AMD Athlon Manual page 77

22914B/0—September 1999
Installing a Previously Configured Hard Drive
Q. Can I use my original, preconfigured hard drive from my old computer since it
already has all my programs and stuff loaded on it?
A. To optimize the performance of your new AMD Athlon processor-based system, you
should use a new high-performance drive (UDMA/66 or Ultra-SCSI) as your
primary drive. Then use your older drive as a secondary drive so you can access
your current data.
If you wish to use your current drive as your primary drive, we strongly recom-
mend you back up all your valuable data and critical files first before attempting
this. Most of the time, you will be able to transfer the drive from a recently built
system to your new AMD Athlon processor-based system with no problems. Drives
from some systems (especially older systems) will not tolerate this. (Subtle varia-
tions can occur in the specifications like signal timing and intensity between two
different controllers.) Even if the drive will work, you should expect to load cur-
rent drivers and reload some of your software.
Ideally, to reuse an old drive, you should departition and repartition the hard
drive (using the FDISK command), and format the drive (using the FORMAT com-
mand). Then do a fresh installation of your operating system, install the
AMD Athlon platform-specific drivers, and install the applications. This way, your
system is loaded with the settings and configuration that your motherboard and
the AMD Athlon processor-based system require. Your data (but not operating sys-
tem or applications) can then be copied from your backups.
A Guide to Building a PC with an AMD Athlon™ Processor
71