Can I switch between 2 different hard drives with different OS without having problems?

Question

Hi, I have a new hard drive since the one in my laptop is going faulty. I'm planning on trying to format the new 500gb hdd first with a different OS(windows XP) to check if it's ok. I was wondering if it would be fine to switch it back to my original 320gb hdd(Windows Vista) after I formatted the new one so I could back up the files from my old HDD through a external drive? And is it okay If I could switch the drives back and forth when I need to as long as they have the necessary drivers for the devices?

Answer 1

Everything in the computer depends on the hard drive, so if you swap hard drives, you completely change the computer. In other words, you can swap them freely without any trouble. If the hard drive contains Windows XP, the machine will boot up into Windows XP, and if it contains Vista, it'll boot up into Vista.



So, yes, you can switch them back and forth as needed, and yes, once you format a drive, you can use it like a new drive for whatever purpose you have in mind.

Answer 2

NO YOU CANNOT DO THAT. ALL OF THE OTHER ANSWERS HAVE OVERLOOKED ONE MAJOR PROBLEM.



Windows XP uses IDE hard drive mode and vista uses AHCI mode. So if you reformat and install XP you will have to switch to IDE mode, and then if you put the other drive back in it wont work until you switch back to AHCI mode.



What you should do is just use the Vista drive as an external, dont try to boot from it again.

Answer 3

If you put data on an external hard drive from an XP computer, a Vista computer will almost certainly be able to read this data. This is one method for transferring data from XP computers to Vista computers. There might be more of a concern if you were trying to get data from PCs to Macs.

Answer 4

Sounds complicated. Back up the files you want to keep and install your new HDD. They normally come preformatted. If not the new OS will do that at during installation. After that create another partition and install the other OS you want there.

Answer 5

yes. as long as both OS(s) were installed on the hard drives using the same configuration.