[zenit84]

My appologies in advance if this is an extremely basic question, but I hope someone can help me out here. My work laptop died the other day and as I will not be able to get it replaced for a week or so I was told that if I removed its hard drive and placed it in a caddy it would be possible to essentially run my work laptop on my home computer.

I purchased a sata caddy and my home computer recognised it as another hard drive and all the programmes seem to be there. But is it possible to have my home computer load up as my work laptop (i.e. basically run my work computer system on another pc?).

If so could anyone guide me through how to do this? My appologies if this thread is a little garbled, but hopefully you get my drift and any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

[philthomas]

If your Home PC has the option in bios to boot from an external USB drive (many dont), then, in theory, you could boot from the Laptop drive.
I say in theory, because your Laptop drive will have the MBR (Master Boot Record) and all the drivers installed for the hardware that existed on the Laptop, which will make no sense at all to your Home PC and will probably prevent it from booting.
A windows Repair can sometimes get around this, but most often it wont help.
Also bear in mind that you could end up corrupting the MBR on the Home PC, if you tinker too much, in the dark.

If you have time on your hands and dont mind giving up a day or two, with no end product guaranteed, go for it, .......... having said that, if it were me, I would pull off any data required and leave it at that and just reformat & use the drive for storage/backup