Moving HDD's to a new motherboard

[Zach1928]

Hey everyone, I need some help on how to go about moving hard drives to a new mobo. My current setup is running on an LGA 775 socket, and it's got two drives, one of which holds games and the other has W7 ultimate which I installed. I need to know if there would be any issues if I got a better 775 socket motherboard and transferred the hard drives over. Would everything on the secondary drive stay the same as it was and be a simple swap? and would i have to reinstall windows on the primary drive or would I just be able to type in the product key again?

Thanks In advance

 

[Ztruker]

I would move just the Windows 7 drive first to SATA port 0. Boot it and see what happens. If any problems, do a Repair Install. Once it's working okay, then install the 2nd (games) drive to SATA port 1.

 

[Marsby]

Before giving an answer, may I ask how your current partitions are setup?

If you're like me I hope you have something like this;

[DISK 0] One active boot partition containing C:\ (Plus one hidden partition)
[DISK 1] Two partitions
Partition label [Games] D:\
Partition label [Repository] E:\ (docs, media, etc)

[DVD-CD] Assigned letter R
[DVD-RW] Assigned letter W

 

[Zach1928]

I cant say for sure, but Of the four sata slots, the first one is empty, the second has the disk drive and 3 and 4 have the windows drive and the programs drive respectively. I would think that there is a hidden partition on the C drive though because the computer is an emachines that originally had vista 32 bit before I did a clean install of W7 64 bit

 

[FliGi7]

OEM licenses are tied to the PC they came with. If you have an OEM version of the Windows OS, it may become invalidated when you switch the motherboard. If so, call Microsoft and tell them you had to upgrade the motherboard for whatever reason and you need it to be re-validated.

 

[Marsby]

In my experiences with SATA the port numbers don't matter. You can usually define the boot drive in the CMOS setup if the machine doesn't figure it out on its own. But as advised, you can simply attach the Windows drive first and attempt a repair installation. Those may be easier with Windows 7 but in my experiences of the past, Windows freaked out with transplants and you ended having to do a total reinstall.

In any event I would be extremely careful about backing up and saving any data on the Windows partition that you probably want. You might have a whole bunch of website passwords for example that you don't have a copy of anywhere.

 

[FliGi7]

The instructions below guide you through how to swap the hard drives to a new motherboard.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/135077-windows-7-installation-transfer-new-computer.html

 

[Zach1928]

So my chances are very slim of having an easy transfer? The version of windows is one I bought on my own. If i were to move the drive over and put a new version of windows on, would i be able to restore everything from a backup? I have an external drive that it backs up to periodically. Also, would the drive that is simply used as data storage need to be formatted again, or would that be plug and play?

 

[FliGi7]

You don't need to put a new version of Windows on. The instructions I posted above tell you how to transfer the hard drives to the new motherboard. It should be rather easy. Follow the instructions to transfer them over and make sure you download/install all of the latest drivers from the motherboard manufacturer's website for your system after you get your system up and running.

 

[Zach1928]

Thanks! I didnt see that until after I posted the response, but it does looke very simple.

 

[Marsby]

The instructions below guide you through how to swap the hard drives to a new motherboard.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/135077-windows-7-installation-transfer-new-computer.html

Ahh that is pretty handy, I guess Windows Seven is an improvement after all.

 

[FliGi7]

Very much so.

 

[Zach1928]

I hate to be a bother, but would the secondary drive with games and whatnot just be plug and play? I'd hate to have to back all of that up

 

[Marsby]

Not a bother, yes totally plug and play. Only caveat is that some games might not play if you have to reinstall the OS from scratch. Just make sure your drive letters are as they were before. Otherwise you will have issues with the pointers/references.

 

[Zach1928]

Gotcha, I assume they'd all work using the process that's in that link

 

[Ztruker]

It is very straight forward. Please let us know how you make out.

 

[Zach1928]

Turns out I didn't need a new mobo at all, the gpu I got works fine. Sorry to disappoint, everyone!

 

[gregrocker]

On such a similar mobo, Win7 may start up on its own with just a few driver swaps. It may also hold activation or reactivate on its own. If not do the phone activation as suggested emphasizing that you replaced with same mobo.

However if it won't start due to convergence of driver/SID/HID issues at animation screen the only remedies besides Clean Reinstall are to SysPrep to move HD to another computer, boot Paragon Adaptive Restore CD to adjust old HD to new hardware, or reimage using Acronis with Universal Restore (2010+).