Swapping hdd from hp laptop and vice versa

MrShazzyMan

Honorable
Sep 2, 2013
4
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10,510
Hi guys. I have a HP laptop and a Toshiba laptop. I want to take out the hard drive from the HP laptop and then put it into the Toshiba laptop and take out the hard drive from the Toshiba laptop and put that hard drive into the HP laptop. But as with new HP laptops there is a recovery partition and I want the hard drive from the Toshiba laptop to work the same way it does as the hard drive that originally came with the HP laptop. I have an idea where I could just make a recovery disc and install Win 7 on the HP laptop as a clean install what do you guys reckon?
 

USAFRet

Illustrious
Moderator
A recovery disk, made from the Toshiba or HP recovery disk creation facility, will almost certainly not work on the other system. It will detect the differing hardware, and puke all over itself.

A Toshiba recovery disk will work on the Toshiba. It will not work on the HP.

What are you actually trying to achieve here? You have two seemingly working laptops. Why the drive swap?
 

MrShazzyMan

Honorable
Sep 2, 2013
4
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10,510




What you say I already know this as both laptops have their own custom drivers for the laptop. I have the recovery discs for the Toshiba laptop however the hard drive which is a Toshiba HDD in the HP laptop performs better and produces less heat than the hitachi hdd that is currently installed in the Toshiba laptop. Because the HP laptop has a recovery image partition on its hard drive I want a way to clone the hard drive to the one that is installed in the Toshiba so I can swap the drives.
 

USAFRet

Illustrious
Moderator


Take it out of the Toshiba
Connect it to the HP
Use anyone of the freely available cloning/imaging tools (CloneZilla, DriveImageXML, etc) to image the HP drive to the one that used to be in the Toshiba.
Put it in the HP

It should work.
 

MrShazzyMan

Honorable
Sep 2, 2013
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10,510


Got ya. I assume I'm gunna need to buy a sata to USB component connector as its a 2.5inch hdd.

What I want to do is copy the hdd in the HP currently to the HDD that is installed currently in the Toshiba laptop. So would I still follow your method meaning I need to format the Toshiba laptop hard drive before cloning the HP laptop HDD to the Toshiba laptop HDD?
 

USAFRet

Illustrious
Moderator


Not 'copy', clone. And you probably don't need to do any formatting beforehand. The clone tool should do it.

And yes...some sort of USB-SATA/IDE cable. I have something similar to this. It works well.
51WK2i7yphL._SL1000_.jpg
 

MrShazzyMan

Honorable
Sep 2, 2013
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10,510


Understood. Also I won't be needs a sata 2.5 inch cable will I. I remember the 3.5inch sata hdds require a wire that connectors to the hard drive and the motherboard. But I take it with the 2.5 inch sata HDDs I simply plug it in the sata to usb component?
 

USAFRet

Illustrious
Moderator


That cable thing I linked can connect to a 3.5 IDE, 2.5 IDE, or SATA drive.
The one I bought came with a short SATA cable and power cable. Nothing else was needed.
Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S