PC Upgrade

Kido

I'm looking to do a major upgrade to my PC, motherboard, processor, DDR, case etc. However, I don't really want to loose all my settings, programmes etc on my current HDD. In the past I've always formatted or bought a new HDD drive when doing a major upgrade. Is this nesessary, can I just take the existing HDD out and put it into the new PC or am I better formatting the HDD drive first?

Thanks for any advice.

googler

So, you could just buy a whole new PC, put your current HDD in as the primary drive, and move the HDD that came with the PC to the secondary drive bay?

Only problem may come if your current drive is an IDE, and you buy a SATA-enabled new PC.....

closed

May as well buy a new one.

Kido

googler wrote: »

So, you could just buy a whole new PC, put your current HDD in as the primary drive, and move the HDD that came with the PC to the secondary drive bay?

Only problem may come if your current drive is an IDE, and you buy a SATA-enabled new PC.....

Current drive is a SATA HDD. I'm not buying a "new" PC as I need a high specification for video editing. It works out a lot cheaper to buy the bits I want and put them together rather than buying off the shelf.

Mista_C

As long as the chipset of the new motherboard is of the same family as the old one there's a good chance it will work.

Better still if you're using Windows XP/Vista/7 you can use Windows Easy Transfer to copy all your data and settings to another source, external drive, network, etc. I would run the tool to backup settings prior to the upgrade, do a fresh install of Windows and all applications after the upgrades then run the tool to restore settings and data.

Toxteth_OGrady

http://ninite.com/ is a useful way of installing common apps easily after a fresh Windows install.