Harddrive with windows preinstalled?

[LONESTORMER]

Im getting my new pc parts shipped in tomorrow and i wanted to reuse some parts from my old computer to cut costs. One (two?) of which being my two HDDs. One of them has windows installed on it from my old computer. Would i be able to essentially plug and play them keeping all my old data? Or would i have to do a fresh install of windows on my main harddrive. And if so how would i go about wiping my C: drive?

[Jacktastic-Mofo]

Just change the boot drive the first time you boot up the PC, by going into the BIOS. Then when you get into follow this same process, just apply it to the new drive. 

https://www.maketecheasier.com/format-usb-drives-windows-10/

[TheKDub]

You'll be best off just reinstalling windows. Copy anything you want to save over onto the second hard drive, format the one with windows on it already when you go to install windows.

[3rrant]

3 minutes ago, LONESTORMER said:

Im getting my new pc parts shipped in tomorrow and i wanted to reuse some parts from my old computer to cut costs. One (two?) of which being my two HDDs. One of them has windows installed on it from my old computer. Would i be able to essentially plug and play them keeping all my old data? Or would i have to do a fresh install of windows on my main harddrive. And if so how would i go about wiping my C: drive?

While it should and might work "as it is", you will much likely have some weird and annoying bugs and problems, so a clean install is a lot more suggested.

 

To do a new install and format the drive, download a Windows ISO/installer from microsoft site, choose to install it from DVD or USB, plug the selected device to the new pc and boot from there (Enter bios > boot override or just choose the option for the boot selector, which might be F2/F11/F6/DEL on the initial screen). From the guided installer you will be able to wipe any drive.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

16 minutes ago, LONESTORMER said:

Im getting my new pc parts shipped in tomorrow and i wanted to reuse some parts from my old computer to cut costs. One (two?) of which being my two HDDs. One of them has windows installed on it from my old computer. Would i be able to essentially plug and play them keeping all my old data? Or would i have to do a fresh install of windows on my main harddrive. And if so how would i go about wiping my C: drive?

It's rare that a system will boot up and run Windows without issues from a drive coming out of another system. Even if it does boot, you'll run into stability issues. I've tested this with 5 systems ranging from ancient to modern and none of them made it to the log in screen. All of them bluescreened the moment they tried to boot Windows. You're much better off reinstalling Windows and starting fresh. Reinstalling Windows takes less than half an hour and you'll be up and running by the end of the day. That's a small price to pay to not have to be chasing gremlins from running a pre-existing Windows install on another system. 

 

Whichever way you choose however, you're going to need a new license for Windows as you're running it on a different system. People will argue you can run Windows without a license, but I'm not going to go into what I think of that. 

[LONESTORMER]

23 minutes ago, ErrantNyles said:

While it should and might work "as it is", you will much likely have some weird and annoying bugs and problems, so a clean install is a lot more suggested.

 

To do a new install and format the drive, download a Windows ISO/installer from microsoft site, choose to install it from DVD or USB, plug the selected device to the new pc and boot from there (Enter bios > boot override or just choose the option for the boot selector, which might be F2/F11/F6/DEL on the initial screen). From the guided installer you will be able to wipe any drive.

As for the second harddrive which has all the games and movies on it, should that one be okay to just plug and play? Im nit new to PCs but im new to reusing old part. Also, Im assuming i would need a new windows key as well

[3rrant]

6 minutes ago, LONESTORMER said:

As for the second harddrive which has all the games and movies on it, should that one be okay to just plug and play? Im nit new to PCs but im new to reusing old part. Also, Im assuming i would need a new windows key as well

If there's no OS installed, you just plug it in and it's gonna be just good as before.

 

If you already have Windows 10 installed, connect to your hotmail/outlook account through Windows. Then, when you install the new OS, select "I don't have a key". When asked, log again to the same account and the system will retrive the key and active it for you, as long as the other system isn't anymore "connected" to something.