Backup/Parts Computer

[Nat Wheatley]

I have a Dell Optiplex 760, on which the power supply died yesterday. I've gotten it fixed, but I'm thinking of buying a second one to in case this one dies again. My thought was that if anything but the hard drive failed on the one first one, that I could move the hard drive to the second one to be back up and running? Good/bad idea, anything I need to be wary of?

As my post may suggest, I'm not a computer person, but am able to swap out parts etc.

Thanks

 

[johnb35]

If you can find another oltiplex 760 with same hardware then you can reuse hard druve and boot up with it. If totally different machine,you will have problems booting to the drive. You could use it as a data drive though.

 

[Nat Wheatley]

Thanks for the reply. Novice question I'm sure, but which hardware components need to match between the two?

 

[johnb35]

Mainly chipset so can't go from amd to Intel or vice versa. Not sure if there were different specs for the 760 or not.

 

[beers]

You might have to reactivate Windows when swapping.

Unless you can get it super cheap like $20-30 I wouldn't bother and just replace parts as they fail. The 760 is getting pretty old at this point.. if you had something like a motherboard fail I'd just roll the same cash into a newer computer