[kennedy]

I have two MacBooks.
Is it possible to swap their harddrives, turning each into the other (so to speak)?

Or is the serial number of the machine written onto the disks such that it wouldn't run that way?

As an alternative, if I pull the drive from MacBook #1 and put it into MacBook #2, could I at least bring up MacBook #2 in "Firewire Disk Mode" (Cmd-T)?

Thanks!

[bluedog]

Either is possible. Whichever you prefer. The similarity with hardware for Apple's computers allows for the system to travel well moving from one hardware system to another.

You could even boot temporarily via firewire target mode if its a one-time option. (Hold down T during boot of the OS install you wish to boot from. Then connect firewire to the other machine. Restart-reboot with 'option' key held then choose the firewire drive to boot from.

[bluedog]

Note, going from PPC to intel hardware WILL NOT allow for a bootable system -- at least in previous builds of OSX. You can always use target-disk mode to load your other system data (user files, etc). The Migration Assistant found in the Applications/Utilities folder may help you if you wish to transfer settings/documents for users from one machine to another.