Need to replace my hard drive - product tips? Other tips?

It uses a 3.5 inch SATA drive. Any will work. Hopefully they sent you a copy on a DVD of Windows 7. My moms came with a image on the hard drive which was worthless when the drive failed.

If you have a install DVD it will walk you through it. You might have to drop into the BIOS to make the optical drive the first.

As far as brands they are all going to have horror stories. Pretty much anything will work. Nobody posts on the Internet when shit works, only when it breaks.

@world_hello Lol, well, at least you’re aware of it! No, I don’t have a disk – is there a way I can make one?

@papayalily – I would call HP. It might cost 10 bucks but they might ship you a physical version of windows 7. They have done it in the past.

A Samsung spinpoint F3 1 Tb HD. It’s fast and it’s big. You should be able to pick one up for abot $50—$60.

@Lightlyseared Fast and big? That’s just how I like ‘em I love how that’s in my price range and all. 2 days before Christmas? I don’t really have the money for stuff to break down…

My tip is, dont get tricked by low prices in to buying a bad drive. As well as the storage, you also have the revolutions of the drive to take in to consideration.

Some people make drives that only have 5400rpm. If you are offered 2 hard drives, both 400gig, both for 50 bucks, check the rpm speed. you want at least 7200rpm, stay away from 5400.

You may also want a SATA drive over an IDE drive. They are a little faster. Just make sure the drive you get has good storage, is SATA, has a good rpm, and is a decent price, and you wont go wrong.

It’ll depend on your need. It’s simple. For average use, you can choose a SATA HDD, up to 300 GB and at least with 7200 rpm. Or for the best overall aspect, you can buy a SSD (Solid-state drive) HDD. I recommend to buy from the trusted industry in Hard-Drive product:
1. Seagate
2. Maxtor
3. Transcend
You can choose the type you like better.

If you aware of something bad that will happen to your HDD, For a suggestion, you can buy an external HDD to prepare for the worst incident that will happen to your current HDD.

And for your Operating System, if you don’t have the Installation CD or the copy of it, you can buy the original one. Actually, you can receive a free installation service from the HP Center if you’re still in guarantee. For the further details, you can ask the nearest HP center at your place.

@world_hello /all Is there a difference (that matters in this case) between a SATA and a SATA II?

Oh, and – when it says that it’s compatible with Windows 2000/XP, does that mean it can’t handle Windows 7? What about Linux?

Here are the specs for your computer; it has a SATA controller. In the past, I was able to clone a failing drive using Norton Ghost.

@papayalily – Seems he will still choose Windows 7.
@ratboy – Does he still have a chance to clone the data in his HDD? Norton Ghost not always work for some reason.

@Hedaru Who he? If you mean me, I’m a she.

@papayalily, Linux is compatible with all SATA drives, afaik this is also true of Win7.

I recently bought my first new HDD. It’s a Hitachi HDS722020ALA330. It is a 2TB drive that cost me about $100 nine months ago. Comparable drives are probably cheaper these days.

This drive is fast and has low power consumption, but it is rather alarmingly loud- so loud that I was reluctant to trust my data to it for about six weeks. I don’t know why it is so loud, but it performs admirably in all other respects, and I confidently expect it to outlast the rest of the machine.

@papayalily – Oh, sorry. I can’t detect gender of a plant easily.

@Hedaru Lol, no problem – I figured as much, I just wasn’t quite sure which “he” you were talking about.

@Hedaru, when it works (which depends on the condition of the damaged disk) Ghost copies everything—it doesn’t discriminate between system files, applications or data.