Windows 7 Laptop + windows 10 hard drive?

motorguy

I've an old HP laptop that was running windows 7 Pro. I'd stuck a bit of RAM in it last year to take it to 4GB and a cheap 250GB SSD over the summer. Processor is a Core 2 Duo.

I also updated it to windows 10 Pro last month.

I've been given a younger HP laptop thats an i7 machine, originally running Windows 7 Pro, 2GB RAM, but no hard disk (ex business machine)

It has a windows 7 pro windows key on the back.

Obviously i'll swap the RAM over and that wont be an issue, however can i take my Windows 10 installed hard disk out of my old machine and drop it into the newer machine?

Will Windows 10 object, given the newer machine has never been registered with Windows 10?

And if it does, can i correct it by giving it the Windows 7 Pro licence key?

If it all hangs together, then i'd download the correct drivers for the newer machine

bsod

if you mean the original non ssd disk from the old machine, you could just put it in the new machine, install w7, then upgrade to 10, which would give you two working machines. You won't be able to lift a w10 installation from a to b and expect it to work

motorguy

bsod wrote: »

if you mean the original non ssd disk from the old machine, you could just put it in the new machine, install w7, then upgrade to 10, which would give you two working machines. You won't be able to lift a w10 installation from a to b and expect it to work

I meant the SSD disk.

You reckon it wont let me do that then?

NiftyDigits

No. Just back up your data. Put the SSD in to the new machine. Clean install Windows 7 to the SSD, upgrade to Windows 10 if you so choose. Then run a clean install of Windows 10 to the SSD and replace your data.

Buy another cheap SSD for the older laptop.

glentoran99

bear in mind windows 10 doesn't have easy transfer so copying data isn't quite so easy

wongataa

motorguy wrote: »

I meant the SSD disk.

You reckon it wont let me do that then?

If you did it Windows 10 would not activate. This is why you need to have Windows 7 installed and then upgrade to get the free licence of Widows 10 on the second computer.

almillar

Nothing to do with Windows 10, 7 or SSD or HDD, you just simply don't drop one system's drive into another system. It's got specific software and drivers on it and might have a meltdown, might sort of work, or if you're lucky, might seem to work for a while.
Hardware wise, if they're both SATA, you can very easily swap them. THEN reinstall everything. As bsod says, put 7 back on first using your legit key from the new computer, then go through the update process to 10. This leaves you with legit 10. If you're keeping the old one, you can do the same, with THAT computer's 7 product key.
RAM - don't be so sure it's the same stuff. Laptop RAM is usually SODIMM (roughly half the length of desktop RAM) but could either be (these days) DDR2 or 3, and plenty of speeds in amongst those. DDR2 sticks won't work in a DDR3 slot, but you might get lucky.
Either use crucial.com or tell us the two computers to work out whether it's compatible, or take the sticks out of the computers and read them to see what they are.

_gav_

As others have said it is likely to cause problems, but it could work! There is nothing stopping you taking an image backup of the SSD to another external device, installing the SSD into the new laptop and then trying to see what happens! Worse case scenario is that it doesn't work, but kills the Windows environment on the SSD drive; best case it works and you've saved a load of effort :-)


I've done it before moving an SSD drive from an old Dell laptop to a new Dell laptop and it worked absolutely find. So maybe worth a gamble.


But be aware, you really need to be sure you have a good image backup. Something like Acronis, where you can recover from a bootable CD. If it goes horribly wrong then you need to be confident you can recover using the image backup to rebuild the SSD drive.