Laptop Hard drive

Mass storage for your notebook, a hard disk or  a SSD?

Laptop hard drive,  SSD, IDE and SATA drives or storage.

One of the most common failures in a notebook is the hard disk, it is also one of the few components you can upgrade. Notebook hard disks fail more often than desktop hard disks.

Reason: simple your notebook absorbs more punishment than a desktop. You move your notebook continuously, where you go the notebook goes. I know you are careful with how you handle it but still it gets banged around.

So what can you do about the constant shock the hard drive gets on a daily basis? Not much, be more aware that the hard disk has your data and back it up often.

Maybe make an image of the hard drive. To take the worry out of your storage maybe you should consider a SSD (Solid State Drive)?

The laptop hard drive is located in a bay in the laptop, Most have some shock resistance built into the bay. Some hard drives are easier to remove and replace than others. I have seen some hard drives under the keyboard, completely inside the case where you have to take the case apart to get to the hard drive.

A word of caution: ESD will damage the hard drive the same as dropping it!

You will need to go to the manufactures web site and do a search for your computer if the documentation that came with it doesn't show you where and how to remove the hard drive. Acer's are one of the 'no documentation' type of computers, all the manuals are ON the hard drive, what do you do if it has failed?

Once you have located the hard drive and understand how to remove it you just reverse the procedure to reinstall the replacement.

One thing I would suggest you do is to make a couple of images of your hard drive partitions. If you have a hard drive failure all your data will be lost, with an image of the OS partition and the data partitions (if your installer had the foresight to make two partitions on the hard drive) and a good back up, the failure of a hard drive will not be as catastrophic.

At one time when you sent a computer into IBM for repair they would wipe the hard drive and reinstall the OS, IBM has since sold off most of their laptop business so I don't know it this is still true; however I do know that ASUS will wipe the hard drive and after troubleshooting and repair reinstall the original version of the OS. To save reinstalling all of your programs, finding those pesky cd's and keys you could restore your computer at least to the point of the image and then complete the restore with the backup.

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Your data is the most important thing on the laptop back it up regularly, if your hard drive fails you will lose your data!

Make an image of the hard drive, if you have important or hard to find programs you will always have a copy of them, also you will not have to reinstall them if you have to replace or upgrade the hard drive.

If you have a hard drive failure and have to buy a new hard drive I suggest you check out the SSD (Solid State Drive) for a replacement of your Laptop Hard drive. SSD  are non mechanical drives that have an exceedingly long life time and very low failure rate. Capacity of a SSD has passed the 1 TB size, the only draw back is the cost.