Hard Drive repair

Diy-Computer-Repair can help!

Most components in your system are expensive, the hard drive is no exception.

But if you think about the "bang for your buck" the newer hard drives are a super bargain. Consider this, one byte (8 bits) is equal to one character of typed text. Now you have a hard drive that has the capacity of xxx gig, that is xxx billions of single characters, how many books would it take to have say 300 gig of characters? A book case of encyclopedias? Two? Three? So a new 300 gig hard drive costs say $130, you get a meg for about $0.0105, that is less than a half cent per 250,000 characters!

You will find more information on Hard Drive repair in the Self Computer Repair Unleashed! E-Book.

Before we get to the actual replacement/upgrade we need to know what type of drive you have.

Is it a SATA (ATA Serial Drive) or IDE Drive?

Each have different connectors for both the drive controller cable and the power connection.

Replace or upgrade?

Replacement of a hard drive is a fairly simple procedure, Safety First!

Remember ESD will kill it before you get a chance to power it up! Use that static strap!

Open the case, look at the old drive (check the CD section for steps) note the cable positions. Disconnect the cables, remove the drive.

IDE only

Look at the back of the drive, check the drive select jumper, is this the only drive on the cable?

Yes: Then it should be set for cable select.

No: Is the jumper set for Master or Slave

Note: SATA drive selection is set by embedded software.

All Drives

Reverse removal procedure.

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Replace case cover, prepare to power up. (Check you computer documentation on how to get to the BIOS setup)

Power up, do you see the post?

Go to BIOS setup, your new drive should be listed. BIOS listings differ from manufacture to manufacture, if it is not displayed on the fist page, look for storage.

If this is a replacement drive that the OS (Operating System) was on then you will have to make sure that the drive is selected to be the Boot drive, also you will have to reinstall the OS. (check the programs listing for instructions on reinstalling your OS).

If this is a second drive and not the OS drive once you see it in the BIOS, check to see if it is listed as the boot drive, you do not want it to be the boot drive, change the setting.

Once you are confident that the drive settings for the bios are correct exit and let the OS load.

Once the OS is up and running you have to do two more things before your new drive is ready:

Partition the drive

Format the drive

Check the How to... page to complete these two tasks.

Data Recovery Companies:

Ontrack Data Recovery Software
Data Recovery Do-it-yourself Software

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