My friend needs a new hard drive for his laptop. I am replacing my hard drive in my laptop with an SSD so I was wondering if I could just put my old drive in his laptop. My laptop is an HP with an AMD processor and 8 gigs of ram, and his is a Dell with an intel processor and 4 gigs of ram. If that is not possible, and he was to buy a new drive, would he need to purchase a new copy of windows since he does not have the installation disk? Any help or advise is greatly appreciated.
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Hard drive swap
- Thread starter Dhas12
- Start date
Solution
Boogieman_WD
Judicious
- Jul 31, 2014
- 6,050
- 2
- 35,960
Hey there, Dhas12.
In either way, most likely he'll have to get a new copy of Windows unless he has the product key for the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) version of Windows which the laptop had when he bought it. If he has that key, he can create a Windows installation media by following the instructions from this link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/15088/windows-create-installation-media.
Basically even if you give him your HDD, most likely he won't be able to boot to Windows and will need to make a clean installation, since the OS has been configured for the different hardware (and motherboard most importantly) in your laptop.
Hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Boogieman_WD
In either way, most likely he'll have to get a new copy of Windows unless he has the product key for the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) version of Windows which the laptop had when he bought it. If he has that key, he can create a Windows installation media by following the instructions from this link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/15088/windows-create-installation-media.
Basically even if you give him your HDD, most likely he won't be able to boot to Windows and will need to make a clean installation, since the OS has been configured for the different hardware (and motherboard most importantly) in your laptop.
Hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Boogieman_WD
First of all...without even knowing the makes/models of the two HDDs that are involved it's a safe bet that your friend will not see any significant improvement in the operation of his laptop using your transferred HDD. The fact that his laptop is AMD-based and your laptop's HDD contains an Intel OS is completely irrelevant. As is the difference in RAM.
The only circumstance I could envision where your HDD would prove useful in his system is if the disk-space capacity of your HDD was considerably larger than his present HDD and he needs the additional capacity offered by your disk.
Obviously his best recourse would be to follow your example and purchase a SSD assuming his laptop's system would have no problem accommodating a SSD.
Anyway...
Whether he uses another HDD (yours or a new one) or purchases a SSD he should surely consider cloning the contents of his present boot drive to the new HDD or SSD. This assumes, of course, that his present system boots & functions without any problems. You (and he) should do some research on "cloning the contents of one drive to another drive". There are many freely available disk-cloning programs available and should he purchase a SSD a d-c ("data migration") may even be included with it.
The only circumstance I could envision where your HDD would prove useful in his system is if the disk-space capacity of your HDD was considerably larger than his present HDD and he needs the additional capacity offered by your disk.
Obviously his best recourse would be to follow your example and purchase a SSD assuming his laptop's system would have no problem accommodating a SSD.
Anyway...
Whether he uses another HDD (yours or a new one) or purchases a SSD he should surely consider cloning the contents of his present boot drive to the new HDD or SSD. This assumes, of course, that his present system boots & functions without any problems. You (and he) should do some research on "cloning the contents of one drive to another drive". There are many freely available disk-cloning programs available and should he purchase a SSD a d-c ("data migration") may even be included with it.
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