Swapping SSD

[BobH]

Some of you hardware mavens or others more experienced than I might know the answer to this question.

Is it possible to swap an SSD that contains the OS and program libraries from one machine to another and have it run the machine it is newly placed in?

I'm a little reluctant to just try it and see lest I 'break' something.

[Jay Freedman]

It will work if the hardware is similar enough. The drive may not contain drivers for some things on the receiving machine. The OS will probably boot OK, though, even in that case.

[BobH]

Thanks, Jay!

What if the BIOS is different in each machine?

[Jay Freedman]

Yeah, I forgot about that complication. If the machine that first had the SSD has a legacy BIOS, the drive would be in master boot record (MBR) format. If the receiving machine has UEFI enabled, that requires the boot drive to be in GUID partition table (GPT) format. If that mismatch exists, you can see whether the receiving machine's UEFI can be turned off. That depends on what's built into the motherboard. If you need to, you can convert an MBR drive to GPT. I don't know whether that's reversible.

[BobH]

Thanks, again, Jay!

[StuartR]

Even if it works it may require you to do something to re-enable your licenses. Windows will only allow a small number of core hardware components to change before it decides that the license is for a different computer.