Re: Swapping Laptop Hard drives

Dennis Pogson wrote:

So if the hard drive packs in, you throw the laptop away? Any more good
jokes?

Read what I wrote.

The Operating System licence for Windows for Dell & HP machines, not to mention most other laptops (Toshiba, IBM, Acer & so on) is locked to the *motherboard* type, not the hard drive & the install media normally only come with the drivers for that make/ type of motherboard & the peripherals built in to those machines.

The Dell version of Windows almost certainly won't install on the HP & vice versa. I believe they check a system makers code stored on the BIOS. You can even add memory with no problem.

To be technical, yes, he *can* swap the HDs over, *if* they're both the same type (SATA or PATA, & physically the same size, the logical size *may* cause a problem, if one or both of the motherboards doesn't support LBA48, & one of the HDs is over 128 Gb), but the Windows installations will either just refuse to run or crash when they can't find the drivers they need for the new peripherals they find on the new systems. He *could* use the restore discs to install the manufacturer's installation OS on each of the machines, but he'd then have to re-install all the programs too.

The only HD related gotcha with a laptop (As well as most cheapish desktop/ tower systems, IME) is if the HD fails & the restore partition (If that's the way the makers have done it, some makers send a set of restore discs out with the machine) hasn't been backed up, then you need to either buy a full copy of Windows or buy the restore disc set from the makers.

I've changed enough hard drives in laptops without problems. I've got a number of IBM, Compaq & Toshiba laptops in use here, made over the last 15 years or so, & not one of 'em is running it's original hard drive, & only one of them still has the amount of memory it came with.

I can't change the drive on one machine, a Toshiba T3200 Intel 286 based portable, as it's an MFM drive, & I can't get MFM drives anymore, but that's 20 plus years old, & if desperate, I *could* find an ISA HD controller card & put a new IDE HD in....

--
Tciao for Now!

John.
.

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