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How can I Boot with Another Hard Drive

nemo011
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Hi, I have a question. Suppose I have an operating system installed on an extra hard drive. Now my question is if I connect that hard drive with another motherboard will it boot on the OS I have on my hard drive?

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I actually asked this same question not to long ago when I was building a new PC. I was trying to save myself some money. However if I remember correctly there are some hardware specifications that are assigned to the original motherboard which are assigned as some type of data on the HDD. So most likely when you hook up the hard drive you will boot into windows and have to reinstall some drivers while possibly having to re-activate Windows. Hope this helped.

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14 minutes ago, nemo011 said:

Hi, I have a question. Suppose I have an operating system installed on an extra hard drive. Now my question is if I connect that hard drive with another motherboard will it boot on the OS I have on my hard drive?

yup, aside from things like whether the drive is in MBR or GPT mode (legacy or uefi), you can just put any drive in any computer and tell it to boot it. 

Home PC:

CPU: i7 4790s ~ Motherboard: Asus B85M-E ~ RAM: 32GB Ballistix Sport DDR3 1666 ~ GPU: Sapphire R9 390 Nitro ~ Case: Corsair Carbide Spec-03 ~ Storage: Kingston Predator 240GB   PCIE M.2 Boot, 2TB HDD, 3x 480GB SATA SSD's in RAID 0 ~ PSU:    Corsair CX600
Display(s): Asus PB287Q , Generic Samsung 1080p 22" ~ Cooling: Arctic T3 Air Cooler, All case fans replaced with Noctua NF-B9 Redux's ~ Keyboard: Logitech G810 Orion ~ Mouse: Cheap Microsoft Wired (i like it) ~ Sound: Radial Pro USB DAC into 250w Powered Speakers ~ Operating System: Windows 10 Enterprise x64
 

Work PC:

CPU: Intel Xeon E3 1275 v3 ~ Motherboard: Asrock E3C226D2I ~ RAM: 16GB DDR3 ~ GPU: GTX 460 ~ Case: Silverstone SG05 ~ Storage: 512GB SATA SSD ~ Displays: 3x1080p 24" mix and matched Dell monitors plus a 10" 1080p lilliput monitor above ~ Operating System: Windows 10 Enterprise x64

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It will boot to the OS, but windows will most likely tell you that it's no longer valid and you have to get a new windows key if you have used that same copy of windows with another computer.

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in fact, windows-to-go is the "consumer-friendly" way of doing this, check it out.

Home PC:

CPU: i7 4790s ~ Motherboard: Asus B85M-E ~ RAM: 32GB Ballistix Sport DDR3 1666 ~ GPU: Sapphire R9 390 Nitro ~ Case: Corsair Carbide Spec-03 ~ Storage: Kingston Predator 240GB   PCIE M.2 Boot, 2TB HDD, 3x 480GB SATA SSD's in RAID 0 ~ PSU:    Corsair CX600
Display(s): Asus PB287Q , Generic Samsung 1080p 22" ~ Cooling: Arctic T3 Air Cooler, All case fans replaced with Noctua NF-B9 Redux's ~ Keyboard: Logitech G810 Orion ~ Mouse: Cheap Microsoft Wired (i like it) ~ Sound: Radial Pro USB DAC into 250w Powered Speakers ~ Operating System: Windows 10 Enterprise x64
 

Work PC:

CPU: Intel Xeon E3 1275 v3 ~ Motherboard: Asrock E3C226D2I ~ RAM: 16GB DDR3 ~ GPU: GTX 460 ~ Case: Silverstone SG05 ~ Storage: 512GB SATA SSD ~ Displays: 3x1080p 24" mix and matched Dell monitors plus a 10" 1080p lilliput monitor above ~ Operating System: Windows 10 Enterprise x64

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1 minute ago, Danscu said:

It will boot to the OS, but windows will most likely tell you that it's no longer valid and you have to get a new windows key if you have used that same copy of windows with another computer.

only since windows 10 though, hardware fingerprinting was sketchy as anything before that so windows sometimes didn't even notice it was on different hardware. Windows 10 is pretty smart about it tho. Still not too hard to spoof GUID's though in fairness

Home PC:

CPU: i7 4790s ~ Motherboard: Asus B85M-E ~ RAM: 32GB Ballistix Sport DDR3 1666 ~ GPU: Sapphire R9 390 Nitro ~ Case: Corsair Carbide Spec-03 ~ Storage: Kingston Predator 240GB   PCIE M.2 Boot, 2TB HDD, 3x 480GB SATA SSD's in RAID 0 ~ PSU:    Corsair CX600
Display(s): Asus PB287Q , Generic Samsung 1080p 22" ~ Cooling: Arctic T3 Air Cooler, All case fans replaced with Noctua NF-B9 Redux's ~ Keyboard: Logitech G810 Orion ~ Mouse: Cheap Microsoft Wired (i like it) ~ Sound: Radial Pro USB DAC into 250w Powered Speakers ~ Operating System: Windows 10 Enterprise x64
 

Work PC:

CPU: Intel Xeon E3 1275 v3 ~ Motherboard: Asrock E3C226D2I ~ RAM: 16GB DDR3 ~ GPU: GTX 460 ~ Case: Silverstone SG05 ~ Storage: 512GB SATA SSD ~ Displays: 3x1080p 24" mix and matched Dell monitors plus a 10" 1080p lilliput monitor above ~ Operating System: Windows 10 Enterprise x64

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4 hours ago, Kris_Kid said:

Do you have windows 10 

 

 

Yup.

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13 hours ago, nemo011 said:

Yup.

Should boot fine. Win10 is much more hardware friendly than previous versions. The issues relate with drivers freaking and causing crashes.

^^^^ That's my post ^^^^
<-- This is me --- That's your scrollbar -->
vvvv Who's there? vvvv

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