Swap HDDs on identical laptops while hibernated - comments/problems?

One laptop is being really slow resuming from hibernation and I need to rescue some unsaved work before I can put it through a restart. To complicate matters, that same laptop has a problem with the charging jack so is forced to use the two tired batteries. Neither battery can keep it running long enough to save my work before the laptop heads back to hibernation. Therefore I'd like to switch the HDDs (and RAM) so the problem hibernation uses mains power during recovery. (The reason I intend to swap the RAM is because I know by experience that different amounts of RAM can ruin a resume from hibernate - amount of RAM is the only difference between them.)

I looked up how to remove the HDD and discovered that Dell say not to remove the HDD while in hibernation. Any one know the reasons behind this and whether I can get away with it? Since a hibernated state is nearly identical to a shut down, I can't see why this would be a problem. Isn't the only thing different between shut down and hibernate that the state is written to the HDD?

The laptops in question are Dell Latitude D510 running Windows XP Pro SP3 with either one or one and a half gig RAM. If there are any other specs that people think are relevant, please ask.

Thanks!

P.S. Here is a link to the place at Dell where I was reading:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/latd510/en/sm/hdd.htm#wp1123687