Windows 10: Use old HDD from old laptop as an external drive?

Hey there, this is my first time writing/asking here, so any response would be appreciated :So I have an old laptop of mine, an Asus A42J with 4GB of ram and 150GB of HDD. My plan is upgrading the HDD to an SSD, but I don't really want to backup anything from my HDD because nothing too important there. My question is can I just install the SSD and use the HDD as an external drive using drive enclosure/external case or do I still have to backup some files to the new SSD so that it could run?

:)

 

Old laptop hdd ownership

I removed the hdd from an old laptop and installed on an empty bay of my new laptop to transfer files . I had to change ownership to gain access to the old hdd and anfter transferring all my personal files ( pictures ,music,documents and videos ) I installed the old hdd in the old laptop but now old laptop dosen't boot , screen stays black. How do I fix this problem so I can still use the old computer?

 

Recovering Images from Old External Hard Drive

Some further tips.

1. Buy an external USB drive caddy then you can just plug in that old HDD and use it for backups.
2. Beware of booting with the old HDD connected - it probably has active Windows partitions which can confuse the boot process. If you don't need to boot from the old HDD again, you can set partitions to inactive in Diskpart or using a tool like Minitool Partition Wizard.

 

Need some help. Old HDD. New laptop.

Yes, that would be a favorable solution if possible. But it requires what I said as a first step. Once he gets booted into the OS, then he can either use it as is or try to recover the product key. I'm not saying he couldn't do what you said, I was replying to another post that suggested simply copy/pasting documents from the old hard drive.