A more flexible approach: the external driveĪ more flexible approach I prefer instead is to take the drive out of the old computer and install it into an external USB drive enclosure. There’s no “one way” to do it it varies based on the type of computer and hard disk you have. It does mean opening up your PC and connecting the old drive in the right way in the right place. The downside is, you need to be somewhat computer-hardware literate to install the drive. Once you’re done copying the files you want to keep, you can leave the old hard drive in the new machine, reformat it, and use the extra disk space for whatever you like. Once it’s set up, copying files from old to new is easy and fast. What used to appear as the C: drive on the old computer might now appear as the D: drive on the new one. We’ll take a hard drive from an old computer and install it as the second drive in a new one. This is a fairly common approach used by computer geeks. You will not be able to transfer installed applications or Windows itself.Consider instead placing it into an external enclosure to make it a USB drive.You may be able to install it internally if the interfaces are compatible.
