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Hard drive on Inspiron 620 starting to fail - questions
I'm a year out of warranty and my Seagate 1 TB drive is starting to fail. When I ran the diagnostic, I got errors during a targeted read test (Error code: WHD20-8OT), which suggest to me that it's time to start looking for a new drive. Nice of it to give me a little warning.
What would be the best replacement drive to get? I'm leaning towards Western Digital, but is there anything out there that won't be suitable for this machine? What if I want to get a really bigger drive? Will there be any problems?
Most importantly, I'd like to reinstall my operating system - how does that work? I'd rather not just mirror the drive onto a new one because I don't know what might have been compromised on the old drive because of it failing (though I am using it now without glitches) and I'd rather start fresh anyway. Unfortunately, the only disks they suggest I make was a Repair disk for Windows 7 64bit - how do I get the operating system reloaded onto a new drive from that? BTW, how DOES one mirror a drive? Set it up as a slave? I'd like to make some system disks, but how do you do that on these machines? I've been looking and the only thing I've found how to make is a system image or a repair disk. Do they no longer transfer OSs to new drives? Eeek!
I'm backed up quite well and am not too worried about my data, but I want my Windows 7 and I realized I'm not sure how to go about getting it onto a new drive? Is there, somewhere on this site, a nice, idiot proof instruction on moving the OS software on a new drive? I can handle the physical replacement - its the OS and programs I'm worried I'll lose.
Ariel
ejn63
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April 29th, 2016 05:00
Is this a desktop system or a notebook? What model?
There is a utility on the system that can make a recovery disc or flash drive -- it's either Dell Datasafe or Dell Backup and Recovery, depending on the age of the system.
aksjdlf
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April 29th, 2016 13:00
As I wrote in the title of the thread, this is an Inspiron 620 - which is a mini-tower desktop.
I know I've looked at that Datasafe, but never opened it past the initial splash screen. All it looked like was for a data backup, not system recovery disks, and I already had a backup program with my MyBook - thank you! I never would have thought to look there.
Hopefully the errors I've been getting won't affect this recovery disk - and that wherever this is coming from on my drive, was not affected. I went ahead and ordered a WD blue 3TB drive - now I feel a lot more confident that it will have my machine up and running with Win7. Thanks!
aksjdlf
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May 10th, 2016 20:00
Bumping this up -
I am hoping to get some advice on this - I got the WD Blue drive, but because it's a different size than the original hard drive, the recovery process didn't work that well. The OS loaded but it's acting buggy and not downloading windows updates. I've read a few sites that suggest that this is because of the different sized drive, so I'm considering going back and getting a smaller drive. Does anyone here have any good experiences putting a different drive in a Dell? I don't want Seagate, but I don't want hassle either. What drives have you put into a Dell that worked?