Can I take out HDD and attach to my desktop??

Hello new member here, I just bought a Roamio DVR cable and will soon be upgrading the HDD to a 3TB western digital.


Are they any special tools needed to open the casing? and will the new software just load to the new HDD.


Now for the old HDD with recordings, I would like to attach the old HDD to my desktop via USB HDD case and pull of the recordings, edit commerical and reencode to mkv..can I do this?

Thank you.