Replacement hard drives

GRM

Defintely go SSD if you can. My latest work laptop has a Samsung 128GB SSD and it's fantastically quick.

custardy

do they need new hard drives for space?
have you checked whether they can take a 2nd hard drive?
just means you can whack the 2nd drive in with reinstalling

Breast_Cancer_Survivor

Hammyman wrote: »

Nothing to add except that Ebay isn't particularly cheap for new hard drives.

You can buy a 250GB one from Scan for £4 more than the cheapest new 160GB one on Ebay. Add another £1.50 and you can increase that to 320GB. And thats new from a company who've been around well over a decade.

Thanks for that.

I've just had a look & I can get a 250GB Samsung one for £26.99 which is pretty much the same price they are asking for a 160GB on Ebay. :eek:

Breast_Cancer_Survivor

custardy wrote: »

do they need new hard drives for space?
have you checked whether they can take a 2nd hard drive?
just means you can whack the 2nd drive in with reinstalling

They need new hard drives as they are corrupt or something.

The laptops won't load Windows & the recovery disc won't fix them anymore.

custardy

do you have a full windows disc?
if you only have recovery discs then they may not work without the recovery partition on the new drives
depends what sort of recovery disc they are

grumpycrab

Breast_Cancer_Survivor wrote: »

... & the recovery disc won't fix them anymore.

What goes wrong exactly? Either the recovery disk are broken and/or your hard disk is broken (I guess you're assuming the latter)

FYI Manual is here -> http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01301275.pdf
Search for "Recovering from the recovery discs"

Breast_Cancer_Survivor

custardy wrote: »

do you have a full windows disc?
if you only have recovery discs then they may not work without the recovery partition on the new drives
depends what sort of recovery disc they are

No I don't have a Windows disc just the HP recovery Discs that I bought.

In the past i've used them to restore the laptops to factory settings but god knows what the kids have done to them this time as that won't work anymore.

I don't want to waste money buying hard drives if they still won't be able to use their laptops.

I'm just confused now tbh.

Breast_Cancer_Survivor

grumpycrab wrote: »

What goes wrong exactly? Either the recovery disk are broken and/or your hard disk is broken (I guess you're assuming the latter)

FYI Manual is here -> http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01301275.pdf
Search for "Recovering from the recovery discs"

I've recovered from the recovery discs several times in the past but no matter how many times I try now it doesn't work.

I think I had some kind of error message saying that the drives were corrupt.

I'm going to give it another go so I can report what happens as it has been a while since I last tried.

The laptops haven't worked now for getting on for a year & I can't afford to replace them so hoped I could fix them myself.

Maybe i'm a bit out of my depth.

closed

run chkdsk on them

dannyjebb

hard drives wont last forever everytime you reload windows they will wear down In my experience I have found they usually last about 4 years or so. I have never bought a computer from a shop always built my own but I was under the impression that when you buy a pre built comp with a pre loaded copy of windows then part of the hardrive is sectioned off and this small bit has all the files needed for windows. the rescue disc just adds the last few files needed. So you couldnt use the rescue disc with a new hardrive because half the files would be missing. You would have to buy a new copy of windows or you can buy a program called norton ghost that copies your hardrive and burns it onto a cd you can thn use this to reload windows on the new drive. There are also free versions of similar software available. You could also look at getting an external hardrive that just plugs in via USB