upgrade

Hi new to all this so forgive me for any errors. can anyone give me some advice? i have a dell dimension 8400 series and have made some upgrades in the past, graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT and extra ram currently 2 GB) I want to upgrade and scavange the 8400 for hardware namely the hard drive, ram, graphics card, DVD, peripherals, etc and place these in a new chasis (ANTEC 900) new mobo (ASUS P5N-E SLI) new PSU (ANTEC EARTHWATTS 500) new CPU (P Dual Core E2180). Once i have done this will i have any problems running the os and software that will be on the hard drive. Can anyone give me some help or let me know what sort of problems i will encounter? Thanks

jfzepster

Whenever a major upgrade, like you propose, is made, you would need to reinstall windows, drivers and all the applications, plus when a non-Dell motherboard is used, a new retail copy of windows will be required, Dell's OEM copies are tied to their BIOS.

Bev.

Thanks for that bev, If i was to go ahead with the proposed upgrade, reinstall windows, drivers and applications would the data on the hard drive still be accessible once the upgrade was complete? If you were in my position would you be thinking of alternative methods to upgrade? Thanks for your time and help on this

Joe

jfzepster

Joe.

No, reinstalling windows on the the hard drive will destroy all the exsisting data on it.

You could buy a new SATA hard drive, install windows on it and after it's running to your satisfaction, install the 'old' SATA HD, as the secondary [slave] and transfer the files and folders to the new C:/ primary hard drive.

If you wish to use the 'old' 8400 HD in the new build as the primary C:/ drive, you would need to backup the files and folders to DVD/CD discs, or use a USB flash/external drive [my favourite method].

After transfering the data, you could partition and format the 'old' HD and use it as an additional hard drive for extra storage.

Note: You can only transfer the data files and folders, all applications and utilities must the reinstalled from their discs, or downloaded from the publisher's website.

Bev.

Joe.

Pleased to have helped.

Bev.

Following on from Bev's advice regarding the 'old' hard drive Joe... you can either install it internally - as a 'slave' drive, or (perhaps the easiest?) buy an external enclosure to put it in.

You can then connect it via USB - or even eSATA if your new motherboard and the external enclosure offer eSATA support, to get your important files off it.

Once you have everything you need off it, you can then quick-format the drive, and use it for backups, or downloads, or... whatever you want really :emotion-55:

An additional benefit of fitting it in an external enclosure, is that it's very quick and easy to replace the drive with a new one, as/when it fills up :emotion-5:

PS:  If you decide to buy an external enclosure, although external 3.5" enclosures generally do... make sure the one you buy comes with an AC adapter - rather than drawing its power through the USB bus :emotion-55:

And if your new motherboard has an eSATA port, treat yourself to an enclosure which supports eSATA.

As you may already know, eSATA is a lot quicker than USB 2.0, offering [the potential of] transfer speeds equal to that of standard internal hard drives!

That's particularly important, if you're liable to transfer large files to the external drive, since it's liable to cut the time they take to transfer immeasurably :emotion-21: