Can I swap my Windows 7 drive into an i5 6th-gen computer running Win10?
December 10, 2018 9:17 AM Subscribe
I have an SSD running retail-installed Windows 7 in an old Dell Inspiron desktop that I'd like to just install in a new computer and be off and running. I just bought an i5 8th-gen Dell Inspiron whose motherboard doesn't support Windows 7 (oops). If I buy, say, a Dell 3650 with 6th-gen installed and attach my SSD, will it just run? Or will I need to do some installation or driver adjustment before attaching it? I know very little about this stuff. Please no lectures about why I want to stay with Windows 7 rather than reinstalling all my programs in Windows 10. :) Thank you for your help!
Short answer: no, like Humboldt32 says it won't just run.
Longer answer: you can still just do a fresh install of Win 7. If you've got a Dell and a Dell Win 7 recovery disk it'll most likely license just fine. So yank the SSD, wipe it, and install a fresh copy of Win 7 on the new machine.
Lecture: Win 7 is **ALREADY** out of mainstream support and on extended support. Even that will end on Jan 14, 2020, and ad that point you'll either update to Win 10 or your machine will be rooted and become a zombie in someone's bot swarm before March of 2020. So you might as well upgrade now and save yourself some hassle later.
posted by sotonohito at 9:37 AM on December 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
Longer answer: you can still just do a fresh install of Win 7. If you've got a Dell and a Dell Win 7 recovery disk it'll most likely license just fine. So yank the SSD, wipe it, and install a fresh copy of Win 7 on the new machine.
Lecture: Win 7 is **ALREADY** out of mainstream support and on extended support. Even that will end on Jan 14, 2020, and ad that point you'll either update to Win 10 or your machine will be rooted and become a zombie in someone's bot swarm before March of 2020. So you might as well upgrade now and save yourself some hassle later.
posted by sotonohito at 9:37 AM on December 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
Response by poster: Thanks! And backstory: I had an old Inspiron desktop 530 with Windows 7 (which I'd installed myself from a retail version) and my motherboard fried. I moved the hard drive and data drive to another old Inspiron desktop 530 I picked up cheaply that had some other OS on the drive (Vista? who knows, I wiped the drive and used it for backup) and it was just plug and play, I didn't need to re-install Windows 7.
What I'm trying to avoid is having to reinstall all my programs and spend hours of work reconfiguring either Windows 7 or Windows 10. And yes, I know the whole zombie thing with Windows 7.
posted by roxie110 at 10:56 AM on December 10, 2018
What I'm trying to avoid is having to reinstall all my programs and spend hours of work reconfiguring either Windows 7 or Windows 10. And yes, I know the whole zombie thing with Windows 7.
posted by roxie110 at 10:56 AM on December 10, 2018
Back when I cared about such things one way to get Windows 7 to migrate to a new computer was to do something like boot into Safe Mode and remove some or all of the devices in the Device Manager and then shutdown before doing the HD transplant. Don’t take my word for it, do some research and see if this is still a suggested method of upgrading. There are plenty of others like you who either want to avoid Windows 10 telemetry or as you mention, want to skip the hassle of reinstallation. Someone likely has some guidance on what works and what will be a pain to deal with.
posted by mutagen at 11:58 AM on December 10, 2018
posted by mutagen at 11:58 AM on December 10, 2018
This is a very difficult to impossible thing to do even for experts and depends on a whole host of non-obvious factors to succeed. I would not attempt it in your shoes.
posted by Aleyn at 12:03 PM on December 10, 2018
posted by Aleyn at 12:03 PM on December 10, 2018
Response by poster: What if I were to do a clean install of the retail Windows 7 software on the new (6th gen) computer, turn it off, attach the old drive, and reboot from the old drive? Would something like that work, carrying over my program data? Or is it still necessary to reinstall every single program I have (browsers, office, iTunes, etc., ad nauseam).
posted by roxie110 at 12:27 PM on December 10, 2018
posted by roxie110 at 12:27 PM on December 10, 2018
You won't be able to boot that old hard drive again, pretty much no matter what.
What you need is a SATA-to-USB Docking Station which will allow you to hook up the old drive like a USB drive, and access it from the new fresh-install-booted PC so you can copy off the old files. Unless you did encryption or something else to make it difficult to read the old drive, you don't need to boot from it, you just need to make it readable from the new PC.
(If the new PC has an additional SATA spot, or if you are handy with the parts of an external hard drive to USB case, there's other ways to do it; the Docking Station is the easiest and cleanest way to get this done).
Edit: Yes you'll need to reinstall all your old programs, you can't run them from the old drive
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:04 PM on December 10, 2018 [2 favorites]
What you need is a SATA-to-USB Docking Station which will allow you to hook up the old drive like a USB drive, and access it from the new fresh-install-booted PC so you can copy off the old files. Unless you did encryption or something else to make it difficult to read the old drive, you don't need to boot from it, you just need to make it readable from the new PC.
(If the new PC has an additional SATA spot, or if you are handy with the parts of an external hard drive to USB case, there's other ways to do it; the Docking Station is the easiest and cleanest way to get this done).
Edit: Yes you'll need to reinstall all your old programs, you can't run them from the old drive
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:04 PM on December 10, 2018 [2 favorites]
What if I were to do a clean install of the retail Windows 7 software on the new (6th gen) computer, turn it off, attach the old drive, and reboot from the old drive?
If you already had the other machine I'd try it and see what happens; probably wouldn't work but shouldn't hurt anything. You could also boot from the new drive and see if you can copy data from the old one - it'll be faster than USB.
I've successfully swapped linux, playstation, and OSX drives among various machines without reformatting, but the first deals with modules/drivers in a completely different way than Windows, and the latter two are both pretty standardized in terms of hardware, whereas Windows is very much not.
You won't be able to boot that old hard drive again, pretty much no matter what.
Maybe not with that particular windows install, but you could always reinstall/change OSes, etc. etc. Certainly don't just throw it away - you can always wipe it and use it for storage on the new machine.
If you weren't insisting on sticking with 7, and if I were in your shoes, I would probably try to create an installation drive for Windows ten, stick the old drive the new machine, then boot from the installation media and install the upgrade to the old drive - Windows may just be smart enough to just download the needed drivers along with the upgrade.
You're probably going to end up reinstalling most programs anyway, but experimenting shouldn't cost you anything but time.
posted by aspersioncast at 2:27 PM on December 10, 2018
If you already had the other machine I'd try it and see what happens; probably wouldn't work but shouldn't hurt anything. You could also boot from the new drive and see if you can copy data from the old one - it'll be faster than USB.
I've successfully swapped linux, playstation, and OSX drives among various machines without reformatting, but the first deals with modules/drivers in a completely different way than Windows, and the latter two are both pretty standardized in terms of hardware, whereas Windows is very much not.
You won't be able to boot that old hard drive again, pretty much no matter what.
Maybe not with that particular windows install, but you could always reinstall/change OSes, etc. etc. Certainly don't just throw it away - you can always wipe it and use it for storage on the new machine.
If you weren't insisting on sticking with 7, and if I were in your shoes, I would probably try to create an installation drive for Windows ten, stick the old drive the new machine, then boot from the installation media and install the upgrade to the old drive - Windows may just be smart enough to just download the needed drivers along with the upgrade.
You're probably going to end up reinstalling most programs anyway, but experimenting shouldn't cost you anything but time.
posted by aspersioncast at 2:27 PM on December 10, 2018
What I'm trying to avoid is having to reinstall all my programs and spend hours of work reconfiguring either Windows 7 or Windows 10
There is no way around this, sorry.
posted by smoke at 3:28 PM on December 10, 2018
There is no way around this, sorry.
posted by smoke at 3:28 PM on December 10, 2018
This site says it's possible, though I haven't tried it. The article is about replacing a motherboard, but they also say: "The instructions can be applied, also, if you want to transfer the current Windows install in a totally different hardware (e.g. from a Desktop PC to a Laptop PC or vice versa)."
I wouldn't dream of trying it without first cloning the drive partition(s) necessary to restore your Win 7. I recommend Macrium Reflect. There are free and paid versions.
posted by Homer42 at 4:28 PM on December 10, 2018
I wouldn't dream of trying it without first cloning the drive partition(s) necessary to restore your Win 7. I recommend Macrium Reflect. There are free and paid versions.
posted by Homer42 at 4:28 PM on December 10, 2018
You can absolutely stick the old drive into a new PC. make sure you have a recovery disk and install media. You can google some guides online on how to prepare windows - as was posted above in safe mode you can remove the drivers then unplug and put the ssd into the new machine and restart, should boot. Worst case you need to reinstall windows on the new machine, but it goes over the old one and most of your program should work.
Caveat- windows doesn’t like this very much and you could have weird behaviour etc. I have done this and it worked, but eventually did do a clean install. Not sure why you’re set against windows 10, if you change your mind, uograde on the old machine to windows 10 and transplant the drive, windows 10 is more flexible in boot to load the correct drivers and get you going.
Make sure you have a backup before doing any of this. Could go really wrong. (a clone copy of the drive using acronis, maximum reflect etc. will let you start over if it all goes wrong)
posted by defcom1 at 5:40 PM on December 10, 2018
Caveat- windows doesn’t like this very much and you could have weird behaviour etc. I have done this and it worked, but eventually did do a clean install. Not sure why you’re set against windows 10, if you change your mind, uograde on the old machine to windows 10 and transplant the drive, windows 10 is more flexible in boot to load the correct drivers and get you going.
Make sure you have a backup before doing any of this. Could go really wrong. (a clone copy of the drive using acronis, maximum reflect etc. will let you start over if it all goes wrong)
posted by defcom1 at 5:40 PM on December 10, 2018
Haven't done this for a while, but when I worked in IT for a big organization, it used to be possible to take a drive from most any Dell and put it in another Dell. It would take time to update drivers but it would work most of the time.
posted by theora55 at 3:38 PM on December 11, 2018
posted by theora55 at 3:38 PM on December 11, 2018
Response by poster: So many conflicting answers here! I like the last two, haha. I've tried booting my Win 10 computer with the old drive already, that doesn't work at all. I haven't yet tried buying a 6th-gen Dell to see if there's a chance I can get away with it since folks seem so pessimistic and I already threw money at the new computer. Hmmm, I say! If I ever make up my mind I'll post what happened, assuming it's not me throwing in the towel and recreating my whole computer on Win 10.
posted by roxie110 at 5:08 PM on December 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by roxie110 at 5:08 PM on December 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: I ended up getting a 6th gen i5 processor computer and loading Windows Home Premium from a retail upgrade disk. Took some doing (especially when I realized I had no way to connect to the Internet and no USB flash drive functionality to copy drivers), but with the help of a burned CD and a bunch of Googling and driver installing, I got everything going, and Windows Update worked just fine. A couple little glitches to sort out still, but Windows 7 is definitely loadable onto a Skylake computer with OEM Win 8.1 or Win 10 upgrade.
Just for a kick I'm going to try slotting in my current Win 7 drive just to see what happens, but since it's a different mobo I'm expecting zilch and will have to reinstall all my programs to the new computer anyhow, but hopefully I've bought myself a couple more years with Windows 7.
Of course along the way, after buying this second computer (6th gen), I discovered that there's a program called "Classic Shell" that makes Win 10 look like Win 7. A bit late for me, but good to know when eventually I have to make the switch.
posted by roxie110 at 8:03 PM on January 10, 2019
Just for a kick I'm going to try slotting in my current Win 7 drive just to see what happens, but since it's a different mobo I'm expecting zilch and will have to reinstall all my programs to the new computer anyhow, but hopefully I've bought myself a couple more years with Windows 7.
Of course along the way, after buying this second computer (6th gen), I discovered that there's a program called "Classic Shell" that makes Win 10 look like Win 7. A bit late for me, but good to know when eventually I have to make the switch.
posted by roxie110 at 8:03 PM on January 10, 2019
Response by poster: Oh and one more note! Computers with Win 8.1 or 10 pro have downgrade rights to Win 7 pro, meaning that if they have a 6th generation or earlier processor, you can install Win 7 pro and activate with the same product key. Supposedly only works with 7 pro though.
posted by roxie110 at 8:05 PM on January 10, 2019
posted by roxie110 at 8:05 PM on January 10, 2019
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posted by humboldt32 at 9:21 AM on December 10, 2018 [2 favorites]