Windows 10: replace dead hard drive for laptop

Here is the situation My wife has a Toshiba laptop that crashed, the hard drive is done. I have done everything that I have been able to looking at tutorials etc to revive it, its dead jim. I even tried to wipe the hard drive and it would have none of it. My Toshiba laptop runs, but the case is just falling apart, the moniter keeps trying to fall backwards, its funny and sad all at once. Now I have talked with a few folks and the consensus is I can take my hard drive and put it into her laptop as long as I have the drivers for my laptop. I have gone online and found a list of drivers on the Toshiba website but I am lost as to what to get. Once I get whatever drivers I will need can I download them onto a disc? Thanks for your help sorry for the newbee questions but I am at a loss. Thanks again.

:)

 

I hard to replace the hard drive on my laptop and now it says operating system is missing.

Hi Marlene. I'm Greg, a volunteer installation specialist and 8 year Windows MVP, here to help you.

Plug in the replacement hard drive, boot the Windows 10 media and follow the illustrated steps provided in this link which compiles the best possible Clean Install of Windows which will stay that way as long as you stick with the tools and methods given, has
zero reported problems, and is better than any amount of money could buy:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki...

If there are any further problems report back full details and we will help you through them.

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask back any questions and let us know how it goes. I will keep working with you until it's resolved.

 

I hard to replace the hard drive on my laptop and now it says operating system is missing.

Hello,

See if this fix helps you:

https://www.kapilarya.com/fix-operating-system-...

Let us know if this helps!

 

Welcome to the forum. Assuming your running win10 its very good at finding drivers all by its self. Its a case of putting it in and see if it boots ok then check device manager to see if there are any yellow triangles if there are that is the drivers you need. The main one is to get the network driver as then you can get any others on the pc.

Depending on the differnce of hardware you may run into trouble with it deavtivating

 

Welcome to TenForums @HelloImDavid

Very true - I'd try it.

The different hardware will be no problem, it will activate using the digital license of the new PC, tied to the PC's unique hardware ID and stored on Microsoft's activation servers. The HDD is not included in this this ID, so that won't be a problem. If the wife's PC already has a digital license for Windows 10 it will just use that.

The problem with activation will come if the two PCs had different editions of Windows 10, Home or Pro. A license is only valid for one edition. If both are Home (or both are Pro) then activation should be no problem.

 

And to protect yourself in the future, please consider using disk imaging routinely (e.g. Macrium Reflect (free) ).

If you had done so, you could have restored an image of Windows to a new drive and been up and running exactly as was in a relatively short time, with data and settings safe (as at the time the image was created).

Strongly recommended- keep personal data off C: for maintenance reasons.

 

Thank You all for your help. Yes, I am running windows 10. We both bought our laptops when they had xp so we did the free windows 10 upgrade. From what you are saying I can just swap the hard drives and it will be plug and play so to speak. I just don't want to mess up anything lol. I don't need to worry about the drivers correct? Dalchina, I will definatly do what you suggested thanks. again Thank You all. David

 

XP didn't qualify for a free upgrade, did you mean to say Windows 7?

For the most part, yes.. Any drivers not already in Windows will be downloaded by windows update, you may have just the MS Basic Display Driver until that happens. If by any chance the WiFi drivers don't load you may need to try Ethernet to let it download updated drivers. Worst case (unlikely) download network drivers on another machine and install manually.

Reminder: activation only occurs if both machine were on the same edition, Home or Pro.

 

ok, thanks Bree you are correct then if xp did not qualify then we must have had 7. We both did the upgrades the same way as I remember. Is there any reason they wouldn't have been? These are both home machines. thank you

 

Ok, I threw caution to the wind lol. Once I put my hd in her laptop and powered it up it said something about a cable not connected then said I needed a boot disc. Back to square one lol. on the upside, I didn't fry anything and my house did not catch on fire haha

 

What make and model are each of the two PCs?

On possible problem could be if one had a legacy bios and mbr partitions while the other was uefi and used gpt partitioning. Make/model would help us to look that up.