Cloning a T60 HDD to a Failed T41

[brooklynboy]

A friend has two ThinkPads, a T41 and T60 which have been kept pretty much in sync software- and data-wise. The T41 HDD just failed irreparably according to the Hitachi DFT, so I picked up a Hitachi 5K120 (7K PATAs are now unavailable or ridiculously expensive) for something like $40 from zipzoomfly.

My first attempt will be to clone the busted drive T41 to the new 5K120 and run a Repair installation from the XP CD. When that fails, I can try a factory-state reset if the cloned restore partition is intact, but I just had another thought: Can I save lots of time by cloning the T60 drive to the new drive and stuffing it into the T41?

I imagine that it would boot and be able to find the latest T41-specific drivers either via System Update or my manual intervention. My questions have to do with software licensing:

- Is there some way to change the Windows product ID after cloning from the one used on the T60 to the one printed on the sticker on the underside of the T41?

- Similarly, is there some way to change the Office 2003 product ID? The one on the T60 is already in use on a second machine.

Thanks to all for suggestions.

[basketb]

I'd be surprised if it worked as the T60 uses a SATA drive and associated drivers and the T41 uses a PATA drive and associated drivers.

[rssb]

You will have to do a sysprep of the T60 image , then use that to clone. When it restarts on T41 it will redetect all the hardware etc..
The architecture of both pc's is different ( something to do with ACPI HAL)


You may be prompted to enter the xp license key from the bottom of your T41 during that process of redetection.