hard drive Archives - Page 7 of 9

Q&A: What’s the best laptop hard drive I can buy for $100 or less?

Posted on September 18, 2018

Question from Andy: The 750GB hard drive in my laptop has started making strange noises and I’m afraid it’s about to go out on me. I need to replace it ASAP but I don’t know which drive I should buy to replace it with.

I’d really like to get an SSD to make the laptop run a lot faster, but my budget for the drive is only about $100 (or preferably less).

I checked around and the largest SSD I can get for that price is way too small for my needs. I really need something that’s at least as big as the drive that’s in the laptop right now.

Can you help me find the fastest hard drive I can get for $100 that’s at least 750GB?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Is it safe to keep using a hard drive after doing a low-level format to lock out bad sectors?

Posted on June 29, 2018

Question from Tom J.: I have a 4TB Seagate external hard drive that recently came down with a bunch of bad sectors even though it’s only about 2 years old.

A friend of mine said I could do a low level format of the drive to lock out the bad sectors and the rest of the drive would work just fine.

What’s your opinion on this? I hate to just trash a drive that large when it still has most of its capacity available, but I don’t want to risk losing my files either.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Why is my computer saying ‘A hard drive in the system reports that it may fail.’?

Posted on May 3, 2018

Question from Darla: I have an HP Pavilion laptop with Windows 8.1 on it.

I recently started seeing this message every time I turn it on:

“A hard drive in the system reports that it may fail.”

The thing is the hard drive is working just fine.

Can you tell me what do I need to do to get the computer to stop showing me this message?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Is it safe to run ‘chkdsk’ to fix a hard drive with bad sectors?

Posted on January 31, 2017

Question from Randy F.: My hard drive started making a combination of loud whining and clicking sounds last night.

I did some research (thanks Google!) and found a forum post that said to run chkdsk to see if the drive has any bad sectors. It then said if bad sectors are found to run chkdsk/r to fix them.

I ran chkdsk and it did find a bunch of bad sectors. I started to run chkdsk /r to fix the bad sectors but then I remembered reading a follow-up post that said running chkdsk /r can kill a hard drive outright.

What’s your advice on this? I’d like to fix the drive and not have to replace it if that’s possible, but I don’t want to lose my pictures and other files by killing the drive. I need some advice on how to proceed.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: What kind of hard drive do I need for an HP Pavilion Elite HPE-120f desktop PC?

Posted on May 27, 2014

Question from David H.: My brother gave me his old HP Pavilion Elite HPE-120f desktop computer after the hard drive died. The shop returned the computer to him without the hard drive in it and I need to know what kind of hard drive to buy for it.

Also, I don’t have a set of factory Restore discs for this computer. Will HP send me a set?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Rick’s answer: David, your HP Pavilion Elite HPE-120f most likely came from the factory with a 1TB SATA hard drive, so virtually any 3.5″ SATA hard drive will work in that system.

That being said, instead of simply installing another hard drive, I recommend installing a solid state drive (#ad) as the boot drive and a spacious hard drive as a secondary data drive. [Read more…]