How to flash Windows onto a friend's drive using my PC?

A buddy gave me his empty hard drive to burn Windows XP onto so I can give it back, but I want to make sure I don't wreck my own rig in the process.
Basically, I’d plug his drive into my PC—which is running Windows 10 on an SSD—do a clean install of XP on his drive without worrying about drivers, then just unplug it and hand it back. If I do that, will my computer still boot up fine once his drive is gone?
Can I just wing it, or is there something I should watch out for?

Jesse Anderson2 said:A buddy gave me his empty hard drive to burn Windows XP onto so I can give it back, but I want to make sure I don't wreck my own rig in the process.
Basically, I’d plug his drive into my PC—which is running Windows 10 on an SSD—do a clean install of XP on his drive without worrying about drivers, then just unplug it and hand it back. If I do that, will my computer still boot up fine once his drive is gone?
Can I just wing it, or is there something I should watch out for?

You can certainly just disconnect your own drive if you perform the installation via a CD, DVD, or USB stick; doing so provides absolute peace of mind regarding your own setup (though if the installer is sitting on your SSD, you'll need to move it to one of those external media types first). That being said, it is vital that his drive is set as the primary boot device in your BIOS and that the partition is marked as active. If those conditions are met, the installer will recognize it as the "C:" drive and proceed with the installation. However, I must warn you that dealing with drivers—specifically those tied to the motherboard hardware—could prove to be quite a headache unless your two machines happen to have nearly identical hardware configurations.

What's the point of this? What does it actually serve?

I popped my drives open and tucked away that old 80GB drive from my buddy. Everything went smooth, except I had to swap AHCI for IDE in the BIOS—otherwise, I was getting hit with nothing but blue screens.
Didn't break a thing 😛

Jesse Anderson2 said:I popped my drives open and tucked away that old 80GB drive from my buddy. Everything went smooth, except I had to swap AHCI for IDE in the BIOS—otherwise, I was getting hit with nothing but blue screens.
Didn't break a thing 😛

Just a heads-up though—don't go doing that unless you really have to. It’s not exactly a recommendation, mostly because I'm assuming you guys don't all have identical setups—you know, the exact same CPU, motherboard, and all that other gear. When you install Windows, it saves all those specific chipset drivers and little configurations right onto the hard drive. Sometimes, if you swap out the motherboard or the processor but try to boot from an old drive that doesn't have a fresh Windows installation, you'll end up staring at a BSOD. It happens because Windows detects a different chipset and just gets confused.