can i do this

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Max Power

Mr Beans Sidekick
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Well build a new pc but first put in my old harddrive to get some files off of it then after put in a new harddrive and install windows and all that. if I build a brand new pc and put a harddrive in it with windows already on it will it just boot up normaly
 
Nope, won't work. You can, however, set the hard drive as slave and just pull the files off of it.
 
It mostly does, sometimes you have to chkdsk, boot in safe mode, or repair install. Sometimes it doesn't, especially when moving to a motherboard with a hard disk controller whose drivers are not installed on Windows.
 
Greg's way would probably be the best, but I wouldn't say Foostaple's way "can't" be done - in fact, I've seen it done. I've never seen it done meaningfully - that is, where they haven't completely reformatted after a week or so, but sure! It can be done.

So yeah, what Greg said, or put your new drive in the old PC, copy files, then do what you want. Either way. :)
 
Ah, okay. I was under the impression that if you change the mobo it won't work at all. But yeah, I still say use the one with Windows installed on it as a slave. It would be much easier.
 
there are jumpers on the back of you hdd. different configurations of them will change the hdd to master, slave, cable select, etc. usually your boot hdd should be set to master. There should be diagrams on the hdd which tell you which pins to put the jumper on for different configurations.
 
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