New Hard Drive

[SiouxziS]

I've never changed a hard drive but am going to attempt it. It's a fairly new computer just months after the warranty ran out. Choosing a hard drive is confusing me. Does it have to be the exact same one? Any suggestions?? Thanks so much! 🙂

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

It just needs to be a 2.5" SATA drive.

Your original drive was a 5,400 RPM 1 TB drive.

If you don't need all of that space, and you would really like to pep up your PC, I recommend you take this opportunity to replace the mechanical hard drive with a solid state (SSD) drive.

You can get this 240 GB SSD for cheap and it works great.

It goes right where your old one is.

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-240GB-Solid-State-SDSSDA-240G-G26/dp/B01F9G43WU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qi...

Here is the link to the service manual.  The hard drive removal and replacement procedures can be found in chapter 6, starting on page 60.

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c05087748

If you do need 1 TB of space, then you can get this 7,200 RPM mechanical hard drive.

A 1 TB SSD would be pretty expensive.

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-BarraCuda-2-5-Inch-Internal-ST1000LM048/dp/B01LYNQXCP/ref=sr_1_3?ie=U...

To reinstall W10, you can use the media creation tool to make your own plain W10 installation media.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

The tool will allow you to make a bootable W10 installation flash drive (you will need a 4 GB flash drive for this).

The software will work with the W10 product key in your notebook's BIOS and automatically activate once you are connected to the internet.

Then you can install the drivers and available software you need from your notebook's support page.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-15-ay100-notebook-pc/12499456/model/14084845

[SiouxziS]

Wow! Thanks SO much, Paul.  With all your help, I will actually look like I know what I'm doing. You've answered pretty much everything I'll need to know to do this. I'll let you know how it goes. 🙂

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Looking forward to reading about your first HDD replacement project.

[SiouxziS]

Hi there, Paul. Well, I'm part way there. I got the new drive in okay, made a flash drive and turned her on. I got aways but then it stopped me and says: "

No signed device drives were found. Make sure that the installation media contains the correct drivers and then click OK."

How can I load the drivers if I can't get past this Windows setup?

Thanks!!! Sue 🙂

[SiouxziS]

I did a hard drive test and it didn't find one. I took the computer apart again and discovered that one of the connections wasn't in far enough. I think I was so concerned about breaking them, 'cause they seem so delicate, that I didn't push it in far enough. Onward!! 🙂

[SiouxziS]

Wow, Paul! I did it!!! Woohoo!! Thanks so much. It is super fast too. Better than a new computer. Thanks so much for your help. 🙂

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

Glad to have been of assistance.

Enjoy your revitalized PC!

[SiouxziS]

Hi again. It was actually for a friend of mine and he's super happy about it. His is SO much faster than my HP that I'm thinking of replacing my hard drive. Mine is only about 4 months older than his. His is lightning speed now. Woohoo!! I'll be in touch about which one mine will need. It's not the exact same model but pretty darned close ... but SOOO MUCCHHH SLOOWWER now, haha. 🙂