hard disk fail - help needed in replacing

bittihuduga

hard disk fail

The hard disk on my desktop looks as dead.
I can't load windows and it says primary hard disk fail.

I am looking to buy a new hard disk.
1)is it easy to remove the old hard disk and put the new one? can I do it on my own - Im not a pc expert

2)what is the next procedure after changing hard disk?

3)which is the best/cheap priced hard drive? where can I find it?

Please suggest

hshortt

HiYa, hard luck! I had the same happen in my laptop recently and it's a pain.

Anyway, it is easy to replace the disk, but you should take out the original first so you can identify what type of disk it is, (IDE or SATA). Get a suitable replacement and refit it.

Next step is to boot the computer with your recovery CDs or OS Installation CDs, and rebuild the Operating System, this can take some time, but read the details on screen and follow the prompts and you'll be fine.

Hard drives can be had from PC Worlds, Peats, Maplins, or online from Komplett, Ebay etc etc. You'll pay more for higher capacity and possibly slightly more if the original disk was a SATA disk.

Recently bought a 500GB SATA disk in Komplett for 130Euro.

Cheerio
Howard

Anti

i would reccomend you buy a small hard drive for your operating system to instal onto, and have another larger hdd for all info you want to keep, like music/pics doccuments and the likes.

So if the os hdd dies you wont loose all your data.

Fanny Cradock

You will save yourself a great deal of money if you do it yourself.

First you will need to find out what type of hard drive you can take:
*2.5" IDE
*2.5" SATA (better performance from this)
(If you are not sure post your laptop make and model and we will be able to help)

There are plenty of online guides to help you through the process. I'm not sure how good these links are, but here are a couple of guides I found with a quick google search.

Video Guide

Pictorial guide

Freddie59

Fanny Cradock wrote:

You will save yourself a great deal of money if you do it yourself.

First you will need to find out what type of hard drive you can take:
*2.5" IDE
*2.5" SATA (better performance from this)
(If you are not sure post your laptop make and model and we will be able to help)

There are plenty of online guides to help you through the process. I'm not sure how good these links are, but here are a couple of guides I found with a quick google search.

Video Guide

Pictorial guide

I'm replacing the 80 Gig C Drive on my PC. Bought a 320 Gig from www.komplett.ie. Just format it; put in the recovery disks and Off I go?
Is it that easy? I've restored the machine twice in the past with the recovery disks and no probs.

It's a 4 year-old Emachine. Was warned "don't get it, etc". It's never given any trouble and I've seen two other 'leading' brand name units scrapped in the meantime. Makes you think.

Just in relation to Fanny's reply - I think the OP said desktop - so would he need 3.5" drives?

Fanny Cradock

Freddie59 wrote:

I'm replacing the 80 Gig C Drive on my PC. Bought a 320 Gig from www.komplett.ie. Just format it; put in the recovery disks and Off I go?
Is it that easy? I've restored the machine twice in the past with the recovery disks and no probs.

It's a 4 year-old Emachine. Was warned "don't get it, etc". It's never given any trouble and I've seen two other 'leading' brand name units scrapped in the meantime. Makes you think.

Just in relation to Fanny's reply - I think the OP said desktop - so would he need 3.5" drives?

D'oh. Thanks for pointing that out, Freddie59

Apologies, OP! The general advice remains the same, except look at 3.5" IDE or 3.5" SATA drives instead. Again, there will be plenty guides online.

Freddie59, I'm not sure if you are asking a question there or not. There are ? all over the place Anyway, installing in a new HDD couldn't be any easier. Hook it up and install your OS (not sure what you mean by recovery disks). It's that simple.

Freddie59

Fanny Cradock wrote:

D'oh. Thanks for pointing that out, Freddie59

Apologies, OP! The general advice remains the same, except look at 3.5" IDE or 3.5" SATA drives instead. Again, there will be plenty guides online.

Freddie59, I'm not sure if you are asking a question there or not. There are ? all over the place Anyway, installing in a new HDD couldn't be any easier. Hook it up and install your OS (not sure what you mean by recovery disks). It's that simple.

Thanks Fanny. Sorry for the confusion. Yes I am replacing the C Drive, which has become very noisy (with high pitched whines and screeches from it!).

I was supplied with what are called recovery disks. The full OS is on them (I presume it's some kind of Ghost setup) and they basically restore the PC to what is was at day one. Big advantage is you don' have to re-register or install a separate copy of XP.

What I have done in the past (twice) is insert the recovers CD and follow the on-screen instructions. Difference is this time around it won't be the original C drive. Will that cause any issues do you think?

Bradidup

A good trick is to put a dud hard drive in the freezer for a bit, often works to rescue valuable information.

WizZard

Bradidup wrote:

A good trick is to put a dud hard drive in the freezer for a bit, often works to rescue valuable information.

I hate seeing this tip tripped out at every oppurtunity. It can do more harm than good if you don't know what you are doing, and can often make real (read: professional) recovery more expensive in the end...

Bradidup

WizZard wrote:

I hate seeing this tip tripped out at every oppurtunity. It can do more harm than good if you don't know what you are doing, and can often make real (read: professional) recovery more expensive in the end...

Its a cheap last resort for those that have limited resoures and data that is not to valuable, I have other suggestions such as trawling Ebay for a hard drive with the EXACT same control card and assuming its the problem swapping the card over. There is also various software packages from manufacturers such as Maxblast (Maxtor) and WD Lifeguard (Western Digital) for hard drive diagnostics.

If that fails and you can send the hard drive off to a specialist data recovery firm that will dismantle the drive in a clean room that could charge you several times of what the hard drive or even a new pc is worth and at that cant guarantee full data recovery!!!!.

leeroybrown

WizZard wrote:

I hate seeing this tip tripped out at every oppurtunity. It can do more harm than good if you don't know what you are doing, and can often make real (read: professional) recovery more expensive in the end...

I agree that whenever the advice is given it should come with a health warning and proper instructions but it can work quite well in the correct situation. I have a pretty high success rate using it to retrieve data in situations where professional data recovery was not feasible.

dathiultaigh

hey why has your HDD failed? Cause If you can determine what the failure is by troubleshooting with the manufacturer tech support guidelines or directly over the phone with thier tech support it may be the case that the HDD is still under warranty/guarantee (a legally binding assurance) and will be replaced by the manufacturer free of cost minus P+P as maybe you will to send this on to them to be tested and maybe replaced.

Guarantee's for HDD's i would imagine would be at a geuss of 3 years. You can check though usually by searching the manufacturers website using the model/serial number. It is obviously a bit of research for you but hey its a free replacement if it works out.

Freddie59

Update on this folks. Tried to restore my machine (with the original restore disks). Installed new drive, everything went fine, allowed me to create the XP user accounts and then - bang - unmountable_boot_error.

Same with another drive. Reinstalled original drive and no problem. Did the ritual searches on Google but no joy. All suggestions welcome.:)

dathiultaigh

is it still under warrnaty if so try mty last suggestion - manufacturer replaces it