Clone a Harddrive for another laptop.

[Justin Denial]

I have a DELL Inspiron with a dead harddrive.. it defaulted to an X; drive, but I Could poke around and see Some of the
"D: DATA AREA partition. " but not all of it. MBR not repairable. and last attempt really screwed the pooch.
I have backed up the current data to a WD my book. and I do have the Win 7 pro install disks,

However ! I also have a Dell Latitude with a functional harddrive, and Both are running Win 7 Pro, and practically all the same software..
dang near mirror images. It would be so much easier to get the clone functional, than to re install programs.

COULD I clone the latitude's harddrive, and install it in the Dell Inspiron. How close to actually working would it be. Mostly different drivers? any idea how involved it would be to correct the driver problems?

DOABLE? SNOWBALLS CHANCE? IF this idea Might work.,, then I need to find out how to actually do the 'cloning".

Any insights, help and hand holding though the process would Really be appreciated. Thanks in advance. / Tom W

 

[townsbg]

Windows will recognize the different hardware even if it's the same model since it's based off of an identifier hard coded into the computer. You'll have to reactivate Windows and if it's an OEM key that'll require using the one that came with the computer you are using it in.

 

[torchwood]

depending on how old the Inspiron is, (pre 2014) there are base drivers within the W7 OS so might not be a problem
Activation will not be a problem as the OEM folder will be part of the clone back-up
MBR problem will also be gone