Delete OS on Hard Drive but keep files

[ColePi]

I recently upgraded to an entirely new pc and I want to take the hard drive from my old pc and put it in my new one so I can have more storage but I want it to retain all the files outside of the os.

 

[captaincharisma]

without knowing the sizes of the drives you are using the simplest way would be to copy the files you want from the old drive to the new drive, format the old drive, after it is formatted copy the files back to the new drive and delete them off the new drive

 

[13thmonkey]

on the old PC move the files to the new PC, or move them to a directory that is not under the \users tree.

on the new PC, check that you can access these files and that there are no password/user issues. Then delete everything else.

Better, on old PC send them to new PC over the network, attach to new PC, format the disk.

Beware once you start deleting it any files that you are deleting/formatting will be gone, be sure you have everything.

 

[mjslakeridge]

There is no easy way to delete the OS from a drive, as bits and pieces of it are spread all around. Do what Captaincharisma said, or copy the files you want to save to an external drive before formatting the old drive.

 

[RolandJS]

If you're also including some 3rd party programs, I think there are a few real good migrating utilities around -- I don't know the names though. Only one name pops up for Windows XP era -- Acronis Migrate Easy.