Need help adding old PC's HDD Bootdrive to new PC as secondary storage

[Vale88]

As the title says I need helping putting the 2TB HDD bootdrive from my old Windows 10 computer into my new one as a secondary drive for storage. I would like to do this while keeping all of the personal files on the HDD. The new computer currently has a singular 1TB NVME SSD setup with Windows 10.

Just knowing how Windows can be and my general bad luck, I'm worried about something going terribly wrong if I were to do this myself without instructions, and I can't seem to find a clear detailed answer for my specific question on Google. Is there anything in particular I need to do or know about?

Thanks!

[IkeaGnome]

Backup the personal files to a different drive, format the drive to clean it off, put personal files back on the drive. 

[Wh0_Am_1]

Or you could just be lazy now (and possibly more annoyed later) and literally just chuck it in, depending on your settings you may need to then select which version of windows to boot but otherwise no other issues.

[Fasauceome]

I did this on my personal computer, I didn't even reformat the drive. I just put it in and left everything as it was with the new windows install on the SSD. If you delete all the windows system files off the hard drive it'll never be seen as a valid boot option, so you should do that after you finish setting up the system on the SSD.

[Vale88]

Thanks for all of your help! I ended up just chucking the HDD in without reformatting and everything's working perfectly so far, it detected the HDD as a secondary drive and booted from the SSD automatically.

On 5/10/2022 at 4:02 PM, Fasauceome said:

If you delete all the windows system files off the hard drive it'll never be seen as a valid boot option, so you should do that after you finish setting up the system on the SSD.

My next question would be what's the easiest way to delete the old windows install from the HDD without reformatting?

[Fasauceome]

1 hour ago, Vale88 said:

Thanks for all of your help! I ended up just chucking the HDD in without reformatting and everything's working perfectly so far, it detected the HDD as a secondary drive and booted from the SSD automatically.

My next question would be what's the easiest way to delete the old windows install from the HDD without reformatting?

There's just a folder called "windows" that you can go into and get rid of the system files. But in the users folder is your personal data, so after you've gotten all that out you can delete that folder too.

 

Not that there's probably all that much in there. For me it was pretty much just Minecraft saves and dark souls saves. For the most part, just make sure non-cloud saved games have their info pulled.

[wseaton]

Just shove the old drive onto a spare SATA port in the new PC. Not sure why everybody is making this difficult.:-)

 

Oh wait....you did that.