I've bought a new pc so need to do a bit of downgrading of the others.
Can I simply take the hard drive out of one machine (old and clunky) and put it into a another with better hardware and expect it to run as normal?
It would be a single hard drive which has an operating system on it in each case.
On the face of it I'd expect it to work but there may be reasons....
Maybe, there are loads of computer operating systems, processor makes/models, along with other hw differences, that’s without getting into the question of licensing. Any one or combination of these could cause an issue so if attempting it I would ensure I had a tested backup prior to attempting if there was any data or configuration I cared about.
Is there a driver to not do a clean os installation & restore and local data?
There are of course also different types of hard drives SATA, SAS, SCSI etc. so the physical connections could well be different. There may be BIOS and driver issues.Originally Posted by Captain Morgan
If I've read the OP's post correctly, I would suggest transferring data from the old computer to the new rather than swapping the old hard drive into the new PC. That way you would have data backed up.
If you then wanted to reuse and extend the life of the old PC, you could store and replace the old hard drive with a new one, either install everything from fresh or use a clone tool to replicate the old drive onto the new one.
Remember also OP that the best way to give an old PC new life is to a) increase the RAM and b) fit a faster hard drive. An SSD is the way to go but make sure you have the correct connection for the old PC.
Last edited by dkpw; 2nd February 2023 at 15:42.
Try it: it will either boot up or it won't.
It's not going to burst into flames.
I would say no, I would Imagine all the driver's and such will be different.
For instance Dell to Dell might work but Dell to Acer or whatever, probably not.
Sent from a technical device.
I would have thought with the correct interface, the drive would show up as a new drive in Windows then you can move files to your 'C' native drive.
I would say it would run but you have a lot of crashes and it would be very slow
Hmmm, ok maybe not quite as straightforward. Both SATA drives but acer to dell so not ideal. BIOS things and details of drivers etc might be beyond me to deal with. I'll give it some thought. Thanks all.
Wouldn't Windows throw an authorization wobbly?
Are you just trying to copy data off the old drive(s) or hoping to install it and boot up off it?
If you just want to add the drive as another storage drive or want to retrieve data off it and then use it as a storage drive then I’d say it will be possible.
You might have to take ownership of the relevant folders before you can see within and you’ll end up with hidden partitions on the drive but I’d advise to copy off what you want and then delete all the partitions and then create a single new partition and format it. Repeat this for the other drives.
If you want to use it as the new OS drive then no or at least it will probably throw up a load of errors. If you want to use it as additional storage for the new PC then yes. You maybe want to get a USB-SATA adaptor so you plug it in as an external drive. That way there should be no issue with it booting off the wrong one. You can then copy off whatever you want or just wipe it before installing it.
If it works or not, before you do anything back up the hard drive.
Ideally twice physically and once virtually.
I would not personally trust it, even if it does appear to work initially. I always do a re-install when moving an SSD to a new motherboard and then initially add the correct chipset drivers - only then adding al the other ancillary drivers for sound, graphics, NIC etc.
Without a visit to reinstall city Windows may well think it's got the correct drivers for a specific piece of hardware....and then a hard crash tells you it wasn't quite right.
With old machines this is possible with a little fiddling. These days, the answer is "is TPM enabled?". Read on.
TPM stands for "Trusted Platform Module" and is a set of hardware-backed security standards that stop things like direct hardware exploitation, providing hardware-backed keys, etc. In this case, its the "hardware tampering" that will prevent you from having an easy meal of this.
If even one of the machines is using Windows 11, TPM is 100% enabled (there are exceptions but I won't get into those). In this case, don't even waste time trying. Windows 11 will not play ball and will insist you reformat the drive - it will refuse to proceed without.
If they're Windows 10 or below, the answer is maybe. Again, if either is using TPM the answer is no.
To check if you have TPM installed:
1. Open Start.
2. Search for tpm.msc and click the top result to open the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Management console.
3. Under the "Status" section, look for "The TPM is ready for use" or otherwise.
In the best case scenario where neither is using TPM, you may be prompted to perform a couple restarts but in most cases, if you have no specialised hardware (like a 10Gbit network card) you should be all good.
Last edited by dice; 3rd February 2023 at 20:52.
To echo others .
Better to do a clean install on the new machine.
Any files you want from the older machine transfer over to the new one.
I’ve never seen a PC ( or mac to be fair) that worked very well after transplanting a bootable windows drive to it . Its an emergency only thing to retreive files , even then there are better ways.
Once your new machine is wirking nicely you should be able to install the old c drive and reformat it for additional storage use .
I generally take a backup image of the c drive once stable and store it on a second hdd in the machine and also one offline or on the cloud. Encrypted.
New PCs are much better with windows than 10 years ago , they were a pain to get stable and the most innocuous driver update or new app would cause trouble meaning a reinstall of the c drive with the drive image was usually requires every few months .
I used to do this with Windows 2000 machines in the very early noughties but it was under a different Windows 10 licencing model and all of the various machines were Dell. The machines would auto-update generic drivers and after 3-4 reboots would settle down. I wouldn't bother doing it now, not least because I beleve the way that machines report into Microsoft to ensure the operating system is licenced has changed. I'd also see a new machine as an opportunity to clear out all of the crap.
In the Sotadic Zone, apparently.
Agree but I’ve had no issues with swapping bootable SSD between rigs with different mobo and w10 pro booted fine.
There wasn’t much in the machines other than graphics drivers and a few networking tools but they worked fine .
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