Switching 2 dell harddrives

[colt778]

i currently have 2 dell computers in my home. the 1 mainly use is my dell 4600. it has a very small hard drive and i was wondering if i could switch it with my dell 8200's hard drive in which is bigger. Both of my dell pcs use the OS of windows xp. i have tried adding them together in my dell 4600 but my fan blew very loud and my system would not boot. if someone could answer my question it would be appreciative.

[Paul Komski]

You can swap the drives no problem as such. However you cant simply swap operating systems like that without running a repair installation (http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm).

If you want both drives in the same box then they must be cabled and/or jumpered correctly to be correctly identified and to allow booting to proceed normally. Your PSU should also be capable of supporting the extra hardware.