Using two hardrives, how to wipe one

[tadman]

i recently bought a desktop, but for years i have been using my laptop. i would like to put the hard drive from my laptop onto the desktop, and use it as my hard drive. unfortunately, the desktop already has a hard drive inside, with an xp operating system, i would like to use windows seven. how can i put in both drives, keeping all my files exactly the same, and make it run 7?
thank you in advance for answers

 

[tadman]

(p.s i am a complete noob, so please explain fully)

 

[clarkjd]

Legally, you can't. The Win7 install on your laptop is licensed to that machine. and therefore you cannot move it to a different machine.

 

[tadman]

oh okay, can i use the xp on the desktop?

 

[clarkjd]

oh okay, can i use the xp on the desktop?

Unless whoever built the desktop machine put a pirated copy of XP on it, you should be good to go.

 

[szaboaz]

First things first, is your laptop hard drive a SATA or IDE drive? IDE drives have different connectors so you can't use them directly, only in USB external enclosure.

SATA connectors are the same format, but I've seen some discussion before, where not everybody agreed that it's risk-free to connect a laptop drive to a desktop PC.

If you use your XP, then the situation is simple: you're just adding another drive. You just have to make sure that the XP drive is in front of the other one in BIOS boot order.

 

[clarkjd]

First things first, is your laptop hard drive a SATA or IDE drive? IDE drives have different connectors so you can't use them directly, only in USB external enclosure.

SATA connectors are the same format, but I've seen some discussion before, where not everybody agreed that it's risk-free to connect a laptop drive to a desktop PC.

If you use your XP, then the situation is simple: you're just adding another drive. You just have to make sure that the XP drive is in front of the other one in BIOS boot order.

Since we've covered the legal aspects of the issue, let's look at the tech aspects. Yes the connector compatibility is a consideration, but there is also the fact that the Win7 installation was on a laptop, with it's associated drivers and optimizations, it's doubtful that it would even boot if it was placed in a desktop machine, or if the desktop is even capable of running Win7.

 

[tadman]

Since we've covered the legal aspects of the issue, let's look at the tech aspects. Yes the connector compatibility is a consideration, but there is also the fact that the Win7 installation was on a laptop, with it's associated drivers and optimizations, it's doubtful that it would even boot if it was placed in a desktop machine, or if the desktop is even capable of running Win7.

what do you suggest i do?

 

[clarkjd]

what do you suggest i do?

If you want Win7 on your desktop machine, then you need to download and run the Win7 upgrade adviser first to see if your desktop hardware can run Win7. If it can, then you need to purchase a copy of Win7. You will need to do a clean install of Win7 as XP is not upgradeable to Win7.
If you want to keep XP on your Desktop machine & just access the data on the laptop HDD, then you can follow the procedure that szaboaz suggested.