HP Pavilion dv6 Hard Drive replacement

[Slo84]

Hello, 

I would like to know which hard drive should I choose in order to replace the original hard drive my HP Pavilion dv6 came with. I have tried the following one, 

https://www.amazon.es/SanDisk-SDSSDA-120G-G26-Disco-s%C3%B3lido-interno/dp/B01F9G414U/ref=pd_sbs_147...

because I had it at home. It doesn't seem to work on my computer, 

I am  looking for a faster hard drive than the original one, 

Thank you, 

[WAWood]

@Slo84

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

I have actually replaced the HDD in my old HP DV6 with a similar SSD -- so I know it can be done.

Telling us "it does not work" without any details prevents us from providing any detailed assistance.

When I did the replacement, I did two things -- both of which you need to do:

1) Used an SSD of the same capacity as the original HDD, in this case, 500GB.  If you do NOT do this, then you are faced with a difficult problem of shrinking the OS partition on the HDD to be small enough such that the total of the partitions fit easily into the space of the new SSD.

2) Use a cloning application to copy ALL the needed partitions to the SSD.  Just copying the OS partition is not enough because the Windows boot files are actually contained in a different partition.

[Slo84]

Hello @WAWood

Thank you for your answer, that was fast. 

Well, I checked on the bios menu, it says there is no hard drive in place, even though it is there. I am afraid I don't have any further details or background, since I am unable to boot. 

The hard drive replaced is 500gb, but I intend to install an Ubuntu OS (or maybe another distro), overwriting everything on it. In such a case, do I also need to use a 500gb hard drive? I erased Windows from all my computers and I don't intend to use it for now. 

You think a 500gb hard drive will get recognized by the machine? Is it necessary given that I am not using Windows? 

I already saved the folders I want on my Google Drive, so nothing over here either, it's pretty straightforward:  I want a fresh Ubuntu installation on a hard drive fully dedicated to my Ubuntu OS. The moment my hard drive is "recognized", I'll be good to go. I will be using a usb stick in order to install the new OS, in case it's relevant. 

 Your help is greatly appreciated 🙂

[WAWood]

@Slo84

In answer to your question, NO, you do not need a 500GB drive just to install Ubuntu because you are not attempting to "clone" the existing Windows installation to it.  Any size drive will do.

Unfortunately, HP only warranties their PCs for usage with the OS that comes preinstalled. IF you replace that or add a different OS, then you assume full responsibility for maintaining that other OS -- as HP then provides no assistance on that.

Win10 PCs nearly all use UEFI and that poses special problems for installing Linux distros: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2147295

Your best bet for Linux support, since HP does not provide Linux drivers, is to contact the support forum for the Linux distro you are trying to install  -- in this case, the Ubuntu Forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/

Good Luck

[Slo84]

Well WAWood, thank you for your answer. 

However, as I mentioned, my HP laptop fails to recognize the new hard drive, even before I have tried to install ubuntu on it, therefore this problem exists independently and unrelated to the OS I intend to put on it. 

I mean: in my BIOS menu, I get a message that says there is no hard drive (BIOS > Diagnostics > Primary Hard Disk Self Test > no hard disk. 

Is this normal?