As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Adding old harddrive to new computer?
Frostozuna
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I recently built a new computer but have my previous one sitting around still. I wasn't sure what to do with it so I decided to salvage the hard drive and the DVD burner to toss into the new tower, and then try and sell the other parts on eBay or whatever
I figured Id just use the older smaller HD for data and throw whatever movies/music/etc onto it. My question is this: will I run into any complications plugging my old HD into the new tower? The new computer has its own SATA HD with Vista installed, and the HD from the old tower is also SATA but has XP installed. I'm assuming the two won't play nice but was wondering if there was a way to go about this without just formatting the old HD
I figured Id just use the older smaller HD for data and throw whatever movies/music/etc onto it. My question is this: will I run into any complications plugging my old HD into the new tower? The new computer has its own SATA HD with Vista installed, and the HD from the old tower is also SATA but has XP installed. I'm assuming the two won't play nice but was wondering if there was a way to go about this without just formatting the old HD
Frostozuna on
0
Posts
You probably won't be able to run any programs off it, what with all the weird registry issues that brings.
You should be fine to just plug it in and go; might want to check the bios when you boot up just to make sure it's booting the vista drive first, but you could even just try it first and see if it'll be set right anyway
Running stuff usually doesn't work, though it depends on the program... but sometimes if you just copy the entire directory to the same location on your new drive it'll work (more old games though, I think i've had an installation of Colonization that i've carried over from about 4 hd's now)
If you know your stuff, and are willing to risk trashing Windows or just cluttering your registry, you can try transplanting registry settings. For most programs, finding their folders in HKEY_Local_Machine/Software and/or HKEY_Current_User/Software is enough (the format is usually HKEY/Software/Developer/Program). Export them before you pull the drive from the old computer, and import them to your registry after you install it in the new system, then make sure you move the programs themselves to the same location on your main drive. I've managed to get some programs running this way in a pinch.
You'll probably be forced to manually uninstall programs (just delete their folder and registry entries), since Add/Remove control panel entries are buried somewhere else.\
Edit: Having XP on the old drive will play nicely. As far as Vista cares, the XP folder is just data, it won't be booting XP. If you set it up to boot XP, then XP won't care about the Vista folder. A long time ago, I faked dual booting this way by changing the boot order in the bios when I wanted to use one or the other.