New
#1
A Basic HDD Replacement Question
We have an HP All-In-One unit that originally came with Windows 8.1 about a 18 months ago. We upgraded to Windows 10 in September and it's been running great unit a few days ago when we got the following boot message:
1720 - SMART Hard Drive detects imminent failure
Failing Drive: SATAO
Failing Attribute: # B8
It would not boot into Windows and would only take me into the troubleshooter. I went to a command prompt and ran chkdsk /f, after which it did let me restart the computer, and although it seems to be okay, that same msg still appears at boot. It's just not preventing me from successfully getting into Windows any longer.
So if I have to replace the drive what do I do to get the OS back to Windows 10. We, of course have no Windows 10 disk, or even an 8.1 disk. If I put a new HDD in the unit and turn it on will there be some facility for allowing me to get W10 back? Without a disk? Or even 8.1? We have everything important backed up on an external 1TB drive, so taking it back to factory settings is fine with us. Even if we have to go back to 8.1, I assume we could always re-upgrade, couldn't we?