Swapping hard drives?

[Heaven Can Wait]

Completely new to swapping hard drives, could anyone give me a breakdown on how to do it?
Got an old computer with a newish 120gb HD in it, which needs to be swapped, do i need to format this? will it just plug in and play?
thanks.

 

[Humate]

Im not sure i entirely understand your question. I presume you are upgrading the 120GB hard drive to something larger? If that is the case then does the 120GB already have an operating system on it that you want to keep? or are you doing a clean install on the new larger drive? also does the 120GB hard drive use an IDE or SATA connector? and does your new drive use the same connector? also, does your case not have space for a second hard drive so you could keep the 120GB thats already in there?

 

[Heaven Can Wait]

yeah i didnt explain properly.
i have a spare computer with a 200gb drive in it, but i want to keep the drive and give the rest to a friend, they have an old computer with a 120gb drive in it
im pretty sure one is SATA (the 200gb) and one is IDE
what i want to do, is keep my stuff on the 200gb and take that out, and replace it with the 120gb whilst keeping the stuff on that too, i realise there will probably be some driver issues, if its possible?
thanks.

 

[Skeeter]

I assume both these drives contain the OS installs for the machines?

Is so, i recomend partitioning them both in half, sticking all the data you want to keep onto one half, and leaving the OS on the other, then wiping the OS partition clean. Swap the drives, then reinstall the OS onto each machine respectively. As long as you dont delete the partitions or format the ones with your data on, then you will be fine.

 

[Heaven Can Wait]

So its possible to install an IDE hard drive where a SATA once was?
I figured id just swap the drives, saw that it wouldnt connect and posted here
I dont think i need to partition them, the one drive is full.. i just need to swap them.