New Hard Drive Help

Boots0608

Hi

My partners HP Pavilion Laptop keeps bringing up a SMART disc error on loading.  I have tried a few things i can find on the internet, including the HP diagnose tool (which just comes back with a specific error ID).

Anyway, i am looking to replace the hard drive. Currently it says the hard drive is a HGST HTS541075A9E680.  

She only uses her laptop for basic office use, as she also has a desktop which she predominantly uses, so there is no requirement for a large Hard Drive (id say 500GB tops would be fine).

Is it just a case of any 2.5" Sata Hard Drive will work on it?  Also, is there a requirement to re-install windows then (all be it getting rid of windows 8 would be nice).

Thanks

EndlessWaves

If it's the hard drive that has windows installed on it then you would need to reinstall windows. If it's a second drive, which a larger laptop may have, then you won't.

Any 2.5" SATA hard drive or SSD should work.

What is the SMART error? Is it actually a significant one?

Boots0608

It comes up saying SMART disc error (301), and saying we should be up data immediately.  

On booting, we pressed Esc, went into the HP Diagnostic tools, and ran a scan of the hard drive.  It immediately just brought back a 24 digit error and said to contact HP support and quote it (iv done a google search on the error and it brought back nothing).  Since we have had this error coming up though, on task manager the Disc column has been hitting nearly 100% with just a few MB of applications running which has just slowed the laptop down overall.  We have tried disabling windows update, SuperFetch etc...to see if that helped the overall speed without any real joy.

Boots0608

Without sounding dumb, how do i know if Windows is installed on the hard drive?

EndlessWaves

It's installed on a hard drive so if your laptop only has one, as many do, then that's it.

If your laptop has multiple drives then you'd have to look in disk management to see which drive your windows partition corresponded to.

Trollslayer

Back up the drive (or at least data, email etc.) if you haven't already.

Abacus

If the HDD is still working you can clone the drive and load it onto a new one, then it is just a matter of swapping the drives over.

If the HDD is too badly gone, back up as much data as you can retrieve so that you can load it back onto the new drive once you have installed Windows.

If you only need 500GB then have a look at an SSD, as although more expensive it will improve the performance no end.

Bill

Trollslayer

For SSDs, go for a decent name e.g. Adata, OCZ, Crucial etc.
Same applies to HDDs actually and backup - that saved me when a SSD got corrupted over Christmas.

harry66

Samsung SSD are also generally considered a reliable make - I have had 5 of them installed my various laptops over the years - no failures so far.
Had 2 Sandisk SSDs fail within 18months.

If the current drive is still working and you are not that technically minded, then consider something like the Samsung SSD kit which comes with transfer software and a USB to SATA adaptor cable - so you can plug in the new SSD externally, do the transfer and then swap them over.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Internal-Solid-Starter/dp/B00U701NJK
That is what I used when I wanted to replace my wife's laptop HDD with an SSD.

Trollslayer

Oddly enough I had a Samsung Evo 850 fail after two years.