The first thing to do is to make sure you actually need a new hard drive for your laptop. You don’t want to waste time and money for something that won’t fix your computer problem.
Of course, your hard drive doesn’t have to be bad for a replacement. You may want to upgrade your hard drive for a variety of reasons.
Let’s take a look at a few of the reasons that a laptop hard drive replacement may be a good decision for you.
Do You Need a Laptop Hard Drive Replacement?
You could lose all of your family pictures and important documents if you’re ignoring signs of a failing hard drive. Don’t ignore that humming or slower speed until it’s too late.
Laptop hard drive replacement doesn’t have to be something to be afraid of. As long as you take the right steps and prepare yourself, replacing the hard drive in your laptop can give your computer a new lease on life.
Is It Faulty?
If your computer is running slower it doesn’t automatically mean you need a new hard drive. Uninstalling programs that you no longer use and organizing your files may actually provide some improvement as less hard drive clutter allows it to run efficiently.
Formatting your laptop so that it goes back to just like it was when you first took it out of the box is a sure-fire way to solve software-related laptop problems. This can be a drastic and time-consuming process, but some people find it useful to do this regularly as part of normal computer maintenance.
If you’re hearing clicking or knocking coming from where your hard drive is located or you are receiving errors when trying to save or edit files, you may have a bad hard drive.
Something Else Broken?
If something else has malfunctioned in your laptop or you’ve broken your screen, the good news is that you may not need a new hard drive when fixing other problems or replacing your laptop.
Just because your keyboard, RAM, or other component needs to be replaced, it doesn’t mean your data is gone forever. Most other repairs shouldn’t impact your hard drive, but it’s always a good idea to back up your data just in case, but we’ll cover that more in depth later.
If you’ve recently experienced a power outage in your home and your laptop has been acting weird, your laptop may have been damaged due to a storm. Have a professional check it out as multiple components could’ve been damaged.
Want an Upgrade?
Maybe nothing is malfunctioning, but you want to upgrade your current hardware. If you’re a gamer, you may have heard how much better solid state hard drives are for gaming.
They give better performance for most games.
You also may want to upgrade for bigger storage. The amount of data that hard drives can hold is growing all of the time. If you find yourself constantly running out of room for new pictures or music, it may be time to upgrade.
Which Hard Drive Do You Need?
You’ve determined that you want or need a new hard drive. Don’t get stressed out, we can make this easy for you. There are a few things to do to make sure you are getting the right part and preparing for the repair.
SATA or IDE?
If you don’t know what SATA or IDE means, don’t worry, it’s pretty easy to explain. Your laptop should have one of two different connection types for hard drives. Unless your laptop is an older model, you’re probably using SATA.
The quickest way to figure out what kind of hard drive you have is by looking at the connector. Laptop screws are small and many may feel nervous about opening up their laptop to look so you may want to contact a computer repair shop to handle this.
Speed or Size?
You don’t have to compromise your laptop’s storage space for a fast hard drive, but you do have a decision to make when it comes to which one to focus on.
If you’re storing a lot of data then a large hard drive may be best for you. Solid state hard drives are extremely fast but it can be very expensive to get a solid state hard drive that holds a lot.
Gamers, photographers and video editors are just some of the groups that may want a solid state drive for the speed. Average computer users will generally be fine with a standard hard drive.
Backup Before Doing Anything Else
This can’t be stressed enough. You need to back-up your data.
If you aren’t already doing regular backups then you need to do a full backup now and then start a regularly scheduled backup after the replacement.
While most repair companies will offer to transfer your data to a new hard drive, it’s always a good idea to have a back-up just in case something happens. If your hard drive is still working and your laptop is able to be accessed, you can use an external hard drive or any one of the many cloud storage options available.
If your screen is broken or if your hard drive is having serious problems, there are still options for you. Repair shops can pull your hard drive out and transfer your data even if you have a broken laptop.
Dead hard drives can have data recovered depending on the level of malfunction to the hard drive.
An important thing to remember is that while data such as pictures, music, and documents can be transferred, any programs that you have installed will not transfer over. You’ll need to reinstall any software that you regularly use.
Get Professional Help
Computer problems can cause horrible headaches, but most people don’t realize that it only takes a few simple steps and some basic knowledge to have those problems fixed easily.
If you’re nervous about doing your own computer repair or a laptop hard drive replacement, contact a computer repair service today.
