Windows 10: Can You Use an Old Boot Drive for Your New System?

Hey everyone!

So as it is the holiday season I’m looking into building a new rig(as I’m sure a whole lot of others are). And I just had a question. So I have an SSD that I made my boot drive/installed windows on it from a USB on my current rig when I had built it. I also have a retail version of Windows that is linked to my account, thus my OS isn’t tied with any of my hardware (like my motherboard). I was just wondering, if I would just be able to use the same SSD, with all of the other data I have on it to boot off of for my new system when I do build it? Or would I have to do a clean install and find a way to continue using that SSD with all the other data on it as well. Would love some answers and if anyone has any advice it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

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:)

 

new system old hard drive...

I have an old hard drive that has those old ribbon connections to transfer data to the mother board.

I have a new computer that mostly uses those cool little ATA (I think that is what they are called) connections.

The new computer has a Vista OS.

I opened up the case and I was supprised to see on the motherboard a wide ribbon connection and so I connected the old hard drive and a free power connection.

When I turned on the computer, the system started up like usual and did not notice the new hard drive.

I went to the Control Pannel and did an automatic add hard drive call and it did not find the old hard drive.

Any suggestions?

 

Old Hard drive to new hard drive

I now have my old hard drive converted to an external drive and am wondering what is the best way to move files from the old to the new. I was thinking of booting the old drive and saving the files I want to the cloud and then downloading them to my new
computer. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

 

Can't boot from new drive

Thanks for the reply, but I'm not following you...

• What are you suggesting I unplug? Other USB devices? Done, but made no difference. (Ethernet? Monitors? Don't think that'll help.)
  
• Not sure I understand your partitioning advice?
  
• Also unclear about SSD drivers; if there was a driver issue, wouldn't it had failed to work at all? (As mentioned, I am able to boot Windows from the new drive as long as the old one is still plugged in...and it works just fine as a secondary drive.)