New Hard Drive for 2400 Dimension.

[OHPM-Inc]

I think I might need a new hard drive here soon and I want to change it before it fails and I lose everything. I tried to run the "check now" diagnostic on the C: drive and it always freezes at 63% on the 4of5 stages of checks (I've left it for over 24hours). Other reasons I believe is that during start-up it's making louder noises over the last few months and I had a previous drive fail when it started those noises. Last reason is that the drive seems to be taking longer to find files and run programs. My RAM is kind of low but nothing has been changed or added lately so it's not like it's being over worked and with the other problems, I think it's the hard drive.

If this is a hard drive problem then what SeaGate do you recommend? The current HD is 37.2 gigs. I would prefer a little bigger.

Also, I've never copied a hard drive from/to the other. Is there a walk-through someone could give me? Thanks.

[kilgoretrout]

I assume you currently have a seagate hard drive in there. If so, download seagates hard drive diagnostic utility suite, SeaTools, here:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=SeaTools&vgnextoid=720bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

Run the SeaTools diagnostics and make sure there is a hardware problem with the drive rather than something else. This could just be a filesystem corruption problem, or some malware issue rather than a failing hard drive. If you have a seagate drive, the Seatools diagnostics are the best tool for checking the drive.

[glc]

If you need a new drive, any IDE drive will work and the manufacturer's setup utility should have a drive copy function. However, if the drive has bad sectors, the copy will probably fail. In this case, I've had to use commercial software to get a usable copy - Spinrite in Level 2 followed by Acronis True Image, booting with the CD and using disk clone.

[OHPM-Inc]

I use SeaGate for my personal computer so that's why I choose it. I had to many failures with Maxtor's. The stock one is in there now, don't know what kind.

I found these two but I don't know the difference.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148236

and

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148095

[glc]

The .10 is a newer drive.