Swapping C:\ drives?

[Newblesse Obblige]

My father wants to swap drives of his current Lenovo PC to other Lenovo PC that is used as a HTPC because he was complaining that the HTPC is chonky asf compared to his(i think he wants to swap the case because the smaller one is more suitable for a HTPC lmao) so i decided to swap the hard drives instead. is it ok to do that? (i haven’t swapped them yet)

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, 5GigaaHertz said:

My father wants to swap drives of his current Lenovo PC to other Lenovo PC that is used as a HTPC because he was complaining that the HTPC is chonky asf compared to his(i think he wants to swap the case because the smaller one is more suitable for a HTPC lmao) so i decided to swap the hard drives instead. is it ok to do that? (i haven’t swapped them yet)

What is the model of both PC's?

 

What OS is installed on both of them?

 

If they are similar models with similar hardware, running the same drivers, and both are on Windows 10, then the swap "should" work - but that's not ideal at all.

 

If they have very different hardware requiring different drivers, this could cause problems down the road, and it could also make performance worse.

 

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you want to use the smaller PC as the HTPC, then I would wipe both of them and reinstall Windows. Of course, backing up any important data and transferring it to the new systems.

[Newblesse Obblige]

54 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

What is the model of both PC's?

 

What OS is installed on both of them?

 

If they are similar models with similar hardware, running the same drivers, and both are on Windows 10, then the swap "should" work - but that's not ideal at all.

 

If they have very different hardware requiring different drivers, this could cause problems down the road, and it could also make performance worse.

 

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you want to use the smaller PC as the HTPC, then I would wipe both of them and reinstall Windows. Of course, backing up any important data and transferring it to the new systems.

I think my dad wants the smaller lenovo PC(the one he is currently using) to be the HTPC instead of the chonky Lenovo PC(current HTPC). the Smaller one is an i3 6100 and the other one is a 4th gen Pentium. but based on what you said, it seems another option is to also swap the motherboard along with the hard drive and the my Dad’s PC has a lot of work files and I think he doesn’t an extra external drives to back it up(I’ll double check). What drivers are you talking about though? Both are Windows 10 64 bit(I’ll double check too)

[dalekphalm]

9 hours ago, 5GigaaHertz said:

I think my dad wants the smaller lenovo PC(the one he is currently using) to be the HTPC instead of the chonky Lenovo PC(current HTPC). the Smaller one is an i3 6100 and the other one is a 4th gen Pentium. but based on what you said, it seems another option is to also swap the motherboard along with the hard drive and the my Dad’s PC has a lot of work files and I think he doesn’t an extra external drives to back it up(I’ll double check). What drivers are you talking about though? Both are Windows 10 64 bit(I’ll double check too)

Before doing anything else - if your dad has important work files on his PC?

 

For gods sake, backup his computer. Have him buy an external USB HDD (approximately 2 to

4 times larger than the internal drive). And setup a regular recurring backup. 
 

Do that before any other messing with case swaps etc. 
 

Now, once you’ve done that, assuming the cases are compatible, you could just do a case swap. Take the guts from one and put it in the other, and vice versa. 

[Newblesse Obblige]

9 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Before doing anything else - if your dad has important work files on his PC?

 

For gods sake, backup his computer. Have him buy an external USB HDD (approximately 2 to

4 times larger than the internal drive). And setup a regular recurring backup. 
 

Do that before any other messing with case swaps etc. 
 

Now, once you’ve done that, assuming the cases are compatible, you could just do a case swap. Take the guts from one and put it in the other, and vice versa. 

yeah i think case swap should work but i just need to know the dimensions, and where the motherboard screws are located though

[LunaP0n3]

Windows tends not to play nice booting from a different system that which it was installed, and even if it boots, you might find it will deactivate itself as it will see a completely different system that with which it was activated. Just do a fresh install on the new system, and you'll save a lot of headaches.