Using an old hard drive in a new computer

My friend had a mid-2009 MacBook pro which he recently lost due to water damage. However his hard drive was still intact. Now he’s getting the new MacBook pro (both are 13 inches). My question is: would he be able to pop in his hard drive from his old MacBook pro in to the new one and run it as it was? Mind you the specs aren’t exactly the same but they are rather similar.
Any help with the matter would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Answer #1
He could get an external casing in which the old laptop would fit. That way, he could connect the drive via the USB interface
Answer #2
On the physical level,Provided that both HDDs (old & on the new macbook)
are of the same type (IDE or SATA) then it should fit just fine.
On the software level,The OS may fail to start due to the different hardware.
IMO the best thing to do would be buying an external enclosure
and just hook up the old HDD to the new MB via USB so he’ll
be able to copy his data to the new one.
Answer #3
Ya that’s what I thought. He was just looking for a super easy way out. Thanks for the help.
My friend went ahead and stuck the hardrive in anyways and it worked for him. Guess it was similar enough that it worked.