Easy Steps to Fix a Laptop With a Bad Hard Drive

Early last year I bought my son a used Dell Laptop from Amazon.  At the time of purchase I was a poor graduate student and didn’t have enough money saved to purchase a brand new one. I paid $250 for the laptop thinking spending less would be better but shortly after handing over the computer to my son, it stopped working. Since I bought it used it had no warranty. So I began my Google search of fix bad hard drive.

I can’t be certain but I think my son broke it. His electronics always end up ” it just stopped working mom, I didn’t do anything to it!” usually followed by a blue screen of death or a major crack in the glass. He’s experienced a lot of “it just stopped working” followed by “no mom, I only downloaded 1 app, that wasn’t it”.

We’ve lost…

ipods

iPhones

Tablets

Microsoft Phones

He once broke an Xbox 360

This list goes on…

And so did my Google search of fix bad hard drive, until I stumbled upon the Youtube video below.

But I found a Fix…

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So the laptop sat in the closet for a year. I pulled it out a couple times and tried to fix it. I didn’t know what I was doing and I was never successful. I kept getting the blue screen of death no matter what I tried. I actually needed to fix it this week because I need a laptop I can take with me to work. The one I am using now can’t be unplugged from the wall due to a bad battery and the batter isn’t a pull out and replace kind.

I tried Youtube and let me tell ya, Youtube is our friend! I’m not that mechanically inclined but I know how to watch videos.

I fixed it and this is what I did to do it

I watched this Youtube video to figure out how to replace my hard drive

It took me 5 minutes to switch out the hard drive. The computer should be turned off. If your old hard drive is still operable you need to make a copy of your operating system or you can buy an upgrade.

You need a small screw driver to unscrew the tiny screws. You gently remove the hard drive and put the new one in. Put the screws back in and close up the laptop.

Upgrade to a larger hard drive

*Purchase the same type of hard drive your laptop came with. You can take your laptop’s model number to Best Buy and they will help you pick the correct hard drive. Since you are replacing it it’s a great time to upgrade to a larger hard drive. They don’t cost much extra but you can get a lot more space.

Once you turn the laptop back on it will say it’s not bootable. This is because there is no operating system. Once you install the operating system the computer will boot up just fine. This is a good time to upgrade to the newest operating system. I chose to purchase Windows OS 10.

Installing a new operating system is really easy if you do what I did and purchase a new operating system so you can upgrade. My Dell was running Windows 7 Professional before the upgrade.

The total for installing a new hard drive and a brand new operating system was $170! Compare that to a brand new laptop and you simply can’t beat the savings.