I have a older Dell Win XP Pro SP3 computer which I connected a external Seagate Free Agent Desktop drive to hold audio/video files. Which has worked well for a number of years.

  Recently a Friend gave me a HP computer with Win Vista SP2 installed. This computer has a single internal SATA hard drive.

  I would like to hook up, by USB Port, the external seagate free agent drive to my newer Vista computer, and transfer some audio/video files to the SATA hard drive. But I'm concerned about possible hard ware  "clashes" between the 2-computers.

  So I would like some feedback on this issue. Would there be any risk of a computer crash, or loss of data ?

Feedback will be appreciated.

But I'm concerned about possible hard ware  "clashes" between the 2-computers.

Which kind of "computer" clash do you expect?

The only possible one is Disk Signature collision, where there is chance that can be estimated between (optimistically)  1/(2³²-1) and (pessimistically) roughly 1/(2¹⁶-1), i.e. between and 1/4294967295 and 1/65535.

As long as you connect the USB disk to an already booted machine, IF such a collision hypothetically happens (it won't ) the duplicate Disk Signature on the USB disk will be changed to a new one with NO practical effect on the PC nor on the disk.

IF the USB disk is used as bootable disk, IF hypothetically the collision happens (it won't ) the internal Disk Signature will be changed and likely you will need to repair the BCD.

 

In a nutshell:

 

Would there be any risk of a computer crash, or loss of data ?

No. 

jaclaz

Thanks for your reply