HD swapping from one box to another

Biochem101

Senior member
Feb 27, 2001
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Im getting a new system without a hard drive, but i need to test it out. At the moment , I only have 2 HDs that im using to dual boot w2k and win98.

To test the system, I wanted to pull the w2k HD out of my current box and put it in the new one. Am I going to be running into some troubles here if I just doa straight swap? Or do I need to prep the w2k HD for the new rig?

Curent rig wil not have ANY of the same hardware as the new box.

Thanks for any info and suggestions.

 

TBP

Senior member
Feb 20, 2000
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I had tried to swap hdd between two exactly the same laptops but no go. System booted but didn't want to load the OS.
 

TJ69

Senior member
Jun 7, 2001
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It will only boot, if the hd ur swapping has a boot sector on it. But even if you get it to boot, win2k is pretty strict with hardware. Its gonna have to update alot of drivers for the new hardware. So Its not like you can just swap hd and everything will be dandy. Every time you swap, windows has to figure out what hardware is installed in the system and install the appropriate drivers. Its not that easy of a task, and will prob cause some problems. Win9x will be a little more lenient, but its still not that easy.
 

Dogma

Member
Sep 14, 2001
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Sorry man, if you put that hdd in another system with re-installing the OS from scratch, you'll hose the OS and it won't work in the old box as well.

 

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
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You're probably screwed, sometimes Win2K can survive if you get sysprep and do 'sysprep -pnp' before the swap may help as it will redetect all hardware at next bootup, Win9X may limp a long on it's own but you're better off reinstalling in either case.

Any other OS like Linux should be easily swappable, just make sure the new hd controller is supported by the current kernel and you can boot up and fix any other drivers easily. I've kept the same Linux install for over 2 years now, constantly upgrading hardware making me have to reinstall Win2K quite a few times.
 

Biochem101

Senior member
Feb 27, 2001
314
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thanks, looks like ill have to go to some bizzare extreme in testing the system, prolly try booting to a w2k boot disk, and repartitioning one drive for testing purposes.

Since this will be my new route, is there a 'very safe way' to partition a drive to dual boot and be able to wipe/merge that partition back to its previous state. Obviously I need to defrag and checkdisk. But which systems does a better job of wiping itself and recovering that old partition: w2k or win98?