hoping I might not have to reformat the old drive I currently use as I don't have a burner in the computer so backing it up will be a chore.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
 
In theory no but in reality yes. Your installation of windows contains a lot of information about your motherboard and the chipsets on it. When you move the drive to the new computer, it will know the motherboard has changed. It is supposed to add the correct support but may have problems doing it correctly. You may wind up with a sytem that won't boot or is unstable.

You do not have to reformat to make the other drive the slave although you may want to do it to get rid of the old windows installation and any other junk that is there.
 
What if I used my current drive in the new computer as a slave would that have better luck?Of course I would still have to reformat the existing drive the new computer as it is running 2000 and my current computer has 98 on it.
 
Make your new HD a slave. Copy everything you need off the slave (new HD) to the master (old HD). Then format the slave. Then make the slave the master and the master the slave and install an OS on the master (new HD).

You could just make your new HD the master and wipe out all the drivers and reinstall them but sometimes the computer just isn't as stable as a clean install.
 
when I did that, I kept getting the blue screen of death. Someone else i know, only had to reregister it with M$ and he was good to go.

 
Why couldn't you just make your current drive the slave, and leave the new one as the master?

This way, not only would you leave your data intact, but also would be able to dual boot.

However, I'm not sure if 2k reads Fat32, and I'm confident 98 doesn't read NTFS.

This way, you could avoid reformatting either drive though.
 
if I make my current drive the slave and reformatted the new one to 98 would that work so that I could avoid a dual boot?
 
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