hard drive swap

[george the lemon]

so i'm thinking of buying a new PC would it be possible to take out the old hard drive and put it in my new system if i delete old drivers from the old PC and reinstall new ones

 

if i'm wrong is there a correct way to do it

[rafazafar]

If its windows 8 and above its easy as plugging it in On first boot it will try to sort itself out. You may still need to install some missing drivers but no, you dont even need to remove old drivers.

[george357]

Yes it is possible. I have done it twice on progressively newer AMD computers. The first time I transferred the boot drive from a Turion x2 based laptop to a Phenom 2 based system. Last month I transferred the drive from the Phenom 2 laptop to my current A10-7850k based desktop. Windows has an internal tool for this called sysprep which you can read about here.

 

http://www.fixedbyvonnie.com/2014/01/heres-smart-way-move-internal-hard-drives-computers/

 

That tool will not work on systems that have used the in-place upgrade feature and would not work on mine. From what I have read swapping drives without the use of the sysprep tool has about a 50/50 chance of it working. I think much of the success is dependent on how closely related the systems are which you are swapping between. 

 

Both times I was working with Windows 7 btw.

[rafazafar]

Yes it is possible. I have done it twice on progressively newer AMD computers. The first time I transferred the boot drive from a Turion x2 based laptop to a Phenom 2 based system. Last month I transferred the drive from the Phenom 2 laptop to my current A10-7850k based desktop. Windows has an internal tool for this called sysprep which you can read about here.

 

http://www.fixedbyvonnie.com/2014/01/heres-smart-way-move-internal-hard-drives-computers/

 

That tool will not work on systems that have used the in-place upgrade feature and would not work on mine. From what I have read swapping drives without the use of the sysprep tool has about a 50/50 chance of it working. I think much of the success is dependent on how closely related the systems are which you are swapping between. 

 

Both times I was working with Windows 7 btw.

Nice to know it works with Win 7. Have you tried the one on Windows 8/8.1 or know of any difference? cus i have been swapping from laptops to dekstops alot and every single time it just works.

[george357]

Nice to know it works with Win 7. Have you tried the one on Windows 8/8.1 or know of any difference? cus i have been swapping from laptops to dekstops alot and every single time it just works.

Nah, I never moved to Widows 8/8.1 so the only experience I have with it is limited to setting it up on friends computers.

[george the lemon]

if i used sys prep would it keep the original user accounts as i have 4

[george357]

if i used sys prep would it keep the original user accounts as i have 4

I believe it will. I think you use a default user account in the sysprep setup that you would delete after transfer is complete. You may want to research it further to be sure as I am speaking from memory and not experience.

[rafazafar]

if i used sys prep would it keep the original user accounts as i have 4

Its will be the same. Nothing is changed other than the fact that it may or may not be able to run the hardware correctly, even then it will most likely boot unless you have some encryption/safety on it. 

Again, what windows do you use?

[george the lemon]

so all users will be restored after admin account is restored

[george the lemon]

Its will be the same. Nothing is changed other than the fact that it may or may not be able to run the hardware correctly, even then it will most likely boot unless you have some encryption/safety on it. 

Again, what windows do you use?

win 7

[george357]

so all users will be restored after admin account is restored

To the best of my knowledge yes. I would make a full disk image before I began, just in case.

[rafazafar]

I just tried it out for you. Took my friends win7 from an Acer v5 laptop and put in my desktop pc.
Booted just fine, just missing some hardware drivers like my bluetooth and wifi. None of the accounts changed.

It did run a chkdisk on the laptop after i swapped it back, but it worked normally afterwards.

[george the lemon]

thanks