Can I swap HDD drives into laptops of similar make and hardware/OS configuration?

[Wolveryeti]

My laptop motherboard (Thinkpad T420) failed recently due to water damage, but it has some valuable programs on its SSD which I would like to keep.

Does anyone know if it would work to just buy another second hand one and swap the native (non-SSD) HDD with the SSD from my borked one?

 

[The Boy]

Yes.

Edit:. Assuming, of course, that the drive bay is the correct size. Can't think of any reason if wouldn't.

Edit edit:. You could also buy a caddy for the ssd if you have a desktop and use it as an external hard drive - that may not suit your needs tho.

 

[keybored]

Do you mean just putting it into a second laptop and using it without reinstalling the OS? If so will these laptops be "similar" or the same? If the hardware is different it won't work properly because the OS will have configured itself around the hardware of the first laptop on install, the greater the differences the less likely it will work properly/at all.

Also if Windows you may run into issues with licencing if the OS came pre-installed on the first laptop.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Do you mean just put it into a second laptop and using it without reinstalling the OS? If so will these laptops be "similar" or the same? If the hardware is different it won't work properly because the OS will have configured itself around the hardware of the first laptop, the greater the differences the less likely it will work properly/at all.

Also if Windows you may run into issues with licencing if the OS came pre-installed on the first laptop.

Yeah, this is a serious consideration. I would go with the caddy suggestion myself. If you really want to use the old drive, say if it's a really great expensive one, I'd copy the user data from that to a third drive somewhere, wipe it, put it in the new maxhine, reinstall the OS, then copy the user data back. But that's a bit of a faff tbh, particularly if you don't have install media.

 

[gosub]

os makes a difference if it was win7 it won't have the layer of software between the bios and the os win 8 and current machines have.

 

[The Boy]

Yeah, good point. I'm running win 7 and a variety of unices so have been able to swap drives in and out.

 

[Wolveryeti]

Thanks all! I will give it a try with a Win7 machine and report back.

 

[mauvais]

Windows handles total hardware change pretty well these days. Biggest issue is the software license as someone already said.

 

[gosub]

Windows handles total hardware change pretty well these days. Biggest issue is the software license as someone already said.

Tried putting and Ssd into a Lenovo stripping out win 8 to go back to win 7, the thing between bios and os made it not the usual piece of piss.

 

[mauvais]

Tried putting and Ssd into a Lenovo stripping out win 8 to go back to win 7, the thing between bios and os made it not the usual piece of piss.

I've done a couple of near-total hardware replacements with Windows 7 and 10, keeping the hard drives and so just throwing the old setup at the new hardware, and apart from having to do a chat with MS about key activation on 10, it all worked seamlessly, which is a far cry from how it used to behave.

 

[keybored]

which is a far cry from how it used to behave

Probably disregard what I said about hardware changes in #3 then Wolveryeti, I've not really touched Windows since XP/a bit of 7. Seems like things have changed since then.

 

[mauvais]

XP could handle some hardware changes but if you went too far or got unlucky it'd just break, BSOD etc and require reinstall.

 

[gosub]

I've done a couple of near-total hardware replacements with Windows 7 and 10, keeping the hard drives and so just throwing the old setup at the new hardware, and apart from having to do a chat with MS about key activation on 10, it all worked seamlessly, which is a far cry from how it used to behave.

Might have been a Lenovo thing then (still thread relevant) but was trying to hot hatch a 15" laptop for the Mrs back when win 8 was new. No end of agro, mainly from the mrs