Moving a hard drive to another computer?

It is possible, but not recommended. If the computers are literally identical (like they are the exact same model from Dell or whatever) then it's no problem. However, if they have different hardware (almost always the case) then it's usually not a good idea to do so. Not only will you have to load the drivers for the new hardware, you may have incompatible drivers loaded from the old hardware that cause problems - and they can be difficult to get rid of.

Another issue to be aware of is Windows activation. If you install Windows XP or Vista on one computer and then later move that hardware to another, you will have to reactivate. This usually isn't a problem, but it's possible that you will have to explain yourself to Microsoft.

I've done it with an old laptop that didn't have a cd drive. I installed the operating system most of the way. Once I didn't need the cd any more I popped it back in the other machine and installed the correct drivers. Then I networked to a shared cd drive in another computer to get anything else I needed from cd.

I use an external USB housing to use various HDD and transfer info That way. Moving drives from one computer to another is easy, as long as you set the jumpers correctly. With more than one HDD, one has to be jumpered as master, the other as slave. If not done, THAT would cause problems. If you have a program like True Image 8, you can copy whole discdrives (including the one with the operating system) so the copies work just like the originals (including booting a system).

Yes but you will likely need to re-install drivers for much of the hardware unless the two computers are virtually identical.

Bert

In my experience it almost never works easy like that, most of the time I had to reinstall the os, but you can still pull out the files you need before reformatting.