Can i use a old hard drive in my NEW pc build

[justin49088]

building a pc. can i use my old hdd on the new build. the hard drive has windows on it

 

[elbert]

If its SATA it should work but the windows probably not. At the very least you will need to reinstall windows.

 

[thx1138v2]

You won't be able to boot your new build from your old hard drive. The motherboard and some peripheral drivers are loaded when you install Windows and those old drivers on your old HDD won't boot your new build.

That said, you can install a new HDD or SSD, disconnect the old HDD, install your OS on your new drive, and get it to the state of a bootable machine. Be sure to connect your new drive to a lower numbered SATA port on the motherboard so the motherboard will find it first when booting up. Then power down, connect your old HDD, and power up again. You can then copy all of your data from the old HDD to the new drive. Depending on how old the HDD is, you might want to continue using it or not if it's older than about 5 years.