Can I swap hard drives?

[Bob L.]

My brand new Dell PC, all of a week old, has stopped
working. After spending forever on the phone with them
they have agreed to send me a replacement PC.

I spent a week customizing the first one and moving data
to it. So my question is, when I receive the replacement
PC, can I swap hard drives? Will Windows XP give me a
problem because it's now on a different PC. Will it think
I'm trying to install it twice or can I do this?

Thanks.

 

[cimex]

If the hardware is identical, then XP cannot tell the difference. If it is a
different motherboard, you may not be able to activate at all, ever. Rather
than void your warranty by playing around with the new machine, you should
clone the one HDD to the other. It is discussed often here.
Something about a crossover cable, not sure about any software required...

 

[Guest]

Plug in that drive and use casper to make a copy, then
make that drive a master.

The demo for free should work fine. for free.


Buy a second Hard drive $69.00 these days and a good
copy/backup program to make a clone. XP-Casper is one.

http://www.fssdev.com/products/ $ 39.00 make the clone
and then un-plug the power to the drive if you want.

Want to test drive a Demo for 30 days. It has some
features disabled.

http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3000-2248-10161152.html?
tag=lst-1-8

 

[Guest]

Follow up----it being a DELL it will be tied to the bios
so a swap would be easy. Just swap drives.

 

[Alex Nichol]

My brand new Dell PC, all of a week old, has stopped
working. After spending forever on the phone with them
they have agreed to send me a replacement PC.

I spent a week customizing the first one and moving data
to it. So my question is, when I receive the replacement
PC, can I swap hard drives? Will Windows XP give me a
problem because it's now on a different PC. Will it think
I'm trying to install it twice or can I do this?

Your brand new PC presumably came with a copy of XP installed - so will
the replacement. Either it will come with new CD disks for use, or your
old ones will not work with it. The product key to use for install
will be on a label on the case of the new machine.

I would definitely *not* try swapping the hard disks - firstly the
trouble may lie in the disk, and secondly it would void your warranty.
You could however plug the old disk in as a second, slave one, and copy
your data files away to a CD or to the new HD. Ideally I would take it
to some other machine and try to put them on a CD there, then you will
not have opened the case of the new machine *at all* which could be
important if you get in an argument over this machine too.