How to Replace A Desktop's Hard Drive

If you ever wanted to upgrade your hard drive in your desktop, either by replacing the one that is in there or installing a new one as a secondary hard drive, then you've come to the right place. This article will give you the steps to replacing the hard drive in your desktop. The same steps are taken in a new installation minus removing the existing hard drive in the system.

Instructions

1. The first thing you should whenever you are going to working on the inside of any electronic device is ensure that you have no clothing on that may produce static electricity. Such clothing would be something like wool. Static electricity can damage electronic equipment in less than a second.

2. Disconnect anything that is connected to the computer. This is so there isn't a chance of a surge while you are working on the inside of the computer. Things that are normally connected to the computer are the monitor, printer, network cables and of the power cord.

3. Remove the cover from the computer. Hold the chassis for a few moments. This will drain any of the static electricity already built up in you.

4. Assuming that you have a computer that was manufactured within the decade, your hard drive will be located in the bay area. That is it will be in a 5.25" slot with brackets or in a 3.5" slot screw to the bay slot.
   Note that some manufactures try to make space of additional hardware to be added by placing the hard drive in slots outside of the bay area.

5. Remove the data cable, which is the flat ribbon cable, connected to the hard drive, then remove the power connected.
   Removal of the data cable first so if there is a spark (a surge of electricity) while disconnecting the power connect from the hard drive it will be localized to the hard drive.

6. Remove the screws holding the hard drive to the bay. Then, slide the hard drive out of the bay area and out the system.
   Note that it sometimes easy to slight the hard drive out of the front of the computer which means that you would have to remove the front cover.

7. In order to install the new hard drive you would perform steps 6-2, that is in reverse order.

8. Most hard drives that are sold maybe be pre-formatted to work with Windows compatible systems. Whereas, operating systems like Mac or Unix/Linux, would have to reformat the hard drive so that it can use its native hard drive file system.

9. Unless there is another bootable device connected to the system, you will have to install an operating system on the hard drive.

   after that has been completed your job has been done.

Tips & Warnings

• Technician tools needed to remove the cover and hard drive.

• an operating system to install on the hard drive.

• Static electricity can damage electronic components in less than a second. To quickly understand the power of static electricity, it has been measured the amount of electricity that pass from one finger to another when you are shocked is about 25K volts of electricity.