Some hard drives may last 10 years…. some 6 months. Some will fail under warranty and some will fail years down the track.
Either way – as long as you have backups of your data, all is not lost!
How will you know your hard drive has failed?
Your computer might start to become slower and slower by the day. Or maybe you will turn it on and it will say that it cannot find a boot device. Some computers are very helpful and will even give you an alert message telling you to back up your data and replace your hard drive!
What is involved in a hard drive replacement?
Firstly, if we can, we try to salvage your data from the damaged drive. In some cases we can get all data, some cases its only a portion of the data and in some cases – no data can be saved. If your hard drive has been clicking or clunking or going very slow for a while – that may reduce your chances of saving data. Yes, we have had customers in tears in our store when we tell them their hard drive was too damaged to recover any data from it.
Next we physically swap out the old hard drive for a new one. Many customers are opting to upgrade to a solid state drive instead of the older style mechanical drives. Why? Well a Solid State Drive or SSD has no moving parts in it. Meaning it is far more robust – making it a very sensible option especially for notebook owners who move their laptop around alot. Secondly, SSD’s are much faster than their mechanical counterparts so you get a great performance boost at the same time.
Then we have to re-install your operating system – so whatever version of Microsoft Windows or Apple O SX you were running. We have to download and install a wide variety of drivers to make sure your computer does things like connect to the internet, and displays images correctly on a screen. Then we need to run the million or so updates to your operating system.
If we were able to salvage data or you had backups, then we re-import all your data back in to your computer. And if you have opted for this service, we can re-install all of your software, setup your Outlook/emails and anything else you may require.
As you can see – its a fairly time consuming process!
How much does a hard drive replacement cost
We really need to check out your computer and quote on a case by case basis. It also depends what sort of hard drive you want to replace with – whether its a standard mechanical drive or an SSD – and what size it is.
So just contact us today and we can give you a quote!