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two different hard drives on same laptop
My question is can I swap two different hard drives one with windows 7 and other with 8.1 back and forth on same laptop?
My question is can I swap two different hard drives one with windows 7 and other with 8.1 back and forth on same laptop?
Assuming your laptop supports Windows 8.1, and you installed 8.1 initially on that machine, absolutely you can. I've done this before, at least with Windows XP and Vista, had 2 different hard drives, and swapped them out as needed.
Thanks for the quick reply Shadow. My Acer 5517 came with windows 7 and I want to use it for my music studio and new creations ect. and put 8.1 on a new same size drive...possible?
As long as the Hard Drive is big enough, you can make 2 partitions on it, and have your 7 install on one partition, and install 8 on the other and dual boot. That is definitely an option, and would be easier than having to swap HDD's everytime. Granted, if you have a smaller HDD, then I'd probably stick with swapping HDD's, so you don't run the risk of running out of space.
I would like to put a larger one in probably for studio purpose but you are saying I can simply take one out and put other in?
For simplicity use the following;
Drive A is in the laptop and Windows 7 is installed
Drive B is placed in the laptop replacing Drive A and Windows 8.X is installed.
(In the above scenario both operating systems will run with no problem, generally speaking)
If, however, you are swapping a drive from another computer with the operating system already installed you will have issues.
I would run one of the OS systems from an external USB3 attached enclosure.. You only have to change the boot sequence - now tools required. That is a 10 second operation.
If you don't have the second disk yet, buy a SSD for the second OS. That will be a lot faster from the external attachment. A 120GB SSD costs appr. $60 - a 240GB SSD is under $100.
very helpful advice. The only thing is that I already have a new sata hd.
You can use the HDD. It will just a bit slower for boot. But for the normal operation it will be fine. Do you have a USB3 port?
But you can always buy an additional SSD and use the HDD for images. Get an open external enclosure, then the disks are easy to swap.
Example:
HighPoint RocketStor 5411A Single Bay USB 3.0 SATA 6Gb/s Storage Dock - Newegg.com
that is a great option an open external enclosure that's just what I will do...thanks fellas