[CraiGDaniel]

Ok. So i need something cleared up. I have always been told "You cannot boot someones HDD into your pc because of driver incompatabilities, it just wont work!" and that has always been how i percieved it, however...

I need to be able to transport desktop computers around and i don't have the space to accompany a full desktop tower. I want to be able to rip out the HDD's and take them to my workshop to work on. What is the best route to go down? Can i just take the HDD, plug them in and boot them up into my test bench pc?

The operating systems would mostly be windows xp, vista and 7. How could i make this work?

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Unless you are using exactly the same motherboard, CPU, memory, sound and video you will most likely run into problems.
At the least the test system will not work properly. In the worse case it won't even boot up.
What are you trying to transport exactly as data should be able to be put on cd's, flash drives or a external drive to share with another system. Programs won't be able to be transferred and drivers will not work unless the systems are the same.

[rshaffer61]

Unless you are using exactly the same motherboard, CPU, memory, sound and video you will most likely run into problems.
At the least the test system will not work properly. In the worse case it won't even boot up.
What are you trying to transport exactly as data should be able to be put on cd's, flash drives or a external drive to share with another system. Programs won't be able to be transferred and drivers will not work unless the systems are the same.

[CraiGDaniel]

Ok thank you for your reply.

I will be launching a compute repair business very soon, and sometimes there is a need to take the computers to my workshop, for long processes such as virus removal or other things that may take time.

However i don't have the room to transport a full desktop case.

Is it viable to pull the motherboard, ram & HDD and install them on a workbench PC? Would that have a good outcome ?

[rshaffer61]

You could run it as secondary drive and run checks on it that way.
Removing the components as you stated is really not cost effective. I worked a computer repair shop for 5 years and even had my own company for a couple of years. I would suggest if you are really going to get serious it would be easier to have diagnostic capability at home also. That way you have the complete system there.

[CraiGDaniel]

Diagnostic capability? Could you elaborate?


Ofcourse i could pull the drive and run checks on it as a slave, however i can't do things such as software troubleshooting, reloading windows etc.

[rshaffer61]

for long processes such as virus removal or other things that may take time.

This is what I mean diagnostics.