Hard DRive Replacement

[Ogandydancer]

I am needing to find an exact replacement or an equivelent for my unit.  I have found a WD5000AAKX 7200 RPM sata6GB 16 MB Cache 3.5" and was wondering if I could substitute that for the original?

[DGroves]

you would be better served, by buying a 528GB or 1TB  2.5 SATA SSD + the 2.5 to 3.5 mounting adapter (see link below) which will be much much faster and have a larger capacity 

you can clone your existing drive to the new SSD quite easely

528TG SSD

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX300-525GB-NAND-Internal/dp/B01IAGSD68

1TB SSD

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077SF8KMG/ref=dp_cerb_3

HD 2.5 to 3.5 adapter

https://www.amazon.com/ORICO-Adapter-Mounting-Bracket-Interface/dp/B01LZWX6PD/ref=sr_1_6?s=electroni...

[Ogandydancer]

What I am wanting to do is completely replace the hard drive and, start as fresh with new copy of Win. 10 O/S. I do not simply want to clone the drive that is already in the machine.

[Ogandydancer]

I do not simply want to clone my old hard drive I want a new drive freshly formatted for Windows 10. I do not know what an adapter is or I might condider a SSD but I was told that tjis particular  computer  (Pavilion 20 b010) would not support a 1TB drive.

[DGroves]

whoever told you that you can not use a 1TB drive was wrong

here's a M.2 adapter for nvme based ssd's

https://www.amazon.com/Lycom-DT-120-PCIe-Adapter-Support/dp/B00MYCQP38

[wb2001]

@Ogandydancer,

An SSD will give you a marked speed (read/write) ability. See here.  But because your chipset is SATA300, you will not reach the full potential of SATA 600, as defined in that article.   Because your computer was upgraded to WIN 10, it was issued a digital license to WIN 10. Here is a procedure when you swap out a hard drive . If you get into a "jam" here is an article on the proceduure for re-installation.  READ VERY CAREFULLY.  You do not have to have a product key.  If you have a problem,  read this FIRST.   If you need more support, here is a support reply from Microsoft concerning digital activation. You should bre able to reactivate after a hardware change.

WARNING:

If you installed any other (MS) Microsoft software, ( like MS Office suite) you must un-install it from your old drive because the product key was registered with MS.  Failure to un-install will prevent you from installing it to a new drive.