Laptop Hard drives

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Laptop Hard drives, storage, IDE and SATA drives.

One of the most common failures in a laptop is the hard drive, it is also one of the few components you can upgrade. Laptop hard drives fail more often than desktop hard drives. Reason: simple your laptop absorbs more punishment than a desktop. You move your laptop continuously, where you go the laptop goes. I know you are careful with how you handle it but still it gets banged around.

So what can you do about the constant shock the hard drive gets on a daily basis? Not much, be more aware that the hard drive has your data and back it up often. Maybe make an image of the hard drive.

Laptop hard drives are located in a bay in the laptop, Most have some shock resistance built into the bay. Some hard drives are easier to remove and replace than others. I have seen some hard drives under the keyboard, completely inside the case where you have to take the case apart to get to the hard drive. You will have to go to the manufactures web site and do a search for your computer if the documentation that came with it doesn't show you where and how to remove the hard drive. Acer's are one of the 'no documentation' type of computers, all the manuals are ON the hard drive, what do you do if it has failed?

Once you have located the hard drive and understand how to remove it you just reverse the procedure to reinstall the replacement.

A word of caution: ESD will damage the hard drive the same as dropping it!

One thing I would suggest you do is to make a couple of images of your hard drive partitions. If you have a hard drive failure all your data will be lost, with an image of the OS partition and the data partitions (if your installer had the foresight to make two partitions on the hard drive) and a good back up, the failure of a hard drive will not be as catastrophic. At one time when you sent a computer into IBM for repair they would wipe the hard drive and reinstall the OS, IBM has since sold off most of their laptop business so I don't know it this is still true. To save reinstalling all of your programs, finding those pesky cd's and keys you could restore your computer at least to the point of the image and then complete the restore with the backup.

In conclusion the hard drive is fairly easy to remove and reinstall, you need to be aware that it is the most vulnerable component in your laptop. Your data is the most important thing on the laptop back it up regularly. Make an image of the hard drive, if you have important or hard to find programs you will always have a copy of them, also you will not have to reinstall them if you have to replace or upgrade the hard drive.

Would you like to have more information about laptop backups? This site has some good tips about hard drive back up.

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