How To Change Primary Hard Drive
Short Bytes: There are many ways to repair corrupted hard drive using a Windows PC. You can either use inbuilt Windows CMD-based tools to repair the hard disk that ran into problems like it’s done in the case of flash drives.
Taking the hard drive fixing work to the next level includes third party data wiping software like DBAN, CCleaner, etc. When it comes to the word corrupt, it’s mostly associated with pen drives, SD Cards, and some special category of humans. There is another breed of storage devices called hard drive which is more sturdy, and it doesn’t run into problems as often as flash drives. But hard drives don’t last forever, they tend to get corrupted, and we have to find ways to repair corrupted hard drives. Instead of contacting some hard drive recovery service, you can try some workarounds on your own and use this guide. Now, your HDD might get corrupt in two ways: the problem might occur the software level which can be fixed. But if the hardware is at the fault, you might not be able to get it back to normal and restore corrupted hard drive. The only possible way out of this situation is recovering the data before the hard drive sleeps forever.
How to change drives in MS-DOS and Windows command line. For example, if you wanted to switch to the floppy disk drive, you would type a: at the prompt. Below is a listing of common drive letters and their corresponding devices. Tip: A partition is also treated as a drive, which means if you have a hard drive with two partitions, it is likely the C: and D: drive letters.
- I am going to be getting the M93P Tower with the standard 500 gb hard drive. I purchased a Seagate 240 gb SSD which I would like to use for.
- How to Make an External Drive Your Main Hard Drive. Prepare your computer. Access your computer's BIOS and navigate to the Boot Order menu. This lists all available boot devices. Using the commands listed on the BIOS screen, select the option that resembles 'USB device' from the list and move that to the top position.
Also Read: How to fix/repair a corrupted hard drive in Windows 10?If the hard drive you’re trying fix contains your important data, then you should use a data recovery software to extract the photos, music, videos and other files before they’re gone forever. Here are some you can use.Now, in order to fix a hard disk drive that’s gone rogue, we should start with the basics because we have to make sure that the hard drive is corrupt or not in the first place.It might be possible the problem was nothing but a loose screw, and we repaired the whole bicycle. Here are some ways which might help you repair corrupted hard drive. Check the power supplyIf you’re using an external hard drive, then it’s possible that the storage media is taking the power from the USB port itself.
How To Make D Drive Default Windows 10
Try to unplug the hard drive and connect it again in the process of hard drive fix. You can also try another USB port on your computer, maybe the one you’re using isn’t working properly. Make sure haven’t disabled your USB ports.Some external hard drive comes with a separate power supply, so, do a check if the same is working properly. Checking the power supply in the case of an internal hard drive might be a little tougher. However, if your PC is detecting the internal drive, there is hardly any chance something is wrong with the power.
Try the hard drive on another PC, if your PC can’t detect itIt might be possible that only your PC can’t read the hard drive and you need to repair hard drive accordingly. Connect the storage media to another PC, maybe you get a sense of relief by seeing it work on another PC.If it works, then there might be some issue with the device drivers installed on your computer that needs to be fixed. You can reinstall your hard drive’s drivers by visiting This PC (right-click) Manage Device Manager.
Right-click on the name of your hard drive and click Uninstall. Now, restart the computer and connect the hard drive.
The drivers will start installing automatically in most cases. You can also consider changing the drive letter assigned to the storage media to restore corrupted hard drive. Go to This PC (right-click) Manage Disk Management. Right-click your hard drive and click Change Drive Letter and Paths.Now, click on the drive letter and click Change.
Select the new drive letter and click Ok. It’ll show a warning that other programs might not work, click Yes. Problems will only occur if you change the letter of an internal drive where you have installed apps, mostly the Windows drive. Check your hard drive for errorsWindows has an inbuilt mechanism for hard disk recovery using which you can check a storage media, internal or external HDD, for errors.
In various cases, Windows will automatically ask you for drive scanning when you connect the drive to the machine. If it doesn’t happen, you can visit This PC Drive (right-click) Properties Tools tab. Click Check.The hard drive we use on our desktops and laptops have a built-in hardware monitoring technology called S.M.A.R.T.
Now, Windows doesn’t have any app to display the data collected by S.M.A.R.T. But you can check the overall status using WMIC (Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line) in CMD and try your hands on the broken hard disk repair. Open CMD in admin mode. Type wmic and press enter.
type diskdrive get status and press Enter.It’ll show the SMART status of your hard drive as OK, this means everything is fine. But if it’s not Ok then you should worry about your hard drive dying in the coming future. Things get confusing when you have multiple hard drives connected, it doesn’t display the name, so, you will see an ‘Ok’ for each of the hard drives connected.Alternatively, you can fetch S.M.A.R.T. Details using a utility known as CrystalDiskInfo. It can show you the numbers related to individual hard drive attributes, as well as, it’s overall health, temperature, the number of start counts, total number of active hours, etc.
How to fix a corrupt hard drive using built-in Windows CMD tools and other options?The Check Disk utility we use for and SD card also works for rotating hard drives and SSDs. It can be accessed in the Properties of a connected hard drive. Also Read: Format an internal volume using Disk ManagementNow, the corrupt hard drive you’re trying to format is an internal logical volume, then the Diskpart tool can easily help you out. Follow these steps to format an internal drive:.
Right-click My Computer/This PC. Click Manage. Click Disk Management in the left pane. Now, right-click the local volume you want to erase. Click Format. In the window that pops-up, name the disk, select file system (mostly NTFS).
Keep the allocation size to default. Tick ‘Perform a quick format’ checkbox to make the format process faster. Untick it the volume is having issues. Click Ok, and it will take a while to format the lock disk on your computer.Format corrupt internal volume using CMD. Open elevated Command Prompt (Admin mode) corrupted hard drive repair using CMD.
Type diskpart command and press Enter. Type list disk and press Enter. Select the disk where the partition exists i.e. Your internal hard drive:select disk Xwhere X is the number of the disk.
Display a list of available partitions:list partition. Select the partition to be formatted:select partition X. Once the partition is selected, format it:formatand press EnterYou can also add label for the name and quick attribute to do a quick format.format quick label=testThe format process takes time depending on whether you’ve chosen the quick or full format and the size of your internal volume or local disk.
Repair corrupted hard drive using disk wipe softwareNow, if the inbuilt Windows tools can’t help you then third-party disk wiping tools are your only rescue in the process to fix hard drive. Disk wiping software is designed to rinse your drive to the point that no traces of your data can be found. They work differently than the regular quick format process, according to the standard released by various organizations such as DOD, NIST, etc.There are various data destruction software you can use to wipe a corrupt hard drive and attempt its fixing. If you can boot into your Windows OS, then a GUI rich disk wiping software would be easier to use.The popular free PC optimization tool knows as CCleaner has inbuilt disk wipe which can be used to wipe a hard drive completely.
When removing data using CCleaner, you can choose any local volume on your computer or any external drive connected to your computer.Bleachbit is another free and open source disk wiping software that’s available for Windows, Linux, and MacOS.You can also use a free drive eraser tool called CBL Data Shredder if you don’t have any problem with making a bootable USB and taking a long road.One of the famous data wiping software is the open source project called Darik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN). It comes in the form of an ISO, so, it even works if you can’t access the operating system on your computer.If the hard drive you’re trying to fix contains your important data, then your should use a data recovery software to extract the data before it gone forever.
Here are some you can use in this hard disk repair process. How to use DBAN to wipe your hard drive?Please note that you can only use your keyboard to control DBAN and proceed with the disk wiping process. Download the DBAN ISO using (direct download). Create a bootable USB or DVD using one of these. Now, restart your machine and boot using the media you’ve created. Different machines have different options to access the boot selection menu.
For instance, it’s F9 on HP and F12 on Dell. In the boot device selection menu, choose the bootable USB drive to start DBAN.
The first screen of DBAN shows all the available options you can perform using this data destruction software.I recommend you read all the text carefully as you might end up wiping the other drives connected to the system.Pressing F2 will show information about DBAN.Pressing F3 will explore a list of commands. Each command initiates disk wiping process according to a particular standard.Please note, running the command once will destroy data on all the connected drives at once.
And you won’t be able to get it back.So, if you’re trying to wipe the internal drive, make sure you remove any connected storage. In the case of an external drive, don’t use this option as it will destroy data on your internal drive too.Pressing F4 shows information about using DBAN with RAID disks. Probably, it won’t be of much use to normal users.Also, there is an autonuke option which used DOD standard as default. Type autonuke in the command line on the screen and press Enter. Using this option will start the wiping process of the hard drive without any confirmation.How to use the Interactive Mode in DBAN in hard drive fixing process?You can press Enter to start DBAN in interactive mode. This mode allows you to choose the desired disk which is to be wiped, the data destruction standard, etc.The bottom of the screen shows the controls you use in the interactive mode. Press P to select the Pseudo Random Number Generator (PRNG) from the available options.As the name suggests, PRNG is used to generate a random number sequence which is used while wiping the drive. Use Up and Down arrows to highlight an option and press Space to select.Press M to choose the wipe for the process.It lists the same method as mentioned in the F3 options above.
The default DoD Short would work in the most cases. But you choose another one if the former doesn’t work. This also works in the same way, arrows for highlighting and Space for selection.Pressing V allows you to select when and how many times DBAN should perform the verification. Choosing the Last Pass option would be better as verification after every pass would take more time.Press R to select the number of rounds for which the wiping method should run. Normally, a single round would do the job. Type the desired number and press Enter to save and return to the main screen of the interactive mode.You can highlight the desired drive using arrows and press Space to select it.
Now, press F10 start the disk wipe process.Make sure you have selected the correct disk as there is no turning back beyond this point. It might take hours for the process to complete. After that, you can reinstall Windows if it’s an internal hard drive.So, that’s was a guide on how to a fix or repair corrupted hard drive. You can use these to revive your external drive or any internal logical volume.If you found this helpful or you have any suggestions to make, drop your thoughts and feedback.
The 'official' way to upgrade the primary hard disk of a Windows machine seems to be to install the new drive, install windows, install backup software, then do a restore from backup of the previous system.For home use and for the sake of doing it faster, is there another way? There doesn't seem to be a standard way of making a disk other than the primary one bootable, which is a nuisance.I've tried 'install new hard drive, copy image of partition over and expand it using a gparted boot CD, remove old hard drive', but that leaves me in a strange state where windows boots OK but doesn't go to the desktop, instead going to a logo screen. Ctrl Alt Del does nothing at this screen.
This happens even in safe mode.I have with this home system what appears to be a Windows OEM CD (XP home sp2) that isn't bootable, which is odd.Edit: I think the 'clone and replace' using systemrescuecd does work, I'm sure I've done that before, but only if the drive is on the same controller. In this case it's IDE-SATA, which is probably the problem. Use your favourite imaging software like Ghost Enterprise Suite or whatnot, boot it from a disc or something. Clonezilla should do it I guess though I haven't tried its disk cloning abilities.Have both the old and the new disk plugged in, clone the old one to the new one using a disk to disk clone (not partition). In this process you can normally resize the partitions to fit the new disk size in whatever way you want.Shut down, remove the old disk, move the new disk to the same controller port as the old one for good measure and boot the machine.It would be wierd if this didn't work - like the disk imaging software not really doing its job or something. As long as the disk uses the same controller there shouldn't be any problems at all.