What will happen when i put my old hdd into a new pc with windows installed on it?

[RitoVazan]

I want to buy a new PC that has an 240gb ssd and a 1tb hdd with windows 10 installed (probably on ssd?)
Yes it's prebuilt but its for a really GOOD price, but
I want to put my old HDD with all my files and stuff in it but I obviously have windows 10 on it.
So i want to know what will happen and what should i do when i put my old hdd in the new pc?

 

[Colif]

which copy of windows 10 are you going to use? I assume the new?
Do you intend to use the ssd as C drive and old drive as E or do you want to use the hdd as C drive?

if you want to use the hdd as storage only, just put it in now and PC will ignore its got windows 10 on it but it won't see any of the applications installed, so you would need to reinstall them for the ssd to see them. You may need to delete the old win 10 install at some stage, as it may confuse the bios if you ever reset it, as it will then see 2 win 10 installs.

If you want to use HDD as C drive in the new PC, you will want to follow this: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/20530/windows-10-reactivating-after-hardware-change before moving it, and there is always the fun of the install not liking the new hardware and not booting anyway. Its always a better idea to fresh install on new hardware... and its fresh on SSD now so I would use it instead of hdd as boot (that and its faster)

 

[Isokolon]

If it isn't selected as boot drive you'll be fine.
You won't be able to boot from your HDD
If there's windows on your ssd and it is your selected boot drive, you can just boot up

Your files should still work.
As for application and programs, most of them won't, some might.
I suggest saving all data to a device (if it's only documents and save games you can try to store it on the ssd temporarily or on a flash drive) and then reformating the HDD. This is the cleanest way.

 

[RitoVazan]

If it isn't selected as boot drive you'll be fine.
You won't be able to boot from your HDD
If there's windows on your ssd and it is your selected boot drive, you can just boot up

Your files should still work.
As for application and programs, most of them won't, some might.
I suggest saving all data to a device (if it's only documents and save games you can try to store it on the ssd temporarily or on a flash drive) and then reformating the HDD. This is the cleanest way.

I've got my photos and other files that I don't want to loose on my flash drive already. So I should boot from the ssd and then format my old hdd?