Moving Hard drive to new Laptop With Clean Install

Good afternoon, all.

I understand I can't move a HD from one computer to another. I plan on doing a clean install of Windows 10.

My question is, after I move the hard drive to the new laptop and do the clean install via USB, will there be the Windows.old folder? Or should I back up my files to an external HD.

Thank you.

Jim

Why do you think you can't just move the hard drive? Lots of people, including myself, have.

To answer your specific question though, a clean install will, at a minimum, wipe out the C Drive partition completely with no windows.old folder. Depending on how you do it, it is possible to keep data in a separate partition.

I've read that the system folders/files on my current hard driver are set up for this laptop and I would get errors if I just moved the hard drive to a new laptop.

flightmedic said:

I've read that the system folders/files on my current hard driver are set up for this laptop and I would get errors if I just moved the hard drive to a new laptop.

Usually not. Big things to watch out for are legacy BIOS/CSM v. UEFI booting mode and SATA controller mode. Both of those are easy to manage to allow the existing OS to be moved from one computer to another.

OK thank you sir. So I just pop the hard drive into the new machine and see how it goes? I'll be moving it from an IBM Thinkpad to a HP DV7 CTO machine, mainly because the HP has an i7 processor and is more efficient. The HP is running Windows 7 right now and the IBM (where the HD is now) is running 10.

I don't have the money for a 2 TB SSD. I have about 500 GB of music that I want to move over to it.

You will want to look at two things on the system information screen of both computers and make sure they match:

On the first System Summary Screen look at BIOS Mode



Then under Storage -> IDE, you will want to look at your drive controller(s)



If the drive controllers don't match, that's a pretty easy fix. If the BIOS Modes don't match, it is fixable, but not as easy. If both of those do match between the two systems, there is a pretty good chance you will be able to move the hard drive from one to the other and it should work. Windows 10 will not activate, because it will sense the change in computers. You should be able to re-activate using the Windows 7 product key printed on the COA label attached to the Windows 7 computer, as long as the editions match (IE: Home to Home, Pro to Pro, Ultimate to Pro).

The HD I want to use has legacy BIOS and Standard SATA.

The computer I want to put it in at UFEI BIOS and Intel Series 8 Chipset family SATA ACHI Controller.