[SOLVED] Is it possible to clean the boot drive while leaving other drives intact?

[Matth3www]

Hello, so I've recently installed a new motherboard, cpu and ram into my pc, it's natural it doesn't boot and I know the easiest way to solve it is to wipe your drive clean and install fresh windows, but except my ssd boot drive I have a 2tb hdd filled with games, files etc. It will take a while to install everything again after cleaning it so I'm wodering, if I wipe my boot drive and install fresh new windows on it without touching the other drives will it boot with my old files on it or will it straight up not work?

Hope this question is understandable since I don't really know much about pc's

Thank you.

 

[USAFRet]

Hello, so I've recently installed a new motherboard, cpu and ram into my pc, it's natural it doesn't boot and I know the easiest way to solve it is to wipe your drive clean and install fresh windows, but except my ssd boot drive I have a 2tb hdd filled with games, files etc. It will take a while to install everything again after cleaning it so I'm wodering, if I wipe my boot drive and install fresh new windows on it without touching the other drives will it boot with my old files on it or will it straight up not work?

Hope this question is understandable since I don't really know much about pc's

Thank you.

For the OS reinstall, you wane/need all other drives physically disconnected anyway.

Reconnect them after it is running on the new hardware.

Read through this:

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[TerryLaze]

Hello, so I've recently installed a new motherboard, cpu and ram into my pc, it's natural it doesn't boot and I know the easiest way to solve it is to wipe your drive clean and install fresh windows, but except my ssd boot drive I have a 2tb hdd filled with games, files etc. It will take a while to install everything again after cleaning it so I'm wodering, if I wipe my boot drive and install fresh new windows on it without touching the other drives will it boot with my old files on it or will it straight up not work?

Hope this question is understandable since I don't really know much about pc's

Thank you.

Most things will still work if you click on their icons but all the shortcuts and menu entries will be gone so you will have to create new ones.
Some thing will probably also not run anymore and will need to be reinstalled.
Steam games are no problem since you can just add the current folder as a steam folder.