[DareMe55]

Dont know whether this should be Harddrive or motherboard section.



Basically Im giving my dad my computer, but he wants all his information. Can he just put his HD in my computer and everything is fine? Or must he reformat. I've done some googling and some people say its possible, and some say its not.




He is using this right now:
GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3

and my computer has:
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R

[BigBadBaz]

You should be able to do it easily. The only things you may need to do is reactivate the OS and install new drivers.

I just swapped my GA-P35-DS3L for a Rampage Formula. I just needed to reactivate Vista and Vista got the drivers I needed.

[MARCI]

Depending on the OS, it's varying degrees of simple/hard.

He's worried about data, or he doesn't want to reinstalll all his programs?

[x30Jx]

I would suggest taking 0 chances, and doing a 100% reformat and reinstall.

[MARCI]

Back up data files, and a fresh install of the OS will generally feel much snappier anyway.

[DareMe55]

Originally Posted by MARCI

Depending on the OS, it's varying degrees of simple/hard.

He's worried about data, or he doesn't want to reinstalll all his programs?

Data. he does a lot of work on his computer. Bills, stocks, etc.

[MARCI]

Data is easy... does he have 1 or 2 hard drives? and how much data (in MB) are we talking? Even someone who does ALOT of data entry of mainly text based info, like stocks, bills, records of cds and insurance.. It really doesn't take alot of space..

You could likely burn the data files onto a cd, or a thumb drive..,

[BigBadBaz]

If just throwing the HDD into the new machine doesn't work, these are some great ideas. But I suggest you just try it first. If it doesn't work you'll just have to do what everyone else is saying, but if it works this is a lot easier and more practical.

BTW, what OS ARE you running?

[cw823]

Originally Posted by x30Jx

I would suggest taking 0 chances, and doing a 100% reformat and reinstall.

Zero chances would mean a new drive, leaving the old one intact with all related data.

[Mr.Guvernment]

Originally Posted by DareMe55

Data. he does a lot of work on his computer. Bills, stocks, etc.

then back it up anyways, assuming he probably has no backups....


back it up, swap boards, as long as the chipset is the same, the rest like audiop and stuff, uninstall those drivers (audio, video) prior to switching and remove them from the system / hardware area

[Mr.Guvernment]

Originally Posted by DareMe55

Data. he does a lot of work on his computer. Bills, stocks, etc.

then back it up anyways, assuming he probably has no backups....


back it up, swap boards, as long as the chipset is the same, the rest like audiop and stuff, uninstall those drivers (audio, video) prior to switching and remove them from the system / hardware area

[grumperfish]

Originally Posted by DareMe55

He is using this right now:
GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3

and my computer has:
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R

I actually did this very same swap when my 965P board died (*by my inept hands) and it worked fine. It's still running great actually for that matter, though I'm incredibly anal about removing old drivers and I spent a week going through the system manually with regseeker. Still running the same XP install as I really didn't want to have to reload everything again.


I didn't expect to be able to keep the OS intact, but what I did is this (YMMV) :

1.) Removed audio and video drivers after swapping the boards.
2.) Removed the antivirus/firewall (symantec client security 9) and then ran NoNav to clear off the stuff it left behind.
3.) Ran driver cleaner (Pro and Platinum Edition) twice to finish off removing the video and audio drivers.
4.) Under Control Panel-> System Properties-> Advanced tab-> Environment Variables, I added the following under "User Variables for ....":

Code:

user variable: devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices
value: 1

then rebooted the system.

5.) Under Device Manager, I enabled showing of hidden drivers (View tab-> Show Hidden Devices), and removed the old IDE/ATAPI drivers for the previous board, and under the System Devices menu I removed the ICH8/965 northbridge drivers. Cleaned out any unused/greyed out USB drivers remaining.

6.) Rebooted, then installed the Intel .inf drivers from their site.

7.) After that I reinstalled the video and audio drivers, along with the antivirus and was good to go.


My Ubuntu install wasn't repairable however, and it may have been easier just to do a reformat.