Hard Drive change

[Zhuge_Liang]

My dad wants a new computer for video editing but doesn't want to pay top dollar for a top of the range CPU or GPU. As a solution I offered to give him my old system and put £300 towards his new system in order to get something top of the range for myself.

My dilema:-

The new computer would have a large clean hard drive which I don't really need, but I'm thinking of ordering because it would be ideal for my dad. It would be perfect if I could take the hard drive out of my old system and put it in the new one, and visa versa.

Each of the computers would largely have different components, and even different operating systems. Is it possible... or easy to chnage around the hard drives like this?

[quemar]

Well you should use an image cloner program like Norton Ghost or Drive Image (recommended)
Then on each disk clone the other disk.
Switch disk on each pc and probable the worst that could happen is reinstalling the operating system (check sata hd drivers)
Hope it helped
Sorry mi English and the translator
Spanish speaker

[Zhuge_Liang]

Thanks for the reply.

Not sure if I should get vista on my new system now, don't see any reason why i should. It has a very bad reputation with compatibility.

[Aristocrat]

Most of your applications won't work when you switch a hard drive like that, and all of your drivers, etc, will be out of whack, or downright not working.

Best bet is to back what data you want to keep, then format and reinstall windows/OS on the hard drive.

[Erik]

Each of the computers would largely have different components, and even different operating systems. Is it possible... or easy to chnage around the hard drives like this?

If your old computer has a SATA port, then it's no problem hardware wise.
But the operating systems, applications, games, etc. will no longer work, so you'll have to re-install them.

My advise: first hook up the new drive in the old computer.
Then install windows on that drive and make sure it's working properly.
With both drives hooked up to the same computer it's easy to copy whatever data you want to keep from the old drive to the new.
Finally you can format the old drive and install it in the new computer.