Computer crashed-questions about old hard drive in rebuild

[wheeler522]

alright, where to begin... My desktop (gateway dx from bestbuy) crashed last week. all of the fans worked, hard drives where humming and the power supply fan was on. the power light was flashing but could not get it to boot up at all... I figured it is either the processor or the mobo or both. I took all ram cards out and installed one at a time-still nothing. I even reset the cmos....ive been wanting to do a custom build for a while so this is my chance! only problem is that I really need to save my photo albums off of my old c drive. it has been a while since I backed up everything (stupid mistake). So I bought a bunch of stuff (corsair obsidian 800 case, asus z77 sabertooth mobo, intel 3570k processor and new copy of widows 7 64 bit). I was hoping to use my old sata hard drive as my new hard drive in the new build. I have two questions if its possible! 1: can I build it with a new hard drive and then plug the old c drive in and move the files after everything is installed and running (would I have a conflict with the old hard drive linked with the old OS and the new one (old OS is Vista btw). 2: could I install the new OS on the old hard drive without formatting it and losing all files? Any help or insight will be greatly appreciated!!!

 

[smorizio]

alright, where to begin... My desktop (gateway dx from bestbuy) crashed last week. all of the fans worked, hard drives where humming and the power supply fan was on. the power light was flashing but could not get it to boot up at all... I figured it is either the processor or the mobo or both. I took all ram cards out and installed one at a time-still nothing. I even reset the cmos....ive been wanting to do a custom build for a while so this is my chance! only problem is that I really need to save my photo albums off of my old c drive. it has been a while since I backed up everything (stupid mistake). So I bought a bunch of stuff (corsair obsidian 800 case, asus z77 sabertooth mobo, intel 3570k processor and new copy of widows 7 64 bit). I was hoping to use my old sata hard drive as my new hard drive in the new build. I have two questions if its possible! 1: can I build it with a new hard drive and then plug the old c drive in and move the files after everything is installed and running (would I have a conflict with the old hard drive linked with the old OS and the new one (old OS is Vista btw). 2: could I install the new OS on the old hard drive without formatting it and losing all files? Any help or insight will be greatly appreciated!!!

your beter off putting in a new hard drive and picking up a usb to sata cable. dont connect the old drive till you installed windows 7 on the new drive and updated the mb bios and all the drivers. with the old drive connected by the usb cable you should be able to drag and drop your old photos to the new pc. i would then put the old drive someplace safe if you find your missing some photos.

 

[wheeler522]

wow, thank you for the quick reply!!! doing the way you said, I wont have a conflict of the old vista-new win7? also, would it pop up in "my computer" and can be opened normally??? thank you so much for your help! this forum is awesome!!!

 

[smorizio]

as long as the drive data is fine windows 7 will pop it up as drive letter d or lower when you connect it to your mb after you have everything set up. at worst you may have to give the old drive a drive letter under windows drive management.