Hard Drive Swap

[Roger Fink]

I would like to remove the hard drive on my IBM laptop, which has Windows
2000 installed on it, and replace it with a hard drive which was removed
fromanother machine, same model 2682 R40, also running a freshly installed
Windows 2000. Undoubtedly there are some differences in the installed driver
versions, and the processor on the machine to be fitted is a Pentium 4M 2.0
rather than the 2.2 of the other machine. I'm pretty sure the two CD-DVD
combo drives are the same. The proprietary IBM software on the "blind"
partition that comes on a new machine is not installed on either machine.

Is it likely that once the replacement drive is installed the machine will
successfully boot up? If not, what, in general terms, would I need to do to
get it working? Am I stuck with a disk wipe/OS reinstall? TIA

 

[Pat]

It's likely that it will boot up. However, Best Practices dictate that any drive you use
be formatted and partitioned by the drive electronics it will be used in. Ignore that at
your own peril - a raw hard drive check that tries to fix something, or running a disk
defragmenter, risks destroying the HD.

My recommendation - buy a new HD and format in the target laptop from a boot disk. Then,
copy over all the files. Worst case, if it doesn't boot right, you've got the original
HD as a backup.

Make sure you label all three HD so you know which is which. I know, I know, you're
telling yourself you won't forget. Trust me, label them anyway.


...

 

[DL]

Simply run a repair installation of win and install any drivers from their
cd's, NOT winupdate.
The cpu is unlikely to make any difference.

 

[Roger Fink]

I have a legit W2K disk, but since it's not not the laptop W2K disk, what
you are suggesting sounds, at a minimum, somewhat incomplete, since some of
the drivers required for basic laptop operation aren't on the disk. Since
all the latest drivers for this model running W2K are listed and available
for download in one location on the Lenovo site, what I think I could do
however is just upgrade from there provided I can boot up OK.

 

[McGarill]

Sometimes problems are so complicated as they seems.
I'd try to run a repair installation as DL suggested.
It should work, but if not you'll go back to the old 2K.