Can I install windows on an SSD and access data from my old windows HDD?
- by nzifnab
I purchased new computer components, switching my hardware from AMD and Radeon to Intel and Nvidia. I kept components from my old computer like the powersupply and two HDDs.
Everything appeared to install correctly and the system booted into the BIOS just fine (after a brief snafu with the CPU fan).
My goal was to use the two harddrives and just be able to turn on the computer and load up my old windows install with all the files, programs, and documents. I expected to have to call Microsoft to re-register the windows install for the new hardware (since I had to do that last time I upgraded w/ the same windows version). When the computer attempts to boot into windows it briefly flashes a bluescreen and then restarts. System recovery gives a message something like "BadDriver Failover" something something. I assume this is because it's trying to use amd drivers for an intel chipset (or something...?) and I've been as-yet unsuccessful in getting it to boot into my old windows partition.
SO! I decided eff it, maybe I'll go visit my nearest Micro Center and buy a 200 GB SSD, install windows onto that, and then... be able to access just the contents of both of my other harddrives? I don't intend on running any of the programs but there were some saved files I would like to salvage from the 500 GB harddrive, The 1.5 TB harddrive only had files on it, no OS or applications so I'd also expect to still be able to access it.
Is this possible? Can I install the SSD and only format/install windows onto it and still access the contents from my two transferred-over drives?
