If I understand what you're asking, no. If you take out your old hard drive, you will be taking the operating system with it. If you were to simply plug in your new drive, your computer will boot up with a message saying something to the effect of: "no bootable disk." If you go that route, you will need a Windows installation on a USB drive to install the operating system. Honestly, the easiest thing to do is to purchase a USB to SATA cable and mirror your old hard drive to the new one. Then swap them out. Even if your old drive was cluttered with items, you'll still notice a remarkable improvement in performance.