Question What factors determine cross system-compatibility of a storage drive's old data? (Reusing drive in new system).

[mking8992]

I am planning on helping my parents upgrade from an old windows 7 computer. I need to be able to preserve all their photos and other related data. I will be using a variety of spare and new parts. I plan to reuse the internal storage drives as they are newer then the rest of the system. I have experience building and upgrading several computers and generally enjoy tinkering with them but when it comes to transferring or backing stuff up beyond using a thumb drive, I feel rather clueless.

Given that I don't want to migrate the operating system, the impression I have gotten so far is this shouldn't really be too much a of complex task. My concern is I don't fully understand the factors that come into play when concerned with partition formats and file system compatibility across systems. When can you just plug in a storage device with its old data and when can you not?

The storage devices on my parents original computer include a HDD, and a SSD. In disk management they both show as NTFS and MBR. If I moved all the data I wanted to keep to a "non-boot-partition (?)" on one of the drives, and If I didn't use this particular drive as the primary drive on the new system, would I be good to go? Does this distinction between a primary drive vs secondary drives matter in this context? Are there any setup factors I need to be aware of that would cause a windows 10 system install to not talk nice with MBR? What if I wanted all the drives on the new computer to be GPT? Would it be compatible with UEFI?


Would it make more sense here to just move the data to an external source first? I don't have an external drive but my personal computer with storage to spare is on on the same network (I currently live with my parents). Could I migrate the data via the LAN?

 

[Lutfij]

Please list the specs to your build like so:
CPU:
CPU cooler:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:
Monitor:
include the age of the PSU apart from it's make and model, i.e, specs for the build would be a starter.

Usually if you're working with SATA drives that are a decade old, you should be fine with any platform that has a SATA data port. I would try and get s small capacity SSD so you can install the OS onto, leaving the drive, you salvage from your folk's PC, as is.

 

[USAFRet]

While the old system is still running, save all that data to 2x neutral storage devices. Even thumb drives work for this.
NOT the built in default Libraries, but rather the files within, and any other personal data.

Simply connecting the old drive to the new system can be done, but it leads to permission issues.
Better to ward that off before you start.

 

[Dave8671]

To transfer data you can use internal or external drive to back up data to keep its simple I use FreeFileSync application. I use idrive cloud as well. I avoid USB thumb drives. I find them slow in transfer speed.

Freefilesync

Windows 10 will reach end of support on October 14, 2025. The current version, 22H2 will be the last. Might be better to think about windows 11 though on a windows 7 system not sure it will meet the requirements it.

Windows 10 will use a GPT file system which supports larger drives above 2TB MBR is obsolete in modern windows like 10 and 11.