Old Hdd into a new system

Tony Glover

Honorable
Aug 8, 2013
16
0
10,510
Hi,
I have an old Dell Inspiron 530 from around 2007 running vista. I'm looking to build/buy a new system in the next few months. How easy would it be to transfer my old hard drives to a new system.
Thanks!
 
Solution


Assuming the old drive is SATA, it will 'work'.

But you're ultimately doing a lot of rework.
Build it with the old drive.
Install the new OS (and applications)
Replace the old drive with a new SSD
Redo the install, either a clone operation or reinstall again.
My new system will be Win8 I guess, once I have that setup will plugging the other OS HDD cause problems? I don't want Vista, will I still be able to access anything on that drive (or able to delete Vista without affecting everything else?)
 


You can access stuff, but the existing applications will not run.
They all need to be reinstalled.

Ideally, you get any critical data off it, and wipe all partitions. Then use as needed. But that drive is getting quite old.
 
I trust you're not planning to install the HDD from that Dell Inspiron as your boot drive in the new desktop PC. Because if you are it's a near certainty that you're going to very disappointed in the performance of your new machine. As long as you use that HDD as a secondary drive for whatever purpose you have in mind it will probably serve you fine.

If at all possible $-wise, spring for an SSD as your boot drive - you'll never regret it.
 
Absolutely planning on SSD for my new OS. Having a few technical problems with the Dell at the mo and I figured instead of trying to fix it, I could just wait until I got the new system then grab what I need once I'm up and running (then kiss goodbye to the old drives)
 


Assuming the old drive is SATA, it will 'work'.

But you're ultimately doing a lot of rework.
Build it with the old drive.
Install the new OS (and applications)
Replace the old drive with a new SSD
Redo the install, either a clone operation or reinstall again.
 
Solution