I want to install a windows on a SATA HDD I was using in an enclosure and put it in a computer

[adnan.farooqui]

Hi,
 I need to install windows on a SATA HDD, which I have been using inside an enclosure as a storage device. I sourced it out of an old pc of mine. Now I am repairing that PC for my younger brother and I have ordered the motherboard and RAM. The data inside the HDD is important to me, plus I don't have time to copy that data to another place and then install fresh windows on it. I need a solution where I can just keep the data on it and also install windows on it. 
I have a MacBook so you can assume that I don't have any other PC using which I can do this. I gotta do all this using those new components and the HDD with that data.
Please help me find a solution to this. 

[Aniallation]

If it's NTFS formatted, Windows will usually allow you to just install onto it anyways and not erase any data, as long as there's enough free space. If it's formatted to Mac file system or APFS or whatever though you can't, you'll need to back up your data first, then format to NTFS (or have the Windows install do it for you).

 

But as a boot drive.... SSDs are cheap

[adnan.farooqui]

1 minute ago, Aniallation said:

If it's NTFS formatted, Windows will usually allow you to just install onto it anyways and not erase any data, as long as there's enough free space.

 

But as a boot drive.... SSDs are cheap

It has exfat I guess because it is compatible with mac and windows both. SSDs are currently not available in my country due to the lockdown so I have to get it running for now. I will upgrade to an ssd whenever they are available

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

You could try shrinking the partition with the data on it with the Windows Disk Management utility, then creating a new partition in the free space, and then installing windows onto that new partition. Never done this, but it seems like it might work.

 

Good luck!

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Just now, adnan.farooqui said:

It has exfat I guess because it is compatible with mac and windows both. SSDs are currently not available in my country due to the lockdown so I have to get it running for now. I will upgrade to an ssd whenever they are available

Yea you would have to format the drive then... I guess you could shrink the exfat partition and create a NTFS one in the freed up space. But that isn't elegant. 

[Aniallation]

3 minutes ago, adnan.farooqui said:

It has exfat I guess because it is compatible with mac and windows both. SSDs are currently not available in my country due to the lockdown so I have to get it running for now. I will upgrade to an ssd whenever they are available

Unfortunately you need an NTFS partition to install Windows on. You could do what others above have suggested of shrinking the partition and creating an NTFS one in the empty space, but honestly that's just as much time and effort as you could be spending just backing up the files to somewhere and doing a fresh install on a clean drive. It's much less cluttered that way and less likely to run into weird issues or poor performance afterwards.

[adnan.farooqui]

Totally agree with you all two partitions with different file systems is not a good combination, I guess I would have to back up the data somewhere and perform a clean install.