Swapping a hard drive from one think pad to another

[jtz]

Greetings,

I was a faithful R61 user since 2006. This was a notebook that arrived with XP installed and I used it through SP3. Earlier this year I purchased a new hard drive and loaded Windows 7 and was perfectly satisfied until yesterday when the Fan Error message brought my R61 to a conclusion. Tomorrow my new W520 arrives.

I was wondering if I was able to take my current hard drive with Windows 7 and all of my software loaded and swap it out of the new W520 before turning it on for the first time.. Would this work? Work well? What if anything would need to be done to make this work well?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks,
jtz

[mariol90]

it may work, you can always try and see. there are sometimes issues when you just put a hard drive in a different computer, like windows not being able to boot, windows deactivating itself (because of hardware changes), or some other software issues. most of the problems would be able to be fixed i'm sure.

i'd say most people would just recommend a fresh install of windows, since you won't have to deal with any issues that come up from using an old install. but if your W520 does boot without a problem, you may be good to go. just download any software/drivers from lenovo's site.

[jtz]

Thanks. I am going to give it a try just to see. I'll post my success, (hopefully), or lack thereof, (hopefully not).

jtz