New laptop - use old HDD?

My lenovo motherboard died so I am looking for a new laptop.
The Lenovo had just gotten a new Hitachi 500GB 7200rpm drive with Win7 Ultimate installed.
I do a lot of photo editing via lightroom/photoshop.

Is there a way to take the HDD from the lenovo and put it into the new machine (tbd, leaning to an ASUS), and have it boot up as normal with minimal hassle? I would love to avoid formatting and reinstalling everything. I have thousands of pictures, most of which are backed up on my external 1TB drive... but still a PITA to mess with if I can avoid it.

I know enough to get myself in trouble with this stuff so your advise and knowledge is very much appreciated.

 

If the version of Windows 7 is an OEM version, then what you ask is not possible.

If the hard drive utilizes an IDE connection, then it is not possible since laptops these days internally only support SATA.

Since a majority of the drivers will change between the laptops, you are better off reformatting and reinstalling. It will save you hours of headaches down the road. This is coming from someone who has tried the very same thing in the past. Trust me.

 

It is a SATA HDD and the copy of Win 7 is retail. The original OS was Vista but I upgraded to 7 when I replaced the HDD.

So Windows isn't smart enough these days to know it needs to download new drivers with the different hardware huh? I figured it was a pipe dream..
I know I can connect it as a slave/external drive to transfer files, etc, but I want to use it as my main drive since it will be faster/better than the one that comes with the new laptop. I guess I just want to be lazy and have it be plug and play.

 

if they are both sata drives, it should be no problem using the old drive. I would recommend reloading windows though. I've never had success with drive swapping unless the hardware is identical (mainly mobo).

Of course, you can plug it in and see what happens, it won't hurt. The last time I can remember doing that, I simply got a bluescreen and a restart though

 

I would like to do something similar, but my HDD is from an older system with XP and it's IDE. I have it in an enclosure and was wondering if there is a way to boot from an external harddrive (Lenovo T500).