swap hard drive to new pc

[chesire17201]

Hi all,

I have a dell inspiron 531 that the motherboard died on, so I just ordered a new insipron 546. My question is the new tower is pretty much bare bones, as i am going to swap all my other parts into it, dvd, media reader, etc. The older one had an AMD 3800, and the new one has an AMD 7550.

The new tower will have a 320g hard drive, and my old one is 160, both have vista, but i want to use the 160 as the primary and the 320 as extra, because all my info and settings are already on it, what do i need to do to make the 320 basically extra storage, with no OS on it.

I'm thinking just put the 160 in, boot to it first get it running and then reformat the 320. will it really be that easy? obviously i will have to mess with the hardware settings on the 160 for the newer processor and what not.



thanks for any help.

 

[NightSurge]

It won't quite be that easy, and it may require you to repair/reinstall windows. Trotter has a program that sometimes allows you to do this without too much effort. Wait for him to come by as I can't remember the program name.

 

[chesire17201]

I had a similar issue when the laptop died, and got the belkin transfer kit, software, cables etc, but only used it to get the files off the laptop to the new desktop, since i was going from xp to vista, i didn't bother to try and keep the settings or anything like that.

maybe i would be better ahead to put the old hd in and just transfer all my old stuff to the new hd and the reformat the old one.....

anywho, i assume there would be an issue with the new processor and bios if i try the old hd first, is that what you're thinking.

 

[patonb]

Okay, depending on your OS type, you might not be able to swap your OS.

But i thnk as its the same mobo, you should just have to do a repair aT the most.

 

[chesire17201]

OS on the old hard drive is vista, as well as the new one, hard drive itself is fine, it's the old mobo that died.....and figured i would order a new bare bones, put all my stuff in it.

 

[carnageX]

http://www.techist.com/forums/f75/gigantic-sad-face-206332/index4.html#post1644462 < the utility paton was talking about that Trotter mentioned.

Or use Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image.

Make sure you backup all important files before trying any of these.

 

[Trotter]

^^^ Yep, that's it. You have to use SYSPREP while the drive is in the old computer, and then move it to the new one.

 

[chesire17201]

k, thouroughly confused now, anyone want to step by step me here,

i don't see anything for a transfer utility in the link, and the crap part of it is, the old system will not stay powered on, it will turn on, spin fans and shut down, so the only option i can think of is to pu the old hard drive in the new tower.


sheesh, i feel like such a noob....

 

[patonb]

But does he have to?

As it is the same mobo, but different cpu... Wouldn't it just be happy?

 

[Trotter]

As it is the same mobo, but different cpu... Wouldn't it just be happy?

If that is true it should boot up with no problems. If it was XP you could just do a repair install... Vista doesn't have that option.