Hello,
I have a question. If i took my harddrive out of an older lenovo T-series laptop and put it into a newer model, what are my next steps? How can i make sure i have appropriate drivers for the new hardware? Please excuse me if this post belongs elsewhere.

Thank You

Depending on the exact hardware and which distro you are using, it might just work with no effort on your part. Let us know any specific problems you run into.

I wouldn't take an old HDD from an old laptop and put it in a new one: HDDs have a limited life. The older they are the more likely they are to break tomorrow.

And you are likely to void/disable your guarantee/warranty on the new hardware if you take a screwdriver to it. (I can never work out how to get inside laptops anyway)

What I suggest you do is install the latest version of your preferred linux distro on the new laptop's new HDD (alongside win, if you feel you must).

Then sort out the (possible) problems with the new linux install. Meanwhile you have your old laptop to go back to.

Then connect both laptops to your network, and copy your personal files from the old to the new.

But your question was:
And the answer is that you can't be sure, but you can try it and see what happens. Sometimes it is OK, sometimes not.

Hi,
Thank you for the prompt replies. I had an older laptop configured to dual boot XP and CentOS with GRUB. After i swapped the drive into a newer notebook, i installed all the additional drivers for the xp installation, but when boot into centos, it takes significantly longer to boot up and seems very choppy when moving the mouse around at startup. yum update tells me everything is upto date. wondering is there is a way to see what drivers i have installed/missing on the system

Here is a more detailed question:
How do i install a RAID controller driver under linux?

ended up reinstalling CentOS
But still behaving the same way on startup. Very slow and choppy, especially moving the mouse. My guess is the drivers arent loaded, but i dont know the first thing about drivers on linux, any help would be appreaciated. Thanks


The hardware is Lenovo T410i

I doubt if its a driver issue... did you check that the drive is set up properly i.e. as a master or a slave. ! the end of the cable is the master,the middle is the slave,and check the jumper.

This is just a guess.

Have you tried a hard boot into Linux? That is to say, completly power down the computer, let it sit about 10 seconds then boot directly into Linux? I have seen instances where rebooting from Windows to Linux is troublesome because the Windows drivers still have some control over certain devices or IRQ settings. If a hard boot does not help you need to do a fresh install of Linux.

Hi,

I would try a LiveCD. Possibly KNOPPIX to see what is recognized & loaded.