Can I put a Thinkpad HDD into a Compaq?

[mbarker]

I know very, very little about hardware....so kind of a newbie question here:

An associate found a Compaq Presario v6000 series (I think) at a yard sale for $5, but hard drive has been pulled. From the HP support site it appears that it was equipped with a "100GB SATA 1.5Gb/s hard drive - 5,400 RPM, 2.5in form factor, 9.5mm thick."

So, I happen to have a spare 80gb SATA drive. I don't know where it originally came from, and I've never actually used it (my T60p came with 4 drives). It is a Western Digital WD800BEVS-08RS, aka Lenovo 42T1014. Has WinXP on it.

We're wondering if we can stick this drive into the Compaq and expect it to work??

Thanks for any help!

[Harryc]

It will work as a hard drive, but I doubt it will boot windows.

[rkawakami]

As in, "be able to boot XP"? Iffy, I'd say. Windows will probably blue-screen, assuming that it had been previously used in the T60p. There's too much difference in the hardware between the two. The drive itself should work; you will just have to install an OS on it once it's inside the Compaq.

[Nigellus]

It will work as a hard drive, but I doubt it will boot windows.

I once put a Dell HDD from a computer I was replacing for a client and plugged it into the motherboard for the one I was building. I don't really remember why I was doing this at the time except that the data transfer would go faster using then motherboard on the new computer.

I also don't remember why I was trying to load Windows from that HDD on the new computer (I had a really good reason at the time, and it was compelling enough for me to call M$ over the activation issue). What I do remember is that Windows wouldn't load, and even though it was my client's copy of Windows, and even though it was my client's hard drive, M$ said that due to the type of license it was, it could not be transferred from the Dell hardware.

Anyhow, that may vaguely relate to what you're asking about.