Old SSD into new pc, will it work?

[eagle4]

I am not a tech wizard. I have an older Dell machine that I'd like to upgrade from. I was wanting to go all out and get a prebuilt from Origin or some similar company. 

My question is, am I able to just stick my old SSD into my new tower and have everything work? or is there likely to be a bunch of stuff that wont work?

I am wanting to be up and running into my new computer as fast as possible. so I am hoping that I'd be able to turn the new pc on and it would be like I have my old pc but now it's much faster. all my programs are installed and files are where they normally are. 

Is this even possible? 

 

[Tetras]

It depends, Windows is pretty flexible now, but a BSOD boot loop is not something you can discount, so I'd always have made backups of your important files and you can expect that some apps might not work properly until they're reconfigured.

[GuiltySpark_]

Its always recommended that if you're moving to new hardware to do a full reinstall and that WILL be everyone's suggestion if you go through with your plan and things go wrong. 

 

However..

 

If you do some prep work, you can give it the best shot of going smoothly. I'd suggest going through and uninstalling drivers for anything specific to the old system, especially any chipset drivers and the like. While you're at it just uninstall any applications you don't need. 

 

Is the drive using an MBR partition table? If so if the new machine is modern, you'll want the drive to by GPT or you won't be able to boot without CSM, and even with it its a crap shoot. Drive can be converted to GPT with tools built in and there are guides you can lookup if need be. 

 

I'd like to reiterate that no one who really knows what they're doing is going to recommend you do this but if you want to, do the prep work. 

 

 

[podkall]

2 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

I'd like to reiterate that no one who really knows what they're doing is going to recommend you do this but if you want to, do the prep work.

yes because drivers aside there's things that connect hardware to Windows which is purely based off of Windows probably, and based on what parts the PC has as it's being installed fresh

[GuiltySpark_]

That's another thing, you'll almost certainly have to re-activate Windows. Now if its a retail key and you login with your MS account, it should be ok. YMMV there. 

[Brando212]

should be doable, would just recommend running a sysprep generalize command first before moving the drive to the new system

 

sysprep.exe /generalize /shutdown

 

This command will purge all drivers so they will detect and download/install fresh on next boot.

 

but it's not foolproof as others mentioned; especially if moving from Intel to AMD or vice-versa. If you do get errors or BSODs after moving the drive then I would recommend just doing a clean install.

[eagle4]

Thanks gang, As all those acronyms have gone over my head (not your fault) I think i'll take your advice and just do a full reinstall. as it's likely I'll run into issues and be completely out of my depths trying to solve it.

Thanks a bunch

[crazyfrog]

A better question would what computer wont run better with a SSD

[Kisai]

17 hours ago, eagle4 said:

I am not a tech wizard. I have an older Dell machine that I'd like to upgrade from. I was wanting to go all out and get a prebuilt from Origin or some similar company. 

My question is, am I able to just stick my old SSD into my new tower and have everything work? or is there likely to be a bunch of stuff that wont work?

 

The answer is yes only if the old drive was NVMe and the new drive is NVMe, but typically changes in the hardware won't let this work since for example the iRST driver will not be present for the MB.

 

If the old drive was SATA, and there is a SATA port on the new machine, you might be in luck, but only if the old machine was in UEFI GPT mode. If it was installed in CSM mode, you might be SOL too.

 

You can always try, you won't break anything in the new machine by doing so, but you might hose the old drive.