Can you take a hard drive out of a laptop and put it in another?

Yes. You will have to uninstall the drivers for the old components and install drivers for the new ones. Installed applications will still work, unless they’re tied to specific hardware.

Can you put a laptop hard drive into another laptop?

Just about any external drive, including a USB thumb drive, or an SD card can be used to transfer your files from one laptop to another. Connect the drive to your old laptop; drag your files to the drive, then disconnect it and transfer the drive contents onto your new laptop.

Can you just swap hard drives in a laptop?

Replacing the old hard disk drive on your laptop Once the new drive is ready to use, you can swap it with the old one. First unplug the laptop and remove the battery. Then, replace the old hard drive with the new one. The laptop should now reboot without any problems.

Can you remove a hard drive and put it in another computer?

You can definitely take an old hard drive out of one computer and place it in another, as long as the destination computer has space and the proper interfaces. The best approach is to install it as a second drive so as to be able to easily access its existing contents.

Can you remove a hard drive from a laptop and use it as an external hard drive?

Yes. Hard drive caddies – or enclosures – are effectively SATA-to-USB converters and allow you to turn an internal SATA hard drive into an external one that you can use for storing or backing up files, or to keep a library of videos that you could leave attached to your TV.