Swapping Two Hard Drives

[cdishere16]

Hello Everyone! I don’t have a lot of knowledge on the hardware of computers and was wondering whether I could swap two hard drives on two different PCs. I had a little plan on doing so and I was wondering if it would work. Bear with me: First I take out the hard drive of one of my computers and install it as a second drive to the better computer. Then (using Windows) get all the Windows files off of the second drive (emphasis on all) and put them in a folder. I then proceed to wipe the second drive of its data and copy all my Windows files (again emphasis on all) to the second hard drive. Next I swap the second hard drive as the main hard drive and it should presumably boot. Once it does I use Windows to go on my second hard drive (once the main hard drive) and wipe it of its data. Afterwards using the folder I copied earlier put all the files on the post-main hard drive. It should boot on the second pc as normal. This plan sounds far-fetched but I wanted to know if it could possibly work.

 

[USAFRet]

No, you can't simply "copy" the windows files like that.
Nor can you just move the drives back and forth between systems.

Let's investigate:
What parts and drives do you have, what OS is this, and what do you want the end state to be?

Don't worry about 'how'...we'll get into that later.

 

[BFG-9000]

The last time you could copy Windows like that using only Windows Explorer was with Windows ME. Nowadays you have to use cloning software.

It would be a lot easier with three hard drives but two could work provided you either have a lot of free space on them or have cloning software that can select which files to copy--first you just have to clone one system to a file on the other system's drive (not just a folder).