Building a media drive on one PC and transferring it to another

[blankj0]

So I built a new computer about a year and a half ago. I kept my old one running just in case I needed it. So far the only thing I've been using the old PC for is my music or pictures I've kept on their. I didn't want to copy the whole PC onto my new one because I wanted this one to be fresh and not full of the stuff I downloaded on my old PC over the years. What I want to do is get a new hard drive (Already acquired), copy all my music, pictures, and other media onto it, and then put that hard drive in my new computer. What's the most efficient way to do this? Is it as simple as installing it in Old PC, copy&paste, and plugging it into New PC?

 

[seagate_surfer]

Assuming you don't need the new drive to hold your Operating System drive and it's just the files/media you mentioned, then yes, it should be as simple as plugging the drive into the new computer and it showing up as extra storage. Where it gets complicated is if you want to install your Operating System on the drive, because then the OS install will want to format the new drive, thus erasing your files/media.

 

[faalin]

Yes that would be the easiest way to do it.

Plug new drive into old computer, copy/paste any information/music/movies over to new drive, remove and plug new drive into new computer. All data has been transferred to new computer.

 

[Solandri]

As long as the new computer runs the same OS family as the old computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux), yes it's that simple.

When you start mixing the different OSes, you run into problems with some OSes not recognizing filesystems commonly used by the others. Windows uses NTFS, but Macs and Linux can only read NTFS (Linux can sorta write to it). Macs use HFS+ or APFS, but Windows can't read it (Linux sorta can). Linux uses ext2/ext3, which neither Windows nor Macs can read. There are programs and drivers you can install to add cross-filesystem capability. But it's best to go with something the OSes you use can read/write natively. Which leaves us with FAT, FAT32, and exFAT.