Clone from one T420 to another?

[VanZan]

I have two T420 laptops. Can I clone the hard drive from one to use on the other? The only difference between the two is the sizes of the secondary hard drives. I guess what I'm asking is what are the critical components that need to be the same? The definitely both have the same CPU models. Not sure what else I need identical. Thanks.

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

What OS are you talking about?

I've never had an issue moving Windows 7 or any version of Linux, even between totally different hardware. Hardware changes just get picked up at the next boot as if you'd done a hardware upgrade. At most, sometimes you need to reinstall the boot sector or change some drive IDs in the GRUB config.

I don't know about Windows 10. I think it has some additional recovery partitions and such, but I don't know if they lead to any issues.

[axur-delmeria]

A cloned Windows 10 installation from one laptop to another would probably run into license issues.

Aside from that, cloning is a straightforward operation, especially if the source and target drives are of the same size/capacity. If the new drive is smaller, you can use Macrium Reflect (free version) to adjust the partitions on the new drive before cloning.

[cadillacmike68]

Acronis true image backup and restore is a better option. And you would have the backup image in case you need it again sometime in the future.

[axur-delmeria]

Acronis true image backup and restore is a better option. And you would have the backup image in case you need it again sometime in the future.

Haven't tried that one TBH. I've found Macrium useful in the situation I mentioned (new drive smaller than old), which I brought up because OP mentioned hard drives of different sizes.

[TPFanatic]

I do this all the time with Windows 7 installs between various laptops with SLIC 2.1, cloning with either Acronis True Image or Minitool Partition Wizard v9 (runs within Windows), or by moving the physical HDD/SSD. I got Win 7 on my P71 by moving the disk from my Optimus T430 into it. Sadly the occasional driver conflict will cause unfixable BSOD going some directions, such as I can go T420 -> T430 but the inverse causes BSOD. I've had the most success starting from T500 and going to T410, T410s, X200, W500, R500, X201, T420, T520, T430, T420s, T430s, X61, T61, T60, S1 Yoga........