Hard Drives
Your computer is slowing down and you've tried running your anti virus and ad-aware software with no luck your computer is still running slow. So you decide to defrag your hard drive but still no luck it is still running slow. Next you check how much space you have left and low and behold your hard drive is almost full. All those vacation pictures and pictures of the grandkids or the playlist you've assembled has filled up your hard drive making your computer run slow. So what do you do now well you could take it to a computer repair shop but that would not be much fun and you would spend more money than you need to.Installing a hard drive is not as hard as you may think. If you are new to installing hardware don't worry here at Computer Help we will walk you though step by step with easy to understand instruction. If you can handle this you will be able to handle most all your upgrades on your computer and, save a lot of money in repair fees.
A few things that we need to point out that are very important. First thing is to make sure you read though this entire tutorial before you begin because, if it is not done correctly it could cause loss of important data or your computer not to startup. The second thing is to make sure you unplug your computer from the wall outlet this will prevent you from getting an electrical shock and we would not want that to happen. Next you will want to make a windows startup disk this will allow you to start your computer after you install the new hard drive. Each version of windows may be a little different so click on your start button then click help and search for startup disk and follow the instructions. And the last thing, we should mention is that if your computer is still under warranty do not take off the cover of your computer not even to just look inside because there is a service sticker on the back and if you remove that sticker you will void your warranty. So if it is still under warranty you will have to take it to an authorized service dealer to have the work done.
Let's get started
Ok now if there is nothing wrong with your old hard drive it's just full and there is no more room to install programs or files then what you need to do is backup all your important files like pictures, word documents, spreadsheets, music and video files etc. All the programs you cannot save, because when you install a program it puts little files in the windows registry which cannot be copied. The best way to copy all your other files is if you have a CD burner you can copy those files to a CD. If you do not have a CD burner there are several ways you can save your files. Most older computers made up to the year 2004 came with a 3.5 floppy drive and computers made 2004 to present come with a CD burner. You can buy blank 3.5 floppy disk at you local electronics store but the problem with 3.5 disks are they do not hold a lot of information for example if you have 500 megabytes of files you would need about 350 blank 3.5 disks. Compared to a blank CD that will hold 700 megabytes of information. Next if you have a friend that has a CD burner you could e-mail all your files to them and they could burn them to a CD for you but this will take a lot of time depending on the speed of your internet connection and theirs. The best way to copy your files if you do not have a CD burner is after you setup the new hard drive and have the operating system (windows 98,2000,xp) installed you can set up your old hard drive as a second drive and copy your files to your new drive. We will show you how to do this later in this tutorial. When you go to buy your new hard drive you have to make sure you get the right one. There are basically two types of hard drives ide and scsi drives more than likely that you hard drive is ide. Then you need to check the size of your old hard drive the information that came with your computer should tell you what size it is. Most computers that are 5 years old or newer should be able to accept hard drive a little larger than your old drive is. For example if your old drive is 20 gigabytes you should be able to go up to 40 or 60 gigabytes. If your computer will not handle the bigger size then most all hard drive companies have software that will let you computer recognize the larger size there will be instructions with the new hard drive.Let's move on to the next step.
