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I want to minimize down-time I'd usually experience deploying new Windows boxes. The hardware has not yet arrived, but I have plenty of hard drives on-hand to put Windows on. So, I want to pre-install Windows onto the hard drives with various software they'll require.

Here's what I'm planning to do:
*Load Windows 7 .iso onto USB stick.
*Install Windows as usual. When it goes to reboot after installing the Windows files, (before installing drivers, I *think*), I shut the PC down during boot.
*Load the hard drive onto fully-functioning PC with Win7 already on it - not as a boot drive - and place all the various software installation files I want onto the drive.
*Repeat with four other drives.
*When hardware arrives, install the hard drives and let Windows finish its configuration/installation, and enjoy ~10 minutes less down-time per box.

Does this sound reasonable? Anyone try it before? Odds of BSoD?

For anyone interested - this appears to've gone off without a hitch.

I also stumbled upon a fairly easy and seemingly-reliable (no guarantees - don't do it if you care about the data or drive) way to hot-swap SATA drives in Windows without any fancy tools or data corruption:
1) Goto Admin Tools-> Computer Management
2) Click Disk Management
3) Locate physical drive (bottom window) you want to swap out
4) Right-click the drive, click "Properties"
5) Goto "Policies" tab, uncheck "Enable Write Caching" option (then click "Okay")
6) Right-click physical drive again, click "Offline"
7) Wait for "Offline" message to appear (at least in W7, help bubble pops up next to "Offline" with "Help" displaying below)
8 ) Disconnect SATA power cable from drive, then disconnect SATA data cable.
9) Connect SATA power cable to new drive you want to swap in (using the same cables as the old drive!), then connect SATA data cable (same cable!)
10) Right-click the old drive in the Computer Management screen which is offline and click "Online."

Idunno if steps 4 & 5 are essential, but at least seemed like a reasonable fail-safe in case I made a mistake.

if the hardware is all the same, then it shouldn't be a problem. i installed win 7 on one laptop and put it in another.. but it did not load, so i had to reformat. i didn't even install any drivers and yet it wouldn't boot.

It sounds Okay to me  ;D but I not an IT :-X