moving harddrive to new system

[stringcheeseincident]

i basically want to take my pc from my sig, and move it over into a sff case/motherboard. the ram, video card, cpu, cd-rw, and floppy will stay the same...but the motherboard will change. can i just install the harddrive into the new sff, or will i run into problems? if id run into problems, whats a good program i can use to back up my harddrive?

 

[tim_m]

do you mean move your drive with windows on it? i've done it once or twice (at least twice actually, once was with win me believe it or not) and didn't really have a problem. it just ran the detect new hardware wizard for a long while.

doing this isn't exactly the most easily done thing. be sure to backup all important data to either another hard drive or burn it, just in case. many people will no doubt suggest (or ram down your throat) to do a fresh install, but it may be worth it to see if it works but prepare in case you need to do a fresh install

 

[awdark]

As a matter of fact, im doing that right now... I replaced my board/cpu kept the other parts. I was really hoping that it would work properly but it just brings me to an unmountable boot volume every time after the drivers install themselves. I assume its a conflict moving from a p4 intel board to an amd board.

So im formatting. just when everything was perfect I had to experiment.

 

[lorcani]

I say that if you change anything major, such as processor, motherboard, or hard-drive [duh ], do a complete reformat. Back up everything on either CDRs or another portable source, or some people will suggest using Norton Ghost. I don't use that, so I can't help you with Ghost. I usually just grab a stack of five CDRs and start dragging and dropping things into folders 1-5. Then, just drag and drop them over after reformatting.