Some of you hardware mavens or others more experienced than I might know the answer to this question.
Is it possible to swap an SSD that contains the OS and program libraries from one machine to another and have it run the machine it is newly placed in?
I'm a little reluctant to just try it and see lest I 'break' something.
Swapping SSD
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- UraniumLounger
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Swapping SSD
Bob's yer Uncle
Dell Intel Core i5 Laptop, 3570K,1.60 GHz, 8 GB RAM, Windows 11 64-bit, LibreOffice,and other bits and bobs
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- Microsoft MVP
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Re: Swapping SSD
It will work if the hardware is similar enough. The drive may not contain drivers for some things on the receiving machine. The OS will probably boot OK, though, even in that case.
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- UraniumLounger
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Re: Swapping SSD
Thanks, Jay!
What if the BIOS is different in each machine?
What if the BIOS is different in each machine?
Bob's yer Uncle
Dell Intel Core i5 Laptop, 3570K,1.60 GHz, 8 GB RAM, Windows 11 64-bit, LibreOffice,and other bits and bobs
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- Microsoft MVP
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Re: Swapping SSD
Yeah, I forgot about that complication. If the machine that first had the SSD has a legacy BIOS, the drive would be in master boot record (MBR) format. If the receiving machine has UEFI enabled, that requires the boot drive to be in GUID partition table (GPT) format. If that mismatch exists, you can see whether the receiving machine's UEFI can be turned off. That depends on what's built into the motherboard. If you need to, you can convert an MBR drive to GPT. I don't know whether that's reversible.
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- UraniumLounger
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Re: Swapping SSD
Thanks, again, Jay!
Bob's yer Uncle
Dell Intel Core i5 Laptop, 3570K,1.60 GHz, 8 GB RAM, Windows 11 64-bit, LibreOffice,and other bits and bobs
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- Administrator
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Re: Swapping SSD
Even if it works it may require you to do something to re-enable your licenses. Windows will only allow a small number of core hardware components to change before it decides that the license is for a different computer.
StuartR