hard drive Archives - Page 5 of 9

Q&A: How is my PC booting from an empty hard drive?

Posted on August 23, 2022

Question from Marvin: I read your article about upgrading a computer by adding an SSD to make it run faster.

The following weekend I went to Best Buy and bought a 1TB SSD and cloned the contents of the existing 500GB hard disk onto it.

I then wiped the hard drive and installed the SSD in the computer, leaving the now-blank hard drive in place to store my data files on.

Everything works perfectly but something has me baffled. When I look in the BIOS it says the hard drive is set as the boot drive.

How is this machine booting into Windows when the boot drive is blank?

[Read more…]

Q&A: How do I decide which programs to install on a small SSD?

Posted on December 25, 2021

Question from Larry: I read your post explaining the advantages of installing an SSD a while back and I’ve wanted one ever since to go in my HP desktop PC.

I ended up buying a 120GB SSD (I got it for $20!) and installed it as the boot drive in my HP desktop computer. I left the 750GB hard drive in there for extra storage.

I installed Windows 10 from scratch on the SSD and now I’m ready to install my programs. The thing is with only 120GB of space on the SSD it won’t hold anywhere near all of my programs.

I have a couple of questions for you:

1 – Which programs should I install on the SSD and which ones should I leave on the hard drive?

2 – Should I leave the original Windows 10 files on the hard drive or is it safe to delete them to free up that space?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Is a 128GB SSD big enough to hold Windows 10?

Posted on September 23, 2021

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

Question from Joseph: I have a 2009 era Dell desktop that’s running Windows 7. The hard drive began acting up a while back so I replaced it with a 128GB SSD.

I’d now like to replace the Windows 7 with Windows 10, but I’ve heard that a 128GB drive isn’t big enough to hold Windows 10.

Will I need to replace the existing SSD with a bigger one before installing Windows 10?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Can I add a second hard drive to my laptop?

Posted on September 5, 2021

Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter

Question from Terry: I bought an older Dell laptop after answering an ad on Craigslist. The guy I bought it from told me I’d be able to install a second hard drive in it if I wanted to.

I went to Best Buy and bought a 1TB laptop hard drive but when I went to install it I could only find a place for one hard drive (the drive that’s already in it).

There is only one plastic cover on the bottom for accessing a hard drive.

Could there maybe be a second drive bay somewhere else that isn’t accessible by simply removing a cover? [Read more…]

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