You guys make it sound quite urgent that I need to buy a new hard drive. How long do you think my PC can last without replacing it and how long if I do replace it? How much would it cost me if I decide to do it and where can I find a compatible model & buy it?
Without replacing the hard drive, is repairing or re-installing windows still a good idea?
Absolutely not. You'd be wasting your time- hard drives aren't that expensive- how much is your time worth when you try reinstalling, and Windows fails again in random ways? Not to mention the potential data loss.
It's good you ran the program I suggested- now you've a probable cause for your problems.
- no, not if you use a good disk imaging program like Macrium Reflect (free).Making a 1 TB recovery image is very difficult.
Sure it'll take longer if you haven't got USB3 and an SSD. But then you're pretty safe- you can even recover relatively quickly if your disk has failed- but you still need to get a new one of course.
Thanks for the help. My concern isn't about the time it takes but about the space. If I make a 1 TB image, I assume I'd need to put it on an external hard drive which I don't have.Absolutely not. You'd be wasting your time- hard drives aren't that expensive- how much is your time worth when you try reinstalling, and Windows fails again in random ways? Not to mention the potential data loss.
It's good you ran the program I suggested- now you've a probable cause for your problems.
- no, not if you use a good disk imaging program like Macrium Reflect (free).
Sure it'll take longer if you haven't got USB3 and an SSD. But then you're pretty safe- you can even recover relatively quickly if your disk has failed- but you still need to get a new one of course
Can someone point me to well priced hard drive that is compatible with my PC? Thanks
Ah, just went on the time zone in your profile and guessed...sorry.
I prefer Hitachi or Toshiba disks mostly.
If you want to buy a new internal hard drive, I'll suggest Amazon or Newegg. Looks like you currently have a 2TB Seagate Technologies spinner in there now. I would suggest a 7200RPM for the replacement.
You'll also need an external drive to make the image. If you use Macrium Reflect Free for the imaging, you can expect 1TB of data with standard compression to take up about 2/3s of that for the image. I would plan on using that external for future imaging, and you want to keep several images on hand at all times, so a 2TB external drive would be minimum size.
Here are some examples (I am not pushing anything here, just trying to help you out):
Internal hard drive
https://www.amazon.ca/Seagate-BarraC...nal+hard+drive
Seagate BarraCuda STBD2000101 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb Internal Hard Drive Retail Packaging - Newegg.ca
External hard drive
https://www.amazon.ca/Seagate-Expans...ion+hard+drive
Seagate Expansion 2TB USB 3.0 3.5 Desktop External Hard Drive STEB2000100 - Newegg.ca
The only thing I would be concerned about at this point is getting a good image from a failing drive. Sometimes you can, but sometimes you won't be able to. You should be okay at this point, if it doesn't get any worse.
I recently had a drive which was at 4% health and Macrium would not image without errors. I had to copy the drive using ddrescue to another healthy drive first, then put that healthy drive through a recovery program to get the data off it.
Once you get the new drive in and restore the image to it, you'll need the W10 ISO to run the repair install.
Oh yes - you'll also need a flash drive or DVD to make the boot media, to recover the image onto the new drive.
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But we have no idea what his system is (nothing is filled out) so I just went with what's currently in there.
