How hard is it to install a hard drive?

Goooner1886

I need one, and I'm willing to buy one, but I'm not willing to pay the excessive labour charges that some of these professionals charge in order to install them.

Is it simply a case of swapping hard drives around, as you would for batteries in a remote control, or is there more high-tech knowledge necessary to complete the task? If so, can the layman perform these tasks or is it a job for the professionals, hence the price?

Cheers.

papu

Goooner1886 wrote: »

I need one, and I'm willing to buy one, but I'm not willing to pay the excessive labour charges that some of these professionals charge in order to install them.

Is it simply a case of swapping hard drives around, as you would for batteries in a remote control, or is there more high-tech knowledge necessary to complete the task? If so, can the layman perform these tasks or is it a job for the professionals, hence the price?

Cheers.

Its easy , depening on the laptop , usually its a few screws which allow the HDD enclosure to come out , and few screws to detatch the hard drive from this , look up a tutorial on youtube. Not allot you can mess up ..

chamaid

Very easy. Heaps of videos on YouTube. Misco or komplett great for HD deals

5uspect

Physically installing it is extremely easy. Then you'll have to get your operating system and data onto the new disk. This can be a little more complex depending on how computer literate you are and if you just want a fresh install or an exact clone of your current set up.

If you can consider an SSD if your laptop is up to it.

thegills

The answer is in the name surely?

thegills

The answer is in the name surely?

Goooner1886

I'm just messing about with old hard drives here, and they fit. I can boot them up, get into my old Windows 7 accounts and look at music from 2011 and stuff.

Can I use one of these HDs instead of getting a new one? I ask because the screen doesn't look like right. The text is kinda blurry, and the icons on the desktop are massive.

5uspect

Goooner1886 wrote: »

I'm just messing about with old hard drives here, and they fit. I can boot them up, get into my old Windows 7 accounts and look at music from 2011 and stuff.

Can I use one of these HDs instead of getting a new one? I ask because the screen doesn't look like right. The text is kinda blurry, and the icons on the desktop are massive.

You need to install a graphics driver. Open the device manager and look for devices with yellow warning triangles. Then update those drivers automatically or manually as necessary.

Goooner1886

5uspect wrote: »

You need to install a graphics driver. Open the device manager and look for devices with yellow warning triangles. Then update those drivers automatically or manually as necessary.

They won't update for whatever reason. Perhaps it's because the laptop can't find any internet connection. Would that suggest it's a bigger issue than just the hard drive?

Edit: I should point out that the icons and the pointer are standard size and it looks like a regular interface now for some reason.

5uspect

Goooner1886 wrote: »

They won't update for whatever reason. Perhaps it's because the laptop can't find any internet connection. Would that suggest it's a bigger issue than just the hard drive?

Edit: I should point out that the icons and the pointer are standard size and it looks like a regular interface now for some reason.

Network driver too so...

MadYaker

I replaced a fan and a HDD on my old laptop, it wasn't hard. Watch youtube tutorials and you'll need a set of small screwdrivers.

ED E

Goooner1886 wrote: »

They won't update for whatever reason. Perhaps it's because the laptop can't find any internet connection. Would that suggest it's a bigger issue than just the hard drive?

Edit: I should point out that the icons and the pointer are standard size and it looks like a regular interface now for some reason.

If your laptop originally had hard drive A, and you insert hard drive B from another machine, Windows on the B drive will have all the drivers and settings for the other machine. Any drivers it cant pick up itself you'll have to install to get it working correctly. Its not a sign of bigger issues, just a mis configuration because of what youve done.

Most of the time the ethernet NIC driver will sort itself automatically so if you connect a cable you can go online and start finding the rest automatically/manually.

Tazium

I'm going to go against the trend in this thread, and suggest that if you don't know what you want to achieve and you aren't sure of how to go about it then get a person with more experience to do it for you. DIY is great and all and it's satisfactory to complete the job yourself but you can get into bother even changing a simple hard drive, any amount of excessive force and you can bend pins or loosen ribbon cables.

As a person with lots of extensive technical experience I'll tell you it's not hard to do, the same way a mechanic will tell you it's not hard to service a car.

What is your objective in replacing the hard drive? Faster, higher capacity, different OS?
Do you have a copy of your OS in installable format? Recovery partition may exist on your existing hard drive allowing you to build one.
What OS will you go with, Windows, Mac, Linux?
Do you want multiple partitions?
How is your data backed up?
Any certificates required for work or anything that would need to be specifically stored in advanced?
Do you rely on cookies and browser saved passwords to login to all your favourite sites, as in... you'll need to backup the passwords.

The physical replacement of the drive is not difficult, it's the clean up after that causes little challenges. If you aren't sure and you don't want to donate many hours to the job, then get someone with experience to do it for you.