Replace a Hard Drive
It shouldn't be difficult to replace a hard disk drive (HDD) in your PC. You simply bring the CPU box to a competent PC repair outfit, buy a replacement hard disk, usually with a higher storage capacity, and pay the repair charges and you're back in business. But an increasing number of PC users prefer to do it on their own. Why bother paying for the repair charges when it's so easy to do just following some simple steps.
Reasons for Replacing your Hard Drive
There's basically just two main reasons. Either you have badly damaged or crashed hard disk, or you want to upgrade the storage capacity. But unless you are using a laptop or one of those compact CPU cases that can only accommodate a single hard drive, upgrading your HDD capacity can be just a matter of adding a new HDD.
Basic Hard Drive Replacement Tips
- Replacing a hard disk is simple. First unplug the PC external power cable and open the access panels on the CPU box. There are just two internal cables you need to bother about - the SATA and the power cables attached to the HDD. Unplug these from the drive, taking note of their position. The new HDD drive's ports looks exactly like the old and you will need to reconnect these cables to these ports.
- After unplugging these cables, unscrew the old HDD and slide them out of the holding bay. Carefully position the new HDD to the same bay, screw them down and reconnect the cables you removed into the same position.
- Plug the external power back to the PC and turn it one. The new device will immediately be recognized in the boot up POST. If this new HDD replaces the primary HDD with the OS, be sure to have your OS installation disc ready and loaded so that Windows will boot from it. Then you can follow the OS installation process as before.
- If the replacement is for a secondary or data disk, once you're in the Windows environment, just go to the Windows Explorer to check that the new HDD is recognized. Then format it by right clicking on the new drive. Alternatively, you can go to the Disk Manager under Disk Management which you can access by right clicking the My Computer icon and choosing Manage. Once there, all your hard drives are displayed and you only need to right click on the new drive to get it formatted.
- While in Disk management, you can also change the drive letter designation or do some partitioning. For a 1TB or 1.5TB, it's often recommended to do disk partitioning for a more efficient use of your storage resources.