Can i swap hdd

I'm curious
if i have a gateway laptop with a hdd and i want to swap it out say in a dell
will it work?

i mean like Compaq and hp are basically the same right

gateway and acer

if i swapped it out will it hurt the drive or just blue screen
I'm assuming the video driver are the culprit but I'm not sure

lots of times people try to sell hdd with a OS on it like its a big deal
but most likely it wont match

am i thinking correctly
thanks

It won't hurt the Hard Drive hardware
But it will likely bluescreen, but not because of Video drivers, but because of different hardware chipset and installed drivers for the different chipsets (like Intel and AMD, and many others)

I hope this helps

hmm
so if its an intel chipset it just may work?
worth experimenting if it wont hurt the hdd
thank you O great and powerful OZ
LOL

That's right, if they are both the same chipsets, then it may work, but due to the amount of other conflicting drivers also installed, it may not

Also note that by doing this you may and highly likely will corrupt the original working Windows, which will then not work when mounted back into the original machine

that's what i was afraid of
oh well
another experiment for another day
thanks again