The basics of laptop repair- installing and configuring a hard drive

When your hard drive crashes you are faced with a number of laptop repair choices. The first thing you have to ascertain is whether the crash is due to a physical malfunction or due to a simple corruption of the hard disk.

If the malfunction is due to a simple corruption, you should have few issues in getting the drive up and running again. The first step in such a case is to recover your data. You should this before anything else, because many of the methods used to recover your drive might destroy your data. There are lots of recovery software on the market today that can recover the data from even a corrupted hard drive.

You will need to slave your hard drive on to a friend’s computer and install the recovery software onto his computer. Then you can simply recover your data. Once your data is recovered, we can concentrate upon restoring the functionality of your hard drive itself. The first thing to try if your hard drive is corrupted without physical damage is a simple format of the drive. In many cases, the format will restore the drive, and will allow you to reinstall the operating system and copy your data back onto the drive. If this doesn’t work there are good many tools on the market that can help correct these more serious issues.

However, if none of this works you must assume that your drive is not possible to recover. You are now faced with the choice of taking the drive to a laptop repair center, or of replacing the drive all together. Many people would opt for a combination of these two options. That is to say they would take the drive to a service center, and if the technician assured them that the drive was irrecoverable, they would then choose to replace the drive altogether, but to do the installation themselves.

If you decide to replace your drive you should be aware that it’s perfectly possible for you to carry out the replacement yourself. First of all, of course, you need to acquire a new drive that is compatible with your laptop. Now consult the user manual or service manual for your computer, which is easily available from most manufacturers’ websites. Following the instruction carefully, remove the old drive from your computer and put the new one in its place. Remember to be especially careful when disconnecting the main connector of the drive. After the drive is installed you will need to configure the wires to accept it, and then to reinstall your operating system. As you can see, laptop repair for a failed hard drive is not that hard to handle.