Will this work? (HDD swap)

[JK7521]

So my girlfriend wants to get a gaming computer but right now she is a bit tight on money, all she wants one for mainly is to play sims 4. I told her to that should could get it and play it on my pc but then she asked well what will happen when she gets her own pc eventually. I thought that was a good question and decided to come here. Wondering if I buy her a hdd put that in my pc and install windows onto it, install the game, and have her boot off of it every time to play can that hdd be taken out and be placed into a pc that she will eventually have? I just dont want to have her buy the game and download it on there then when the day comes that I try to pop it in on her computer it dosent work and she wasted the $40-$60 on the game and her time spent on it.

 

[Jadester]

I'm no expert on this, but from prior knowledge I can say that most of the time when you install windows on a HDD that windows install is usually "tied" to that computer/mobo. Apparently some people have got it to work but I've seen very rare of those occasions 🙁

So in short, unfortunately you probably wouldn't have much success with interchanging hard drives. However to help your dilemma of needing to move the save data, can't you simply copy the save files to a flash and transfer it to her new PC? Or does Origin have some sort of cloud based save storage so she can log into her account and download her save?

Best of luck!

 

[jimpz]

IF you but Win8, it can be moved to a different system, but, the different drivers/hardware, will most likely prevent it from booting.
In Win 7, same with a retail version, An OEM version is tied too the mobo as Jadester suggests.
Also, like he say, most games themselves, can easily be moved to a new system, as an example, Steam has direction on their site on how to move games to a new HDD/System, others should be similar. Check the site of the game you want for details.

 

[Vixen]

So my girlfriend wants to get a gaming computer but right now she is a bit tight on money, all she wants one for mainly is to play sims 4. I told her to that should could get it and play it on my pc but then she asked well what will happen when she gets her own pc eventually. I thought that was a good question and decided to come here. Wondering if I buy her a hdd put that in my pc and install windows onto it, install the game, and have her boot off of it every time to play can that hdd be taken out and be placed into a pc that she will eventually have? I just dont want to have her buy the game and download it on there then when the day comes that I try to pop it in on her computer it dosent work and she wasted the $40-$60 on the game and her time spent on it.

What you propose is extremely complex. While a hard drive for her can be installed on your PC, having to open your case and swap drives every time she plays will be time consuming, and require her own licensed copy of Windows. (or the operating system of your choice) Once she gets her own PC, she would most probably need to do a clean install of windows as well, considering it would probably have different hardware, drivers, etc.

The easiest way to approach this would be:

1. Create a user account for her on your PC;
2. Log into her windows account and download/install the game;
3. When she wants to play SIMS4, all she needs to do is switch users;

When she gets her own PC, all you need to do is re-download and reinstall the game. If you purchase it from somewhere like Origin, she'll be able to re-download it for free. As far as I know, all her settings, etc.are stored on the server, so nothing would be lost in the transfer.

Good luck!