Laptop hard drive swap out?

[Kipper717]

I have two laptops that are "broke". I have a nearly 4 year old Dell Inspirson1510 that has a bad display screen (the inverter is bad) and a 6-7 year old HP PavillionZV5034US that just had it's hard drive fail. (I'm still trying to fix it or at least recover my data.)

I want to put the good hard drive from the Dell into the HP. Would I have to reformat it and reload the operating system or would it boot up just as is? (Both systems were running WinXP.) Obviously, just about everything else on the two systems is different.

My gut tells me that I probably will have to reformat first but I thought I would take a shot and check here.


I do have an external 2.5" case so I can retrieve all my data from the good hard drive before I do anything.

 

[Intexity]

yes a format and reinstall will be necessary

 

[pcgeek11]

yes a format and reinstall will be necessary

Ditto ... Concur.

 

[ManyBeers]

I have two laptops that are "broke". I have a nearly 4 year old Dell Inspirson1510 that has a bad display screen (the inverter is bad) and a 6-7 year old HP PavillionZV5034US that just had it's hard drive fail. (I'm still trying to fix it or at least recover my data.)

I want to put the good hard drive from the Dell into the HP. Would I have to reformat it and reload the operating system or would it boot up just as is? (Both systems were running WinXP.) Obviously, just about everything else on the two systems is different.

My gut tells me that I probably will have to reformat first but I thought I would take a shot and check here.


I do have an external 2.5" case so I can retrieve all my data from the good hard drive before I do anything.

I just did a similar task yesterday. I have a Sony 7 year old laptop that came with a 20gb Toshiba hd. The other day I acquired a nearly brand-new Toshiba 60 gb drive. So i purchased a Vantec external caddy loaded it with the 60gb drive plugged it into a usb port and using this software(disc copy)
cloned my 20gb to the 60 and installed the 60gb drive in my laptop and it runs exactly as it did with the 2ogb drive. My laptop was a WinXP/Ubuntu dual boot setup and everything works perfectly. So you don't have to reinstall. Just use disc-copy and copy your old drive to the replacement.

ps: you burn disc-copy .iso to cd to use. Boot disc-copy from cd and your off.

 

[pcgeek11]

I just did a similar task yesterday. I have a Sony 7 year old laptop that came with a 20gb Toshiba hd. The other day I acquired a nearly brand-new Toshiba 60 gb drive. So i purchased a Vantec external caddy loaded it with the 60gb drive plugged it into a usb port and using this software(disc copy)
cloned my 20gb to the 60 and installed the 60gb drive in my laptop and it runs exactly as it did with the 2ogb drive. My laptop was a WinXP/Ubuntu dual boot setup and everything works perfectly. So you don't have to reinstall. Just use disc-copy and copy your old drive to the replacement.

ps: you burn disc-copy .iso to cd to use. Boot disc-copy from cd and your off.

Dear " Manybeers "

The OP said " I have a nearly 4 year old Dell Inspirson1510 that has a bad display screen (the inverter is bad) and a 6-7 year old HP PavillionZV5034US that just had it's hard drive fail."

He can't clone the HP OS onto the Hard Disk from the Dell as the HP Hard Disk has failed. There is no way in hades the Dell installation is going to boot in the HP Notebook without massive hick-ups at best.

His best option is to install the Hard Disk from the Dell into the HP and reinstall.

pcgeek11

 

[corkyg]

His best option is to install the Hard Disk from the Dell into the HP and reinstall.pcgeek11

Yep! Anything else usually results in a BSOD.

 

[ManyBeers]

Dear " Manybeers "

The OP said " I have a nearly 4 year old Dell Inspirson1510 that has a bad display screen (the inverter is bad) and a 6-7 year old HP PavillionZV5034US that just had it's hard drive fail."

He can't clone the HP OS onto the Hard Disk from the Dell as the HP Hard Disk has failed. There is no way in hades the Dell installation is going to boot in the HP Notebook without massive hick-ups at best.

His best option is to install the Hard Disk from the Dell into the HP and reinstall.

pcgeek11

True if the HP hard drive is done then my method won't work. But he also say's he is still trying to recover his data. If the drive is done how can he recover his data?. Doesn't the drive have to at least spin in order to recover data? In other words I got the impression it was "failing". My bad.

 

[RebateMonger]

If both laptops have disk controllers running in IDE compatibility mode, you could likely set the Dell back to the generic IDE disk controller driver, back to the generic VGA display driver, shut it down, and move the disk. You'll likely have to call Microsoft to re-activate it,

If the disks require SATA drivers or one is IDE and the other is SATA, you should be able to do an XP "Repair Install" on the HP after moving the Dell disk to the HP. You'd need an OEM XP Install CD of the edition (Home, Professional, MCE, Tablet) that matches the COA Key on the computer. The Repair Install should leave installed applications and data intact on the hard drive. But you'll want a backup of anything important to you.

How to perform a Windows XP Repair Install:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm