Swap hard drives between machines

I have a Dell Dimension 8100 and Dimension 4300, both running WinXP SP3.
Can I swap the hard disks between the two machines?
The 8100 will take 2GB memory but the 4300 has a max of just 1GB. The hard drive on the 8100 is 40GB and the 4300 is 120GB. It seems to make sense that the biggest memory and biggest disk sizes go together.

 

You could but I suspect you'd get lots of bootup errors because each XP is configured for the hardware on a particular computer; since the hardware doesn't match, XP will complain or hang or boot up with things not working because the drivers are wrong.

 

This is 100% correct. Windows has a way of 'bonding' with hardware. When the shock of all new hardware hits, XP tends to crash. On a few VERY rare occasions, you can swap hard drives, but 97% of the time, Windows will crash. But if you have your Windows install disc, you can simply swap the drives, then perform a repair install if Windows doesn't load correctly, and all should be OK.... The RAM and hard drive sizes have nothing to do with each other. A PC with 2gb of RAM will run just as fast with a 40gb drive or a 120gb drive as long as both drives are defragmented, have the same speed, and clean Windows installs. This will change over time, but as long as each drive has at least 25% free space, the performance difference will be more-or-less nonexistent.

 

Thanks guys.