Hard Drive installation

[AHLee24]

Sorry if this is a stupid question. I just recently bought an entirely new PC to replace my 4+ year old PC. However, I still want to use the old hard drives that I have on my old PC to be used in the new PC. Would these hard drives have to be wiped & formatted before installing into my new PC or can I just plug it in. These hard drives are mostly used for storage purposes and may have a few programs installed on it. Thank you for your help. If it does require wiping/formatting, if possible, can you guys provide any reference websites of how to clone or swap hard drive data? Thanks again for your help.

 

[kobe22kobe]

no need to format , can straightaway connect it to mobo and sata to psu

 

[Sh4d0w45p]

Plug in and you should be right to go, though there are a few catches.
Chances are you won't be able to run the programs installed on the other drives as the new operating system won't recognise them.
If there are any boot problems you will need to go into the BIOS and make sure the right drive is selected in the 'boot selector'.

You should be able to access everything on the old drives without any problems. Only problem that comes to mind is a permissions problem that won't let you into certain areas. This can be easily fixed.