DIY-Computer-Repair (Hard Drive repair)
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 new300 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! 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!
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 SlaveNote: SATA
drive selection is
set by embedded software. All Drives Reverse removal
procedure.
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 OSload. Once the OS is
up and running you
have to do two more things before your new drive is ready: Partition the driveFormat
the drive