New PC Build - Transfer Hard Drive WITH Data?

[kinetickonvict]

Hello All,

I see different topics on this however none that exactly fit what I am trying to do (unless I looked over it on accident). Hopefully you will understand what I am asking....

I bought a new case and am upgrading from an ASUS H170-PRO/CSM to the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS VIII HERO Z170 ATX. Both are LGA1151. I am transferring my i7-7700k/cooler, GPU, RAM from my existing machine to my new build (all that'll be left in my old build is my case, old mobo & crappy SSD w/ Windows 10 and PSU).

I bought a NEW copy of Windows 10 and a Samsung EVO 250GB which I will be using as my boot drive.

Question I have is for my HDD:
In my current/old build. I have a 1 TB Hard Drive that has a ton of hours of videos/game installs/save files and launchers such as Steam, Origin, Battlestate. I would REALLY like to keep ALL of that stuff and am hoping I could just simply unplug from old machine and plug into new machine.... Is that possible? I mean its going from a ASUS H170 to a ASUS Z170. It will be x-fered into a new Windows 10 install.

I would prefer to not reformat bc I have about thousands of photos, hours of gameplay videos, a ton of games w save files on drive. Plus I'd have to buy another 1TB portable storage to even back this up in order to transfer it onto a clean install.


Thank you in advance!!!

 

[Gam3r01]

You can easily just plug it into the new system and have most of your data right where it was before.
All your files, meaning pictures, videos, game files, etc will still be there once you plug it in.
However, when you install all your programs again on you SSD (which you should do) you will need to reinstall your game clients, and those have default directories you will need to change.

You can change the game directory to the folder with all your games on you HDD and it will figure out the files are already there an use them. Game saves you will have to transfer to their specific folder on the SSD (unless they are cloud based).

 

[kinetickonvict]

Thank you for your help! Thank heavens!