DIY hard drive replacement is a great way to get comfortable working in the bowels of your home PC.
This is how you do it:
1. turn off power to pc
2. Remove all plugs and cables from the back of the PC. Note that cables can only be placed in their own receptacles of the same type, so getting them mixed up on reinstallation is not a problem.
3. place the PC on a work towel or something soft to protect the opposite side of the PC.
4. remove the side panel where there is a handle or set of screws that appear to have been placed for easy removal. (All PCs are different) Be careful not to move or hit other components inside the PC case.
5. Find the hard drive or HD. It should be a metal box that has two wires coming out the back. One cable is power and goes to the power supply, the other is probably a SATA or IDE cable that connects to the motherboard. Remove the cables and remove the unit from the box. Read the HD to make sure you have a hard drive and not another PC component. Look for a storage capacity like 320GB, 500GB, 1TB, etc.
6. Installation of the new hard drive should be done in reverse order. To keep things simple, buy a hard drive that is the same physical size as your old one so it can fit in the same spot inside the case. There are other options, such as an SSD or Solid State Drive, which are great, but may be different in size than the drive you removed. If you choose a different type or size of drive, you may need to purchase a mounting bracket to fit the old slot in your case.
7. With a new HD, you won’t have an operating system on the drive. Using a product installation disc, such as Windows 7, will guide you through the process. After installing the drive; plug all your components and cables back in and turn on the power.
8. You’ll be taken to a boot options screen warning “no operating system present” or something like that. Enter the BIOS by rebooting the PC again and change the boot order so that the computer boots from the optical drive first.
9. Install the operating system disc in the DVD or CD drive.
10 Reboot the PC again.
eleven The installation of your OS (operating system) should begin. Follow the instructions as it guides you through the process.
12 After the installation is complete, you should be able to reinstall the backed up data from the backup program you use. If you did not use a backup program, your data may be lost.
There are some companies that can extract data from damaged hard drives, just search for them on any search engine.
Installing a hard drive is a simple and fun project to try. You’ll be amazed at your ingenuity and glad you saved money by doing it yourself.
