I Should Know the Answer . . .

[BobH]

. . . but I don't.

I have a now-defunct desktop that has several hard drives and an SSD in it. I want to retain the data on them. I currently have only an older HP laptop. The SSD in particular has software on it that I'd like to recover.

Is it possible to install an SSD in remote case, add the device to the Win 10 system, and boot from it? If so, how would go about creating such a kludge?

[stuck]

You can fit an SSD or and HHD into a caddy with a USB connection (search for something like 'usb caddy for ssd drive' , or 'usb caddy for hdd drive'). If you then plug that into a bootable system it would appear as a new drive in Explorer on that bootable system.

I don't know, but if the boot order of the bootable system can be changed (in the BIOS / UEFI) can be changed to 'boot from USB' then if the drive in the USB caddy has an OS on it then in theory the OS on the drive in the caddy will boot.

Ken

[StuartR]

Even if the drive is able to boot, it is likely to detect that it is on a completely different system and this may invalidate licenses for your software

[BobH]

Thank you, Gentlemen!

I'll let you know what I mess up next.