Laptop hard drive replacement.

[crofter 65]

Hi, how difficult is it to replace the hard drive on a lap top, I have looked on You Tube and it looks not to bad to do but how easy is it to load the put the working program on with a disk I.e. Windows 8 or 10? Is it just a mater of running the disk and following the directions.
Thanks.

 

[J B]

Loads of on-line guides on how to do it.
Look here https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/
Make sure you get an SSD - so much faster than a old HDD

 

[Storeman]

Not difficult.
As mentioned above, buy an ssd replacement drive, will improve the speed of the machine no end.
Fit the new drive in a usb drive caddy.
Use free drive imaging software to image the 'old' drive to the new one, make sure the imaging software flags the new drive as bootable.
Then, take old drive out, put new drive in. Job done.

 

[deleted user 837354]

Hi, how difficult is it to replace the hard drive on a lap top, I have looked on You Tube and it looks not to bad to do but how easy is it to load the put the working program on with a disk I.e. Windows 8 or 10? Is it just a mater of running the disk and following the directions.
Thanks.

Do you intend to reinstall Windows on the machine and start from scratch? You could just clone the old hard drive onto to the new drive (solid state) and everything will be AOK when you turn the machine back on.

 

[crofter 65]

Thanks for the replies, the old disk is dead so can't clone it, putting resurrection of the lap top on hold just now as it's pretty old and I have concerns about the rest of it, and I don't really need it as it would only be a back up.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Thanks for the replies, the old disk is dead so can't clone it, putting resurrection of the lap top on hold just now as it's pretty old and I have concerns about the rest of it, and I don't really need it as it would only be a back up.

Could go either way (replace whole machine or fit a new drive) depending on how old it is.

Although an SSD will 100% breath a whole lot more new life into an old machine, you may just be better getting a fresh one as they’re really not huge money and the money might be well spent on getting the whole spec up to date. Just depends really.

 

[J B]

Would you all agree that with cloning the whole drive (which obviously isn't possible in this situation), that you bring all the crap from the old one across, whereas with a clean install, you don't?

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Would you all agree that with cloning the whole drive (which obviously isn't possible in this situation), that you bring all the crap from the old one across, whereas with a clean install, you don't?

Yep. Always better, but requires more time and effort to get things back to somewhere near to where they were.

If you are going down that route with W10 for example I’d recommend downloading the latest install ‘media’ from MS rather then using older media and then spending half the day applying updates and patching the box.

 

[deleted user 837354]

Fresh install is always best.