Can you boot alien hard drive in your computer safely?

[hackmole]

Am fixing friend's computer whose hard drive I installed in my computer as the slave drive. Friend gave me only the hard drive because he didn't want to drag computer around. Diagnostic passed and 600 viruses eliminated. Now want to boot it from my computer but afraid to do so because of different drivers and bios. Think that would screw it up.

Wondering if I could safely boot it to safe mode in my computer. That would at least tell me if it has improved because at first it wouldn't even do that.

 

[postmortemIA]

no, hardware is too different. not only that it won't work, chances are that you might damage installation for him too.

 

[corkyg]

As PM says above, it won't work - unless per chance you have the same mobo as your friend. A different chipset usually results in a BSOD.

However, if he GAVE it to you, then it matters not. But if you have it on loan, it matters.

Best solution - tell your friend to drag his box over to your house, or you take the HDD over to his and work it on his box.

 

[Laputa]

Take it over and put it into his system to find out. It will definitely not work in your system unless all the hardwares are identical.