Help with new pc
Help with new pc
You're preparing for a B350 Tomahawk motherboard build. It looks like you already have a 10TB hard drive with everything installed, so you likely won't need to replace it. You can connect the new B350 motherboard and select it as your boot drive directly. The 256GB SSD is a good idea for backups or future upgrades. The easiest step right now is installing the new BIOS on the B350 and then adding the SSD before moving any data.
Upgrading the motherboard may prevent Windows from starting. Your data remains on the external drive. Insert the SSD first, then connect the HDD afterward.
TrigrH explains the problem in simpler terms. The main concern is whether the old hard drive uses the MBR partitioning method. Most modern UEFI motherboards support compatibility modes that let you boot from drives with MBR, though this usually makes booting slower. If the option to use a compatibility mode is turned off and Windows tries to boot from an MBR drive, it won’t work. You might see a warning about activation when Windows doesn’t recognize the setup. Since I’m unfamiliar with AM4 boards, I’m unsure if they support this feature, but it seems unlikely. I suggest installing the OS on the SSD first and using GPT during installation for better performance and faster boot times. In my experience, switching to GPT reduced boot times from about 30 seconds to under 5 seconds.