Can I Plug an SSD with an OS into Another Computer?

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1

My Lenovo Legion Y520 laptop recently died—it lost power, wouldn’t boot, and then the CPU fried after I left it plugged in, hoping it might magically come back to life. Now, I’ve accepted it’s a lost cause and it’s too costly to repair.

I still want to access my data from the SSD though, but it has a full OS on it. If I use a SATA-USB adapter to connect the SSD to my new laptop, will that cause any issues with the OS overlap? Or is it generally safe to just plug it in without doing anything special?

2

Should work just fine—I did the same thing recently. Just make sure you have the BitLocker key if you used that on the drive.

3

Jane said:
Should work just fine—I did the same thing recently. Just make sure you have the BitLocker key if you used that on the drive.

I don’t think I have BitLocker on it, but honestly, I’m not sure. Is there a way to double-check?

4

@Chan
You can check by logging into your Windows account. If BitLocker is on, your key will be saved there. I didn’t know mine had BitLocker until I plugged it into an external SSD mount!

5

Only thing that might come up is booting. Your computer might try to boot from the new SSD instead of your main one. You can fix this by changing the boot order in the BIOS.

6

Charley said:
Only thing that might come up is booting. Your computer might try to boot from the new SSD instead of your main one. You can fix this by changing the boot order in the BIOS.

Yeah, I read that checking the BIOS boot order is a good idea to make sure it’s loading the right drive first.

7

@Chan
Exactly. It usually defaults to the main drive, but good to double-check.

Even if you have multiple OS drives, only the one that’s set to boot will actually load, so you shouldn’t have any conflicts with your current OS.

8

Sounds safe to me. Only issue would be if BitLocker’s enabled—you’ll need the recovery key to access your files then.

9

If it’s Windows 10 or 11, it should work with no issues.

10

Nothing to worry about. It’ll just show up as an external drive. I’ve done this a few times myself.