Putting old hard drive in new PC

Hi guys!

So recently, my old PC (Win 7) died, and I got a new one (Win 10) as fast as I could afford it. It’s due to arrive today, but I’m still a bit stumped as to how I might transfer my important files to the new PC (the old one won’t boot up).

Now, I’m not exactly sure what would happen if I put both HDDs into the same PC, but this is the idea I eventually arrived at. Would I be able to boot up the windows 10 HDD, and then drag and drop any files that I feel are required from the old HDD to the new HDD? Furthermore, would I be able to format the old HDD after being done with the transfer, and then merge the two HDDs to use them together?

Thanks!

As long as the old hard drive still works you can hook it up to the new machine and transfer that way. You'll most likely need to take ownership of files and folders to be able to view your old data.

You can format it once you're done moving stuff but unless you need the space for some reason I'd just leave it until you do. Or just clear it off and make a backup of important stuff. You can't "merge" them in anyway, basically just another place to park your data.

cancan460 said:

Furthermore, would I be able to format the old HDD after being done with the transfer, and then merge the two HDDs to use them together?

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like Darren said, you wouldn't be merging the HDs. After the transfer, you'd simply format the old HD into one or more NTFS partitions and have more storage available. You could use that as a target location for scheduled backups of your Windows 10 installation, for example.