Ordered my new PC this week and just had a couple of questions regarding the hard drive set ups going from my old PC to my new one.

My old PC has just the one hard drive, is it possible to put that in the new machine and just transfer everything to the new hard drive on the machine?

If the above is not possible and a new install of windows 7 is necessary, will I still be able to use my old hard drive (which has W7 on) on my new PC so I can still get the data off it or will I have to reinstall everything like games etc? This is my main worry as I don't want to loose my game data.

I realise this is probably an obvious question, but there's a ton of game data that I want to make sure I keep going from my old PC to my new one and I don't want to risk loosing all of it.

Thanks in advance for any info.

if the new computer already comes with a harddrive, you can insert the old one to, as just a storage drive.

Then you can transfer all your pictures, music, and other media.

Any kind of program should be properly installed however, not just transferred over.

What you can do is to figure out where the program settings files are for each program, and just transfer over those, before or after installing the program anew, to keep your settings, but at the same time making sure the program has all the proper hooks into the new computer.

just transferring a program might work, but if stuff starts to act up, you know the reason for it.

@devildoll: So will I need to install windows 7 on the new machines hard drive? After that can I just move over all my installed games and have them run as they do on my current PC. And does the same apply to games I have through Steam and Origin?

Thanks.

Depends. When you move / try to start previously installed game in a new Windows it may or may not start. Some games work just fine and some do not. Those games that do not work, usually store information to the Windows registry at installation and they need that info to work. These games you will have to reinstall.

Steam games are going to be more difficult to deal with (most importantly, your saves). While you cannot just drag them to the new hard drive, you can just re-download those games no problem. If you want to retain your progress, you will have to find where each of those games stores its save files and copy them to the newly created folder of the same distinction on the new drive.

@jtb123: IF your new machine comes with windows pre-installed then you just reinstall everything on your new computer. Otherwise you have to install everything from scratch. During the Windows XP days it was common to pull your HD out of the old computer and shove it into a completely new one and it would still boot up and work fine. Windows 7 unfortunately 90% of the time will require a fresh install - although it's a pain in the butt you will be better off having everything freshly installed on a new PC rather running into driver issues down the road.

Steam games you can literally just copy and paste into the new Steam install folder and it will update itself and work just fine.

@mmzone: If I copy the game saves first then can I just move that data into the appropriate folder on my new PC and have it work as they did before?

And just a general question, what's the worse case scenario if I boot up my new PC with my old HD in it? I will be backing up everything anyway, just curious what would happen.

Thanks for all the responses everyone.

If you are asking that will the save games work, yes they will.

I would say that the worst case scenario would be that none of your previously installed programs will start and you have to reinstall all of them.

@mmzone: Thanks for the info :)