[PCTECH] Re: Another topic about PC hard drives

[David Gibbs <david@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

daparnin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Is anybody aware of any reason why you shouldn't be able to partition,
> format, and install Windows on a hard drive that's in one PC, pull it out
> and stick it into another PC.  It sticks in my mind from about ten years
> ago that was a bad idea due to different BIOS's interpreted the number of
> cylinders, sectors, etc.

It's always been my experience that this would only work if the two 
systems you are moving the drive between are identical.

Windows installs drivers for the cpu, power management, bios, interface 
cards, video, network, etc, that are specific to the system it's being 
installed on.

I have heard that it's possible to strip windows down to the absolute 
bare minimum by uninstalling all drivers before moving the drive ... but 
I wouldn't bet the farm on that.

Linux, on the other hand, will generally move from system to system 
without a single problem.  I've upgraded the hardware on the 
midrange.com system many times without making any modifications to the 
software.  I just move the hard drives, boot the system, it notices the 
configuration change, and starts asking me configuring the new hardware 
and unconfiguring the old.

david