[okeee]

1 windows 10 PC broke down. I removed its hard disk drive which the windows 10 license on it. there are 2 new PC (pc A and pc B). I used the licence of the broken PC, on a new win10 PC (pc A) and it worked fine.

I have also another new PC win 10 PC (pc B) with its own 10 license.

what happens if i insert the hard disk drive from the BROKEN pc (with used the licence 10 at another PC) and insert it into this PC (pc B)?

- will it affect pc A somehow (with the previously used 10 license) , if another PC starts up that uses the old 10 license?

- how will PC B start, which has now 2 win licenses, its normal own license, and the old used license from the additional hard disk drive?

 

[sobeit]

most likely nothing will happen. the drive may not even boot because it is a different computer. different computer, different motherboard, different drivers. and then there is UEFI.

 

[spunk.funk]

If you plug int the drive as a secondary, it will not boot Windows and will not have an issue.
If you insert it into, lets say a laptop with only one HDD, it will boot , but may not activate.

 

[okeee]

how do I make sure that the pc (no laptop) recognises the old HDD as the secondary drive?
additionally, i want to remove any content of this secondary drive, including the old windows files. how should I do this?

 

[SpywareDr]

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[Rich-M]

how do I make sure that the pc (no laptop) recognises the old HDD as the secondary drive?
additionally, i want to remove any content of this secondary drive, including the old windows files. how should I do this?

Basically plug the old hard drive into a higher number sata port and that accomplished that. A schematic of the motherboard should show you sata port numbers. Then format the drive being certain you format the correct drive.
You could use the "nuke and pave" for that but actually simple format in disk management is all you really need since the old drive was yours as well. Be aware it isn't the drive holding the Windows 10 activation, it is the system bios saving that.

 

[David Byars]

Basically plug the old hard drive into a higher number sata port and that accomplished that. A schematic of the motherboard should show you sata port numbers. Then format the drive being certain you format the correct drive.
You could use the "nuke and pave" for that but actually simple format in disk management is all you really need since the old drive was yours as well. Be aware it isn't the drive holding the Windows 10 activation, it is the system bios saving that.

Get an external sata HD controller interface and use it as a external hard drive. I have done this successfully. i assume you want to explore the drive and retrieve data that you previously wanted to transfer to the new computer. What I have done on the new computer is create a folder called " data from old laptop" The just drag and drop the old stuff into the new folder and retrieve data on a as needed basis. This is much quicker than rummaging tediously through the old stuff. The little interface HD to USB adapters are cheep and very handy to have. As stated, you then can reformat the drive and reuse it for a system backup. It can then be placed on the shelf for future retrieval if the new computer fails, and it will!

 

[Rich-M]

So much easier to use a Linux Live-cd with a flash drive no passwords to worry about copy and paste so much quicker!