hard drive Archives - Page 8 of 9

Q&A: What kind of hard drive do I need for an HP Pavilion Elite HPE-120f desktop PC?

Posted on May 27, 2014

Question from David H.: My brother gave me his old HP Pavilion Elite HPE-120f desktop computer after the hard drive died. The shop returned the computer to him without the hard drive in it and I need to know what kind of hard drive to buy for it.

Also, I don’t have a set of factory Restore discs for this computer. Will HP send me a set?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Rick’s answer: David, your HP Pavilion Elite HPE-120f most likely came from the factory with a 1TB SATA hard drive, so virtually any 3.5″ SATA hard drive will work in that system.

That being said, instead of simply installing another hard drive, I recommend installing a solid state drive (#ad) as the boot drive and a spacious hard drive as a secondary data drive. [Read more…]

Q&A: Why won’t my Acer laptop boot into Windows?

Posted on April 14, 2014

Question from Daniel W.: I have a 2 year old Acer laptop with Windows 7. I can’t get it to boot up anymore. When I turn it on it beeps and displays this message:

“No Bootable Device — Please Restart System”

What could be causing this? I hope it’s not a bad hard drive but I suspect that it is. This just started last night and it’s very aggravating.

Anyway, thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Why should I convert my old C: drive to an external drive after an SSD upgrade instead of installing it as a D: drive?

Posted on January 29, 2014

Question from Gary M.: Rick, Microsoft is forcing me to get serious about upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 8 (or 8.1). I just finished reading your recommendation to install an SSD drive and convert my XP internal drive into an external USB drive.

I was thinking along similar lines, but figured I would make my existing XP drive into a drive D: after upgrading to Windows 8. Why would converting it to an external USB drive be better?

Thanks, Gary

Ricks answer: [Read more…]

Review: Western Digital Black2 Dual Drive 2.5″ 120 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD Kit

Posted on November 26, 2013

Have you ever wished you could add a solid state drive (SSD) to your laptop and keep your internal hard drive too? As you probably know, that can be a bit impractical since most laptops come with just one 2.5 inch drive bay.

But now you can accomplish the same thing with an ingenious new combo drive from Western Digital. That’s right, you can now replace your laptop’s existing hard drive with both a 120GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive – and they’ll both fit into the same bay! [Read more…]

Q&A: Can my hard drive be repaired?

Posted on June 5, 2013

Question from Michael: I have an HP Pavilion dv5t laptop with a 500GB hard drive which recently began making clicking and clunking sounds. After reading your article about hard drives making unusual sounds I realize that the drive is probably in the process of failing.

My question is can hard drives be repaired? This is a 7200RPM model which I understand to be one of the best. (By the way, I have backed everything up so I’m not worried about losing any programs or data.)

Rick‘s answer: [Read more…]