Technically, there's no need to format your HDD at all, you just need to plug it and it should work just fine. You'll probably have a few driver issues if you do this, though, thanks to the components in your new motherboard being different in comparison to the older one, so you I recommend doing a separate partition to store all the important data and format the partition with the OS itself, then you should have no problems.

You don't need to format any of your HDDs. However if your operating system is unstable after the swap (and after installing new drives and such) I'd advise you to do a fresh install and if you do that formating your system disk before that would be optimal but _not required_.

Totally depends on how old your old motherboard was and if it was INTEL and now is AMD and stuff like that.

If its lets say a (INTEL) Gigabyte GA EP35mainboard and the new one is just a (INTEL) Gigabyte GA EP45 you should be able to boot into windows to remove all the drivers and then install the ones from your new mainboard dvd/ download them.

But there is no guarantee that when you made all this that the computer wont be slowed down to some extent because you can never remove all the drivers from your previous installed hardware. You would need special software to do this or to migrate your Windows as a CLEAN windows without drivers into a new partition.

I did this a few times and the chances that it actually works are like 50/50 and then there is also a 50% chance that the Windows is slow because of driver conflicts.


So try to backup your HDD and then try to use it with the new motherboard. If its not working then install Windows a second time (use another partition!***)

(***If you have  Windows Vista 7 or 8 you can take some GBs away from your Windows partition and create a new partition while Windows is running !!!! this has to be done before you remove your old mainboard and install the new one because so you have guaranteed access to Windows it gets more complicated when you have no Windows!!!)

Install Windows into the new partition. Then migrate the files from your old Windows installation into the new one. (if you cant boot into the old one you will still be able to access all the folders from within your new installation)

And you can also use software that moves all your important files and program/game installations/registries etc into the new Windows


I hope this makes some sence I am tired and a little bit drunk   my nephew was born yesterday so we were partying a bit :)

Yep, should be perfectly fine, I did something similar when I moved my SSD from my old Gigabyte 990FX UD7 motherboard (AMD) to to my Asus Sabertooth X79 (Intel) and didn't bother reformatting or wiping, worked like a charm.

Only thing you really need to worry about is if your current system uses AHCI Sata or IDE mode, you may need to set it to IDE in the BIOS on your new motherboard if you ever wanted to boot into Windows with your old drive.

You *may* also need to set the main boot device in the BIOS to as you essentially have 2 copies of Windows installed and that should stop it booting from the mechanical.

not needed. I recently replaced my cpu and motherboard and didn't have to reinstall windows. Just had to reoad some drivers. I would recomend a fresh install if you can back up your data though.

Right, only concern.

Man, I thought I knew quite a bit about building computers but I can't answer this, I've always done clean installs.

I've heard that plugging a new HDD into the motherboard can cause problems, in which case you'll need to carry out a fresh install. I can't see any reason why it shouldn't work though.

no that shouldn't cause any problems. It should boot to your new install. I have two or three drives with windows on it in my computer. If it doesn't boot to the right drive, you can change it in the bios (press f11 during start up i think).