Switching Primary Hard drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tom
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T

Tom

Hello,

Ideally what I want to do is switch the primary hard drives from one
machine to another. What are the consequences of doing so? The only
thing I can think of is going to be a lot of driver issues. Can I do
it and just update the drivers on both machines or is it more
complicated (or even possible)?

Thank you,

Tom
 
Tom said:
Hello,

Ideally what I want to do is switch the primary hard drives from one
machine to another. What are the consequences of doing so? The only
thing I can think of is going to be a lot of driver issues. Can I do
it and just update the drivers on both machines or is it more
complicated (or even possible)?

Thank you,

Tom
Click to expand...

unless both machines were exactly/precisely/identical 100% then it would be
a pain in the...........hard drive.
 
Hello,

Ideally what I want to do is switch the primary hard drives from one
machine to another. What are the consequences of doing so? The only
thing I can think of is going to be a lot of driver issues. Can I do
it and just update the drivers on both machines or is it more
complicated (or even possible)?

Thank you,

Tom
Click to expand...

You got stuff on this "new" hdd you want to keep, set it as Primary
Slave & lift the stuff off.
Reset it as Primary Master & format>install OS & reinstall kept stuff.
 
Tom said:
Hello,

Ideally what I want to do is switch the primary hard drives from one
machine to another. What are the consequences of doing so? The only
thing I can think of is going to be a lot of driver issues. Can I do
it and just update the drivers on both machines or is it more
complicated (or even possible)?

Thank you,

Tom
Click to expand...

The most straightforward way, is to do a Repair Install.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

A Repair Install means you get to keep all your Applications,
and your User Data. But it takes the OS back to the state
that the installer disk would apply (because it copies the
original OS files back). So if the installer CD is WinXP SP1,
then you'd have to add back SP2 separately. If you had IE7,
you'd have to put that back (because IE is part of the OS
install). Also, you'd have to put back the Security Patches
via Windows Update.

Before doing this, I have two suggestions, from experience.

1) Don't take apart the old computer yet. You might need
it. If you are trying to do this, with no backup computer
to do repairs etc., you'll be cursing later.

2) Back up your hard drive! When I build a new computer, I
always buy a spare drive, then make a clone copy of the
original boot drive, with Partition Magic. Then, if the
"transplant" goes bad, I move the disk back to the original
machine, and clone the disk again to load it with fresh
data. I've had to use that backup, so it pays off.

I have moved a disk, without a Repair Install, but there is
a trick to it. In my case, the original board had an Intel
chipset (which uses the default Microsoft disk driver). The
new motherboard, had a different Intel chipset, but it also
uses the default Microsoft driver. I researched this in
advance, and I was able to boot, without a Repair Install.
It took another hour of installing drivers for the rest of
the hardware, rebooting etc. The OS in this case was Win2K.
So it can be done.

But most of the time, the chipsets will be too different, and
the OS won't be able to boot, because the disk driver will
be missing.

Maybe there is a way, to get a driver in there in advance,
but that is above my skill level.

Paul
 
WHENEVER you change the motherboard that is used with a harddrive containing
its installation of Windows, then you MUST reformat the harddrive and do a
fresh install of the OS with the new motherboard. Otherwise you can look
forward to ongoing Registry errors and data corruption.
 
DaveW said:
WHENEVER you change the motherboard that is used with a harddrive containing
its installation of Windows, then you MUST reformat the harddrive and do a
fresh install of the OS with the new motherboard. Otherwise you can look
forward to ongoing Registry errors and data corruption.
Click to expand...

**NO**

Most of the time, a repair install will work perfectly...

only rarely is a fresh install needed
 
D> WHENEVER you change the motherboard that is used with a harddrive
D> containing its installation of Windows, then you MUST reformat the
D> harddrive and do a fresh install of the OS with the new motherboard.
D> Otherwise you can look forward to ongoing Registry errors and data
D> corruption.

if you're moron, of course you need -- and better do a low-level format.

normal people can just remove chipset-specific drivers that prevent Windows
from booting, or do repair install.
 
Tom said:
Hello,

Ideally what I want to do is switch the primary hard drives from one
machine to another. What are the consequences of doing so? The only
thing I can think of is going to be a lot of driver issues. Can I do
it and just update the drivers on both machines or is it more
complicated (or even possible)?
Click to expand...


What you want to do is copy the data from one drive to another,
so you copy all the operating system stuff across.
Idealy you should have a third drive so you can back up drive A
then delete everything, then copy drive B to A then do likewise
for drive B.
If you don't have a spare drive then you would need some spare space
on the drives. Obviously you just need the driver type stuff.
I would try just copying across the stuff in windows folder (backing up the
old windows folder first).
Something like that anyway.
 
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