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Question from Brad: I have a really old Dell Optiplex 745 desktop computer that I absolutely love.
This machine has an 80 Gig hard drive and it’s recently started giving me problems.
These past few days when I turn on the PC the hard drive makes clicking sounds for about 5-10 seconds, then it finally starts booting up.
I know it’s the hard drive that’s doing the clicking because I removed the cover and listened to it. [Read more…]
Question from Oliver: I just read your article about replacing a hard drive with an SSD and I have a question about it.
I remember hearing that upgrading the graphics card in a computer can sometimes require a power supply upgrade as well because the newer graphics card will draw more power than the old one.
My question is do I need to be concerned about the power supply if I replace the hard drive in my computer with an SSD?
Question from Nancy: Rick, my desktop PC has started making a faint, but noticeable clicking sound when I first turn it on.
It only clicks for about 8-10 seconds, then it boots up normally and runs fine until I shut it down.
It’s hard to tell for sure, but I took the cover off the side of the computer and the clicking sound seems to be coming from the hard drive.
I haven’t downloaded anything recently or made any changes to the system that I’m aware of.
This machine came with Windows 8.1 but it’s been updated to Windows 10.
Do you have any idea what I can do to stop the clicking? [Read more…]
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Question from Eric S.: I’m seriously considering taking your advice about installing an SSD in my Lenovo desktop PC just to install my programs on.
I mostly just use Photoshop and Lightroom along with a couple of web browsers.
I’m not really interested in making the SSD the boot drive by installing Windows on it because I don’t feel confident in my ability to get it done correctly.
My question: Is it worth adding an SSD as a second drive just to make my programs load faster? [Read more…]
Question from Carita: I’ve decided to take your advice about replacing the hard drive in my computer with an SSD.
I’ll be installing a 240GB SSD as the primary drive and leaving the 1TB hard drive installed in the computer as a secondary drive for extra storage.
The problem is I’m pretty sure the SSD will be too small to hold all the programs I currently use.
Will I be able to install some of them onto the hard drive even though the operating system (Windows 11) will be on the SSD? [Read more…]