Question about Ghosting HDD's

[Zephik]

Would it be possible to ghost my younger brothers PC, which is a fairly new HP Pavilion (2004?) onto my new hard drive, which is an IDE for this old junker of mine which is also an HP Pavilion, but much older. Its a 515n model, I'm not sure what my brothers Pavilion is, but his is an AMD whereas mine is an Intel.

I was thinking that I could just start in safe mode maybe and then download the drivers for this PC to fix all the bugs. I was also just hoping that the bios would automatically detect the new hardware and make the proper changes or something. But I haven't a clue, so thats why I'm asking. lol

If this won't work, I'm open to other suggestions for getting an OS other than one thats Linux based. I have to put up with using an old junker as it is, I at least want Windows. lol

Thanks for the help!

[slytherock]

That's possible, but considerate illegal
1 computer = 1 licence

[simon275]

Please buy another windows licence or another copy of windows we do not condone piracy here. You have been warned.

[Zephik]

Right, sorry about that. I know the rules, but I did not know, nor could find out through google, that Ghost was an illegal program. I've heard of people using it plenty of times, but I never heard that it was illegal.

Damnit, I already spent a hundred bucks for a new hard drive, now I have to spend another wad of cash that I don't have to buy windows? Well, money makes the world go round I guess.

Anyways, thanks for the warning and for letting me know that it was illegal. I really didn't know, even though it kind of makes sense now that its been brought to my attention.

[Luke122]

Cloning a hard drive is not illegal... but cloning a drive to a new machine, and then running the same software on two computers is illegal.

If you are using the "ghosting" (same as cloning, but the term "ghost" comes from Symantec's cloning software, Ghost) to move the contents of a hdd to a new hdd, then there's no problem.

If you are moving it from one computer to another, you have to remove it from the old computer after the move.

Also, OEM software licenses cannot be legally transferred between systems. If it's an OEM copy of the OS, you are S.O.L.
-Luke