hard drive died - how to set up new hard drive?

mug51

Just today my desktop wouldn't boot up, it got stuck on a black screen with a message 'primary master hard disk S.M.A.R.T. status bad'. Restarting didn't work and neither did accessing the recovery partition. So it looks like I need a new hard drive.

I got no disks with my desktop, but with my laptop I got a windows XP OS cd. Both the desktop and laptop are by HP.
When I get my new hard drive will I be able to use my laptops XP OS cd to install windows onto that hard drive? However, this would mean that I will not have the drivers, bios or the programs, I'd have to pay HP £20 for these disks. Is there anyway I can get those drivers and bios without paying for the disks, but legally though.

Also, which hard drive brand would you recommend; samsung, western digital or seagate?

Thank You

chuckles1066

mug51 wrote:

Just today my desktop wouldn't boot up, it got stuck on a black screen with a message 'primary master hard disk S.M.A.R.T. status bad'. Restarting didn't work and neither did accessing the recovery partition. So it looks like I need a new hard drive.

I got no disks with my desktop, but with my laptop I got a windows XP OS cd. Both the desktop and laptop are by HP.
When I get my new hard drive will I be able to use my laptops XP OS cd to install windows onto that hard drive? However, this would mean that I will not have the drivers, bios or the programs, I'd have to pay HP £20 for these disks. Is there anyway I can get those drivers and bios without paying for the disks, but legally though.

Also, which hard drive brand would you recommend; samsung, western digital or seagate?
Thank You

Western Digital without doubt.

Yes, you can use your HP XP OS CD quite legally; you have paid for a licence, not the media.

Drivers etc etc etc can be downloaded from HP's website.

Yazza

From personal experience, all of the "failed hard drive" PCs that I've dealt with in the past four months (about 20), bar one (Hitachi), were Western Digital. I recommend Seagate, mainly because they have an exceptional five-year warranty.

Jeewhizz

Another one for the seagate camp - I've never had a problem with them.

Although, I'm currently using Hitachi Deskstar HD's in several servers, and they are on 24/7 without any complications

Debt_Free_Chick

mug51 wrote:

When I get my new hard drive will I be able to use my laptops XP OS cd to install windows onto that hard drive?

Yes, but ideally you need the product registration code for the copy that was originally installed on the desktop. You can't (or shouldn't) install a duplicate copy of the laptop OS, with the laptop code, onto the desktop. It's even possible that MS will not validate it. Do you have the code?

However, this would mean that I will not have the drivers, bios or the programs, I'd have to pay HP £20 for these disks. Is there anyway I can get those drivers and bios without paying for the disks, but legally though.

Windows will supply many common drivers - if not, you should be able to download them for free from the relevant hardware manufacturers website. Programs ... which ones? Again, if you have program disks for the laptop, you can legitimately use those disks to install on the desktop - but you will again need the product registration codes.

Is the drive definitely dead? Can you try it in another PC? Can you install it as a slave?

To be honest, the message you are getting is usually an early warning message and, in theory, it should give you time to back up the disk. Do you get an option to press F1 to continue?

You may be lucky ... you may be able to install a new drive, install the old one as a slave, then install Windows and access the data on the old drive or back it up. This would be the best bet as you might be able to retrieve valuable data off the old drive.

I assume you don't regularly backup the drive and have no copy of it :rolleyes: So your priority, once you get the new drive up and running, is to have a backup process - perhaps onto an external USB drive so you can hook it up to the laptop, if necessary.

HTH