[plug] Swapping disks to another laptop

[psteege at tpg.com.au]

I have a 6Gb removable Fujitsu disk drive in my Gateway laptop, but 
the laptop just died.  I am running RedHat 7.1.
I want to purchase another laptop but not lose all the data on the 
current disk drive.
When I purchase the new laptop, that is compatible with this disk 
drive, how can I bring the system back online?
Will the existing kernel, on the disk, reject the hardware because it 
does not match what existed on the original Gateway?
Can I just do another RedHat install and select update, instead of 
new install ??

Phil