Hard drive swap

[hddave1]

i have 2 computers, 1 is a gateway the other a dell.. both are in good shape but the dell has a 40gig hd and the gateway has a 160gig hd.. my question is im wanting to put the 160gig hd into the dell but i dont want to lose anything that is on the 160gig hd when i remove it from the gateway.. the bigger hd has all my programs and xp home os so how would i go about putting the bigger hd in the dell and still have every thing working like it does in the gateway now...thank for any advice

 

[hddave1]

can i just put the 160 hd in and it still have windows on it or will i have to reinstall windows after i do the swap...anyone???

 

[G Ray88]

Do you have Windows XP Home on the 40GB?, if you do you could slave the 160GB to the 40Gb drive. That's if the Dell is new enough to support a 160GB drive. Before doing this I would back up all of the important information on both drives just to be safe, it's much easier to be safe then sorry.
Good Luck

 

[hddave1]

40gb has no os im just wanting to swap one for the other so i can have the 160gb in the dell but i didnt want to reinstall windows and lose my programs that are already installed on the 160hd.. thanks for the reply

 

[nickc]

sorry the 160gig from the gateway will not work as the os in the dell without a reinstall from the dell as the drivers for everything will be wrong.

 

[PBNinja101]

It will work as if connected to the internet or via Preconfigured drivers - Xp should update all drivers for the dell. (Dell CD would help!).

Booting the harddrive will not be a problem - the drivers may cause a problem.

 

[SNGX1275]

You can't do it. You will have to reinstall the OS and all your programs.

If you absolutely must try, then I'd go in and delete all your hardware from device manager, then put the drive in the other computer and attempt to boot up. Very high chance it won't work.

 

[hddave1]

well looks like im starting over ...thanks guys