Old HDD's into new case - question

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NewbAmoeba

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#1 NewbAmoeba
Member since 2008 • 198 Posts

I got a new rig recently (specs in the sig). My current 750 GB HDD works fine, I have Vista 64 bit on it. But I want to use my other two hard drives, one of which has my old Windows Vista 32 bit (I didn't upgrade from 32-64, just got a new one). I want to be able to get my hard drives in my new rig, but without losing any of the memory of them by formatting the drives. Is there a way possible? I haven't totally experimented, one because I'm a newb at hard drives and two because I don't want to bother risking anything where I have no knowledge in...

Thanks in advance GS guys (and girls).

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imprezawrx500

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#2 imprezawrx500
Member since 2004 • 19187 Posts
the drives will work fine but windows may or may not boot. If all your data is on the c drive and windows fails to boot you will probably loose it. if it is on any other partition it will be fine even if you reload windows. If you still have your old system, uninstall all the drivers then windows should boot fine on a new system.
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NewbAmoeba

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#3 NewbAmoeba
Member since 2008 • 198 Posts
the drives will work fine but windows may or may not boot. If all your data is on the c drive and windows fails to boot you will probably loose it. if it is on any other partition it will be fine even if you reload windows. If you still have your old system, uninstall all the drivers then windows should boot fine on a new system. imprezawrx500
So if I still have the hard drives in my old system and uninstall all drivers (driver sweeper methinks) and then plug em right into my new rig they will work? Also, I'm not familiar with partition... One of my drives is the C drive from my old computer... but my new Seagate Barracuda is the C drive on my new one. Should I just change the old one to like, J drive? Confused here :|
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GTR12

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#4 GTR12
Member since 2006 • 13490 Posts

Yeh change it too some different letter, and make sure you set the HDD as a slave, not master, otherwise you will get conflicting drivers/programs.

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mike4realz

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#5 mike4realz
Member since 2003 • 2577 Posts
yes u can just install ur old hard drives in there but u just have to make sure that your computer will boot to ur current 750GB hard drive which it should by default...if not, u need to go to the bios and change the hard disk boot priority and select ur 750GB hard drive as the 1st boot
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chefkw

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#7 chefkw
Member since 2004 • 2588 Posts

You can add is as many drives as your motherboard has connections for and read/write data just fine without needing to format. Just don't expect to boot the old OSes on them UNLESS they were all originally loaded on your current rig. And be sure your BIOS still has your 750GB HDD as the main boot device.