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Will I be able to pull a switcheroo with hard drives?

J

JoeFahey

Platinum Member
My parents need a new rig, and so do I. My budget is somewhat tight, so what I will do is build mostly a new rig for myself, and give them my old one. (which is more than enough for what they use it for) My question is, can I take their old hd, and put it into my old computer, and then take my old hd, and put it into my new computer? They have Windows ME on their old hd.
 
Yes you can, but you should still do a new installation of windows for both machines. Also, if you are building a new (or mostly new) computer for yourself, then I would replace teh hard drive also. The HD is usually your bottleneck, and you aren't helping yourself out that much by using an old one when new ones are 50-100 bucks.
 
Originally posted by: Tsaico
Yes you can, but you should still do a new installation of windows for both machines. Also, if you are building a new (or mostly new) computer for yourself, then I would replace teh hard drive also. The HD is usually your bottleneck, and you aren't helping yourself out that much by using an old one when new ones are 50-100 bucks.
Click to expand...

Well the one for my new setup is about 2 years old. Its a 150gb Seagate Sata. I only use about 70gb's. I don't need much space. A new one would be much faster would it?
 
If your setup is 2 years old, why on earth would you rather use windows ME? That is why I thought your rig was older than that.

But the core issue is still the same, you can, but if the HDs are now attached to different mobos/cpus, it is best to re-install windows.

Edit : Oh pooh, I re-read your post, and I thought both drives in question had windows ME. sorry for that... but I still stand with my origional assesment, that you can swap the drives around to best make use of the space, but when it comes to the OS and IO of the Motherboard, most of us would still prefer to re-install windows than try to add all the devices in a different rig.
 
Should be able to. Best thing is before the hard drive is pulled from the old machine, go into safe mode of Windows ME and remove as many entries in the device manager as you can. When it's hooked into the other computer, you may have to first tell it to search for the new hardware by the add/remove hardware icon in the control panel.
 
Originally posted by: Tsaico
If your setup is 2 years old, why on earth would you rather use windows ME? That is why I thought your rig was older than that.

But the core issue is still the same, you can, but if the HDs are now attached to different mobos/cpus, it is best to re-install windows.
Click to expand...

Well, for what they would use my old rig for, (just emails and a little web browsing), I figure their hd and Windows ME would be fine.

By the way though, I can reinstall Windows XP for my new rig, because I bought the disk, but the Windows ME for their old hd, (which was from a gateway), didn't come with an Install disk I dont think. I can check to see if it did, but I'm not sure. Do Gateways normally come with the disk?
 
Originally posted by: Tsaico
If your setup is 2 years old, why on earth would you rather use windows ME? That is why I thought your rig was older than that.

But the core issue is still the same, you can, but if the HDs are now attached to different mobos/cpus, it is best to re-install windows.
Click to expand...

Seriously, for a whole lot of people, it is far more worthwhile for them to save the current installation, software, settings, documents, etc. as is, than the very small performance gain a re-install gives you. If done properly, hard drives can be switched between systems without any stability problems. Just last week I moved a Windows 98 drive from a Pentium 3 to a Pentium 4 and the system is rock solid stable.
 
So all I have to do it put the old hd into my old rig, and it will work? I don't have to install any drivers or anything?
 
Probably be best, to create a new partition on the drive, install fresh onto that partition, then migrate from old to new.
 
Originally posted by: Big Lar
Probably be best, to create a new partition on the drive, install fresh onto that partition, then migrate from old to new.
Click to expand...

Make a new partition on both of the HD's?

If anything goes wrong and doesn't work, am I looking at hardware damage? What am I risking? At worst will I just have to end up reinstalling anyways?
 
No, you're not risking hardware damage and yes, the worst that will happen is that you'll lose the data on the HD and have to reinstall. Microsoft officially recommends doing an OS "upgrade" when switching mobos/cpus.
 
the main parts from my old rig that I would be putting their windows ME hd in would be:
-AMD 64 3500+
-9800 Pro
-MSI K8n Neo2 plat.

Do you think that compatibility will be an issue?

I really hope I can just switch them out since it would cost around $150 more. ($50 hd and $100 XP Home)
 
There really shouldn't be a compatability problem. Like someone above me said--uninstall as many devices/drivers as you can, particularly any chipset drivers. Should be OK, most likely.
 
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