Solved: Can I swap out a working hard drive and put it in another pc?

[geno368]

I have two pc's with sata drives. both of then are running windows 7 home premium. I want to install Windows 8 on one machine and then use pc mover to move all my programs and files to that windows 8 os pc. Shouldn't either drive work in each machine?

 

[KomputerKid]

Without knowing the specs on the computers there's no way we can know for sure. Can you please give us a little more info?

 

[dustyjay]

If you are moving the system drive from one computer to another, unless the second computer has identical hardware, the system will not boot with windows 7 originally installed on the other machine. Second if the Installation of windows is an OEM such as from a dell or hp or any other bigbox system, it is illegal to use that installation on any other system. If you however want to add the drive as a second drive so that you can retrieve files and such then it should work just fine.

 

[geno368]

Thank you for the replies...
One of them is a gateway which from the factory had vista 64 bit with 6 gb ram. I bought a windows 7 retail and updated it. The other one is an acer aspire which also had Vista but it is now a windows 7 32 bit with 2gb ram.
I wonder if I could just add the second drive on the gateway as a slave and put Windows 8.1 on it

 

[valis]

truth told, if that gateway came with Vista installed, no way it is going to run 8.1......

 

[geno368]

Thanks,Valis....why wouldn't it run it?

 

[valis]

when vista was released, 8.1 wasn't even thought of yet. As a result, the hardware that 8.1 will use (as well as drivers) simply didn't exist back then. It would be like taking a 2015 formula 1 engine and tossing it in a Model T.

 

[geno368]

lol...thanks Valis

 

[KomputerKid]

But you'd sure have one FAST computer lol

 

[geno368]

Valis, I do have a Dell Latitude E6500 laptop which originally had Vista business and I bought Windows 8 for it last year. I did the 8.1 update and it is running fine. It that because it is a laptop?

 

[valis]

technically it shouldn't work, as according to Dell there are no W8/8.1 drivers for it....you may run into some hardware issues.

 

[crjdriver]

The other issue you have is the fact that you are dealing with big box systems ie dell, gateway whatever. The oem windows lic is valid with the original hardware only ie you cannot take a drive with windows and move it to another system. You can however install the drive and clean install whatever os you want. Before installing win8, make sure it is a supported os for your system. If there are no win8 drivers, then you are a beta tester; might work and it might not work.

 

[geno368]

Thanks very much for the insight and info...