laptop HDD swap

Dumb question, but....
If I buy another HDD for my laptop and install a new O/S on it, can I at a later date put back the old HDD and boot up with it?

 

Short answer is yes!

 

Just make sure it's the same type as the one that's already there SATA, eSATA or IDE/PATA. I've got 3 IDE/PATA drives for my Dell in case the one that's in it should fail.

 

Yes. Just do not format the old drive. What I would do is get an external enclosure for it, so that you can pull anything off of the old drive, such as documents, etc. You will have to take "Ownership" of the drive, when you do it.

We can help you with going through the security part of changing Ownership of the drive, when you get the new drive.

What make & model of drive are you looking at for the replacement? I have a Crucial M500 250gb in my Toshiba Satellite. In the Netbook that I gave my daughter, I put in a a 64gb m4, and gave her my 300gb that came with my Satellite, placed it into an external enclosure, that she could use if she wanted to store stuff, that she wanted local, vs on the family cloud drive that we use at a Colocated server that my brother runs his business off of.

 

->brownizs
What's this about 'ownership' ? Can't mallorcaban simply replace his old HD with a compatible new one, and install the new OS from DVD/CD ROM onto that ?
After that exchanging the disks should be routine ? Even using the 'old' to read and write data on any machine shouldn't be a problem, so long as you don't boot from it. (though why one should want to do that I can't think)

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you said in your post, please explain.

Dumb_Question
19.August.2013

 

If you are using the old drive in an external enclosure, or as a Slave in a desktop, and wish top pull files from it, you have to change the security policy on those folders or the whole drive itself, by taking "Ownership".

This is regarding Windows XP, but the instructions are the same for all current operating systems http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421 See also http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2623670/en-US