Shut down your computer. Remove the side panel on your desktop tower or bottom panel on your laptop. Disconnect the SATA cable and power supply cable from the old hard drive. Remove any screws or the special enclosure holding the old hard drive in place. Place the new hard drive in the enclosure, or hard drive slot. Attach the SATA cable and power supply cable.
Secure the hard drive in place with screws. Replace the side or bottom panel on your desktop tower or laptop. Power on your computer. Install a new operating system on your computer. Did this summary help you? Yes No. Log in Social login does not work in incognito and private browsers. Please log in with your username or email to continue. No account yet? Create an account.
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Make sure that you're using a Windows computer. While it's technically possible to replace an iMac hard drive, doing so is incredibly difficult and could void your warranty. Windows desktop computers, on the other hand, tend to be fairly easy to tinker with.
If you want to install a hard drive on a Mac computer, you can take it to an Apple professional and have them help you. Back up your computer's data. If you're removing an existing hard drive from your computer, back up its information so that you can restore the information later.
If you want to keep your original hard drive installed, consider adding a second hard drive instead. Make sure you are able to install a hard on your computer. Before you go purchasing a new hard drive for your computer, make sure you are able to install a new hard drive on your computer. If you want to install a second hard drive on your desktop PC, make sure it has an expansion slot that allows you to install a second hard drive.
If you have an all-in-one PC monitor, make sure the hard drive inside the monitor is replaceable. Buy a hard drive that is compatible with your desktop motherboard. SATA is the most common hard drive type for modern computers, though many newer motherboards support M. All-in-one PC monitors may require a 2.
This size of the drive is coded using a 4 digit number. For example, a M. In order to install an M. You'll also need to check if the M. Check the manual for your motherboard and make sure the M. They are usually slower, but less expensive.
Solid State Drives have no moving parts. They are much faster, quieter, and more expensive. Shut off and unplug your computer. To shut down your computer, click the Windows Start icon, and then click the power icon in the Start menu. Click Shut Down to turn off your computer. Step 1. Slide your hard drive into the hard drive tray.
Fasten the hard drive to the tray with screws. Step 2. Open the computer case, and plug in the SATA data cable to the motherboard of your computer. Step 3. Now, you've installed the second hard drive into your computer. All you need is to press the power button to restart your computer and enter the next guide to set up the second hard drive. To make your hard drive showing up and detected correctly in your computer, you need to initialize the disk, setting up a correct partition style, and create partitions on your disk.
EaseUS Partition Master with its New Disk Guide feature makes it easy and simple for you: partition hard drive and initialize disk at the same time. Seven of the 10 screw holes are circled in red, while SATA power and data connections are circled in blue and green, respectively. Drives last longer when they stay nice and cool. When mounting drives in a system, try to leave as much space between them as possible to maximize airflow over the tops and bottoms.
Positioning the drives directly in front of an intake fan also helps. SATA uses simple cables that are keyed to fit on the drive and motherboard connector one way. You may find the SATA cables included with your new drive or motherboard feature different connectors: straight ends or right-angle L-shaped. Some may have metal retention clips, while others do not. The shape of the connector makes no difference in performance.
I like to use SATA cables with right-angle connectors on the drive side, provided there is adequate clearance between any drives in the system.
Using right-angle connectors on the motherboard side will will result in blocked ports, because the connector may overlap adjacent ports. The L-shaped plug makes it easier to fit into jacks that are closer to other components. One other word on SATA drives. The same goes for the SATA cable you buy. So you might not want to splurge on the fastest SSD you can get. Getting more storage on an SSD will be more important to most people than getting more speed. It might be worth the small price premium versus a standard hard drive.
Your next step is to decide whether you want to transfer your operating system to the new drive or just do a clean installation and start fresh. There are pros and cons for each. Transferring your operating system and all your data and installed apps means not having to worry about reinstalling Windows, setting it up the way you like it again, and then reinstalling each of your apps. The bad news is that this is a slow and tedious process. Most new drives come with tools to make it happen.
You can go that way with a desktop, too, but it may be easier just to install the new drive, do the transfer, and then decide whether to leave the old drive in place for extra storage or uninstall it. There are also advantages to just performing a clean installation of your operating system on your new drive. The big one is that you get to start fresh. You get to set it the way you want, and only install what you want. The downside, of course, is that you have to do all that.
Different laptops have different methods for accessing the storage drive compartment, if they allow easy access at all. Some business-class designs let you swap out a drive by removing a single screw, others might need you to completely remove the bottom of the machine or even take out the keyboard.
You can usually find specific instructions by searching the web for your laptop manufacturer and model. That loosens the metal body plate enough to let me pull it off the computer. You can see the hard drive in the lower-left corner. To pull the drive itself out, I need to remove another screw, pull the drive up a bit, and then slide it off of the integrated SATA connection.
For this model, the drive caddy is just a thin piece of aluminum with a rubber bumper. I pulled it off, and then placed it on the new drive. Then, I reverse the process, slipping the new drive onto the SATA connection in the laptop, screwing the caddy back down to the frame, and replacing the body panel.
Again, this process is going to vary quite a lot depending upon which laptop you have. This process is a bit more involved than on a laptop, but the good news is that getting the case off and accessing the drive is typically a lot easier than on most laptops.
If you built your own PC, the screws needed to install your new drive should have come with the case—I hope you kept the box of accessories. Power down your machine and remove all cables, then move it to your work area. Most designs require you to remove two to three screws from the back side before it will slide or swing out.
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