Switching HDD between two same specs unibody MacBook Pros

[pyroo]

My sister's macbook pro's hdd just failed and I was planning on upgrading mine into a larger one anyways so I'm going to switch my hdd into hers.

But what I am wondering is if I have to reformat the hdd or anything, can I just switch my hdd into her laptop and everything would start up and all the programs would run normally? If that is the case, would my serial number show up on her laptop? Because in the future, if there's any problem with her laptop and she had to bring it to the apple store, I don't want the people giving her trouble for having different serial numbers on the hdd and the physical serial number on the case.

If the serial numbers are indeed saved on the hdd, would I actually have to reinstall leopard using her recovery disc to get the serial number right back into the hdd so that it shows up in the system profiler? Or would the serial number "change" itself once it realize its not running on the same laptop?

Hope this makes sense to you!

 

[MasterNile]

I believe the HD doesn't hold the serial number, and yes you can do that but be sure to clean off any information you don't want her getting. I think it would probably be better to reinstall OS X, but you don't have to.

 

[wbyung]

I believe the HD doesn't hold the serial number, and yes you can do that but be sure to clean off any information you don't want her getting. I think it would probably be better to reinstall OS X, but you don't have to.

Every hard drive has a serial number.

However I don't know if Apple keeps a record of it.

 

[MasterNile]

Every hard drive has a serial number.

However I don't know if Apple keeps a record of it.

No he meant, does the HDD store the serial number of the computer, not the HDD serial number

 

[e12a]

it should be fine.

if it wasn't, using Target mode and booting another mac would have a lot of problems. The OS is not tied to the hardware like Windows is.

 

[wbyung]

No he meant, does the HDD store the serial number of the computer, not the HDD serial number

lol....I didn't read carefully. My bad!

 

[seb-opp]

yes I read in a mac mag that it works. As long as you havnt used Xslimmer or anything, I think that could mess it up

 

[pyroo]

awesome, thanks for your help!

 

[pyroo]

oh one more thing, just out of curiosity, where/how does the system profiler get the serial number?

 

[Outrigger]

oh one more thing, just out of curiosity, where/how does the system profiler get the serial number?

I do believe its hard coded into the motherboard. others correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[alphaod]

oh one more thing, just out of curiosity, where/how does the system profiler get the serial number?

I do believe its hard coded into the motherboard. others correct me if I'm wrong.

Yes; that's also why when you get your logic board replaced sometimes you "lose" the hard encoded S/N.