Windows 10 - migrating existing hard drives

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bencho

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Sep 15, 2007
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Hi!

Just installed Windows 10 on a new build.

I currently have Windows 7 and plan to reuse two of my 3.5" sata drives. Will Windows 10 automatically read them if I plug them in OR will I need to reformat? I have a bunch of data on them that would be much simpler to just plug and play.

I presume this will work but I'd rather not risk it.

Naturally I'd need to manually rebuild any file associations but that's never been an issue.
 
Just to clarify, you built a new computer with new drive and installed Windows 10. You have 2 separate hard drives that had Windows 7 installed. You want to plug those into the Windows 10 computer?

If that is the case, yes they will be detected. You may have to go into Disk Management to assign a drive letter though. However, they should come up without needing to do that. I would still recommend pulling the data off them and wiping them to clear out unnecessary program files and Windows directories. It will also help in troubleshooting because Windows may detect them as Windows installs during repair procedures.

Just make sure that your Windows 10 disk is plugged into Sata port 0 or adjust the start up order so that the Windows 10 disk (or Windows Boot Manager on GPT install) is listed first.
 
Hey,

Yes...ish sort of :)

You're correct: I do have two computers now, Win 7 is old box and OS is installed on an SDD. Two 3.5" HDDs are used as storage and games etc. essentially SSD is just OS and programs. The HDD shouldn't have any OS related things on them besides associations to games or similar on the alas SSD. Not a problem as I'll end up purging games and reinstalling.

The new box is Win 10 and booting from a 950 Pro M.2 drive.

My only concern was potential differences in file associations or other minute changes (Win7 to Win10) that could cause me to lose data if I just tried to hot plug in the 3.5" storage drives.

Does that help clarify? I see it wasn't clear what was on the drives I wanted to put into the new build >___<
 
The expansion drives will be fine. They will show up as plug n play just like they would on Windows 7.
 
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