Swapping HDDs between Thinkpads?

I access to e-mails that are on another laptop. That laptop is currently apart and waiting on thermal pads. Can I simply take the HDD out of my T60 and put it in my X201, or is there going to be some Windows or BIOS authentication that I have to worry about?

 

If you don't have the HDD password/fingerprint protected, you won't have issues getting the T60's drive to boot in the X201. If you have it password protected, I *think* you can just input your password and be fine, but I can't confirm it 100%.

You should be able to boot into your OS, but if you're running Windows you're probably going to be asked to reactivate due to it detecting vastly different hardware. I don't think you'll be locked out of your system unless you run it for several days like that. Since your T60's drive will have the T60's device drivers on it, you'll have issues with that... think of getting in and having it in a 'safe mode' level of functionality. Since I'm assuming you're going to be putting your drive back into your T60, you shouldn't load new drivers onto it. Just pull the data you need off the drive and onto external storage, put your X201's drive back in and access your data using that.

 

We are talking about two completely different systems in terms of hardware devices. The HDD from your T60 most likely won't even boot to windows. In the worst case scenario you might even lose the OS if you try messing with it while in X201.
Your best bet is to connect the old HDD externally via a USB port and manually copy the files to your X201.
You just need an external combo adapter/enclosure (~30-40$) for it
to work, that's all.
But if you can afford to wait till you get the pads - wait.

 

if your T60 uses XP pro, then it most likely would chuck an error message if you tried to use it in your X201. From memory you would have a hard time getting the T60 XP os to work in the X201 without actually going through reinstallation.

If you use the Vista or Win 7 OS then you should be okay.

 

Regardless of the OS, such action is highly NOT recommended. Even if does boot (which I doubt very much, since the entire HAL is built for different hardware), you might get plenty of error messages and some system files/registry entries corrupted when Windows tries to "auto" install the missing drivers.

 

+1 in agreement!

 

That sucks, oh well.

 

Works perfectly fine with linux though
scnr

 

Linux is not an operating system for two reasons -
It's free and it actually works

 

When I still had my T400 I swapped HDD between it and my X200. Aside from being asked to activate I did not have any issues at all. Sure, there were probably some driver incompatibilities, but I did not get bombarded with error messages. They were both on Win 7 and since I loaded them myself they pretty much had the same load, down to the exact same Firefox add ons

 

Put it in an external enclosue. Boot machine as normal, then plug in the external drive. Copy or access files as you need them - but don't run OS or software off of the external drive.

 

I wouldn't know how to get at emails saved in Thunderbird without booting into windows.

 

OK, I don't use T-birt, but I think it just saves e-mail locally in a storage file. You should be able to copy that file and open it with T-bird on another computer. You really need to ask that of a T-bird forum.