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    Can I swap hard drives with two different OS?

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by Lifesonfan2112, Jan 5, 2011.

  1. Lifesonfan2112

    Lifesonfan2112 Newbie

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    I have an an Inspiron E1505 with a 60 GB HD. Right now I have Ubuntu. I want to upgrade a larger hard drive and install Windows 7 on it. I noticed that the hard drives on these Inspirons simply slide in and out. I was wondering if I can swap the two hard drive, my original with Ubuntu and a new one with Windows 7, on the fly with no problems?

    Let's say I'm on Windows 7 and want to access files on my original hard drive. Can I slide the new one out, slip in the old one, and access those files?
     
    Lifesonfan2112, Jan 5, 2011
    #1
  2. Commander Wolf

    Commander Wolf can i haz broadwell?

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    If both installations work properly on their own, there's no reason this doesn't work. You might as well just dual-boot, though; this seems more complicated than it needs to be.
     
    Commander Wolf, Jan 5, 2011
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  3. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

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    Yes, there should be no problem. As stated at the above post, dual boot would really be easier.
     
    Tsunade_Hime, Jan 6, 2011
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  4. michael_recycled

    michael_recycled Notebook Deity

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    I would be worried about the amount of inserting and removing the HDD. The connectors used are probably not designed to handle many plug-ins/plug-outs.

    Michael
     
    michael_recycled, Jan 8, 2011
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  5. Terry Kennedy

    Terry Kennedy Notebook Consultant

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    It is physically possible to swap drives. However, the connectors were not designed for repeated disconnect / connect cycles. A typical connector specification gives the lifetime at between 50 and 500 insertion/removal cycles.
    No - at best the system will crash, at worst the disk data will be corrupted (the operating system may have data not yet written to disk which could be written to the wrong drive).

    I'd suggest either dual booting or booting one of the operating systems from an external (eSATA or USB) drive.
     
    Terry Kennedy, Jan 10, 2011
    #5
  6. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

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    Well what about hot swap drives and those hard drive docks that support hot swap?
     
    Tsunade_Hime, Jan 10, 2011
    #6