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question about swapping hard drives between laptops?
I have a 1-yr old (approx) laptop with a failed mainboard but a good NVMe hard drive. Never mind for now anything about warranties or repairs, because that is not my question right now.
My questions are these:
1. If I had another somewhat similarly spec'd laptop (but not identical) of the same brand, and it also had an NVMe hard drive, could I swap it with mine and expect upon startup to behave just as my old one did before the mainboard broke? (Assuming it did not break because of what's on the hard drive, which is unlikely anyway.)
2. Same question, but what if the "another computer" was similar but a different brand?
3. Assuming the answer to at least one of the above is yes, could I accomplish the same thing (at least as a test) by putting the drive in an NVMe enclosure, plugging it into a USB port, and "telling" the new computer not to use its own hard drive at all, but just run as though the drive from the broken computer (now connected by USB) is the one and only hard drive known to it?
3a. If that should work, can someone give some instructions about how to do that?
Thank you!!
Wow, this is frustrating. Some say it will work, some say it won't work, some say it might work, and some say it depends. Some say the enclosure will work, some say it won't. And one dufus pretends to know everything but refuses to answer the question, yet wastes everyone's time by posting anyway.
It seems like anyone who really knew how all this stuff works, and that certainly does not apply to me, could make a lot of money with that knowledge.
6 Answers
- Anonymous4 months ago
1)If the laptops are similar specs then a simple swapout stands a good chance of working
2)The more you deviate from the original laptop specs the less the chance of it working, in worst case it won't boot or will crash as it won't have the correct drivers. Additionally you may have to reactivate the copy of windows as the original license will be OEM and not normally transferrable
3)Windows 10 doesn't normally allow booting from an external USB drive without some hacks that can’t be done on a existing installation.
- ?Lv 74 months ago
Dude, it is orders of magnitude FASTER to have already tried this yourself than to ask strangers these questions. You seem to have thought this through -- so GO DO IT. The worst that can happen is it doesn't boot up from your new external NVMe drive -- BUT IT SHOULD ALSO TELL YOU WHY.
Yes, I know you won't like this answer -- but it's the one that'll make you a better tech -- if that's a road you're going down.
- ?Lv 54 months ago
1. It might work just fine. It might deactivate your Windows (and you have to give Microsoft a phone call). I took my dad's laptop Windows XP and ran it on my more-recent tower, and it worked fine. Uh yeah, Windows XP was deactivated because of the new hardware.
Windows 10 is probably more finicky about its license being transplanted than earlier Windowses because it can compare its keycode with the one stored in the motherboard's NVRAM. I tried sticking a Windows 10 Pro drive into a computer that had been licensed for Windows 10 Home, and yeah, the Pro got deactivated.2. It might work just fine. It might deactivate your Windows (and you have to give Microsoft a phone call).- You might need device drivers. Windows is pretty smart and should go with "default drivers" for everything, but you won't be getting good video performance and might not get audio at all, say.3. Normal Windows won't run from a USB drive (only WinPE or WinRE). I think.
- Spock (rhp)Lv 74 months ago
SSDs [and HDDs] won't work in a different laptop without the maker's hardware device drivers. get these from the maker's support pages ... and check for install instructions for an existing drive that already has an operating system installed
- ?Lv 74 months ago
1)If the laptops are similar specs then a simple swapout stands a good chance of working
2)The more you deviate from the original laptop specs the less the chance of it working, in worst case it won't boot or will crash as it won't have the correct drivers. Additionally you may have to reactivate the copy of windows as the original license will be OEM and not normally transferrable
3)Windows 10 doesn't normally allow booting from an external USB drive without some hacks that can’t be done on a existing installation.
- Anonymous4 months ago
Yes, you can jus swap them. Your issues will appear only if one of three things happen. 1) Windows 7 thru 10 are all made to automatically check and replace drivers when it's booted. (Edit to Add: Generic Windows drivers will be loaded when compatibility is found. You can later load 3rd party drivers as needed.) If the Windows was working when you shut off the laptop, then the hard drive should boot up (in theory) in the new laptop. 2) If they are the same or similar motherboards, it may end up booting rather quickly, as fewer items would be different. 3) if the laptop is of a different brand it may take longer, but again, in theory it should boot. It depends on whether it has the driver's handy that it needs to run all the hardware.
Using an enclosure, your computer would have to be able to boot from the USB (check BIOS settings) and same with the internal drive. Check BIOS for boot order, and try it. When I worked in IT (20+ years) we did this a lot. A couple of times, it didn't work, but it was due to problems in the hard drive. As far as I know, this should work even with an NVMe drive and work well for you.
