one of my computers is a bit old now, about 6 years, and the hard drive is starting to make them clickity click click noises

so, do i simply go out and get a new computer?

or do i get the hard drive changed?

and if i do, how do i get the stuff on the hard drive copied over totaly so that i can simply swap them over?

is there software available or do i hand it over to a nerd in a shop to do?

thanks

 

If its 6 years old its probably a bit of a dog anyway

Buy an external hard drive, copy all you want on to that, buy a new PC and copy stuff back on... Simples

 

If it's clicking now it won't be long before it dies completely so you need to be backing it up now either via an external hard drive as mentioned above, of by putting a 2nd hard drive in the machine to back it up to.

 

But if I want to copy the actual hard drive how do I do that? As in cloning it to do exactly what the original clicky one is doing rather than just copying the programs and stuff over?

Is that simple enough? I've got several extrenals so I can get stuff ontothem.

 

I think you'll need something like Norton Ghost to completely take an image of your duff hard drive and put it on the other so you can stick it in and boot away. However it may have trouble reading the sectors of your failing drive. You can't copy installed programs either, they will need to be reinstalled. Basically you need to backup documents , favourites , e-mail if using Outlook / Outlook Express. E-mail account details if you don't know them. And aything else you see fit.

 

Sort of sorted it out now with the addition of a new computer but have copied most of the stuff over to the new one via external hard drive

ideally would like to sort things out propelry but if it means buying some new stuuf which may or may not work I'd rather just leave it until it's availabe for free

 

some hard drive manufactures supply software via thier sites to allow you to clone the drive

 

that's intresting to know mate

i'll take it apart and see what's what

alternativly, i've been looking into getting an external hard drive case thati can put an internal hard drive into and then simply usb the thing to the new computer, but i'm not sure if that will work with the programs already on the old hard drive though

any ideas?