So, of my friends I am considered to be the tech-y person because I built a computer, but that's about it. I don't know everything (not even close) and sometimes stuff happens that I just don't know how to deal with. My friend's laptop (an HP ProBook 4540s, I'll put specs below) just started running slower than usual one day. I mean, the hard drive usually takes a few minutes to get everything started, but it started taking up to twelve hours (she said) for her startup applications to load. She called me and I went over earlier today with a bunch of spare laptop hard drives that I'd salvaged from some old laptops in my room (nothing special, nothing close to recent). I opened her laptop up and replaced her hard drive with a Toshiba hard drive, just to see if the problem lay in the sata connection, the battery, the ram, or some other obscure part of the computer. The drive loaded at a normal speed (a few minutes, but again that's normal), so we concluded that it must be the original drive's fault. Now she wants to know if she should buy a new hard drive or just try and find a new laptop. If we go with the former of the options, what type of hard drive specifically would allow for the same or better performance than that which she already has.
To be clear, she didn't say that there was any error message and when I tested her drive it also didn't show any signs of problems aside from the fact that it took a few hours to load the desktop and longer to load the startup applications.
Specs of her HP ProBook 4540s:
-Intel Core i3-3110M at 2.4 GHz
-Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
-12GB of RAM (We upgraded what was already in there with a G-Skill 8GB stick and kept the 4GB stick of stock RAM. It may seem janky but the system says there's 12GB so we think it's fine)
-A 500GB 7200RPM Hitachi HDD (Model #: 7K750-500 HTS727550A9E364) SATA 3.0Gb/s
-Whatever internet connection thing that the 4540s comes with.
-One loose screw that we can't figure out where it goes
UPDATE: Thank you all for your help. I recently attempted to load a hard drive from an Acer laptop (An Acer Aspire ES1-511-C59V) running Windows 8 on it, but was told that there was no bootable drive found. This has me concerned that the laptop will not take certain drives, maybe something to do with its original drive being SATA 3.0Gb/s, whereas maybe the drive on the other laptop has SATA 6.0Gb/s or something. I don't have the drive on me, so I can't check, but would that difference in SATA render the drive unable to boot?
To be clear, she didn't say that there was any error message and when I tested her drive it also didn't show any signs of problems aside from the fact that it took a few hours to load the desktop and longer to load the startup applications.
Specs of her HP ProBook 4540s:
-Intel Core i3-3110M at 2.4 GHz
-Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
-12GB of RAM (We upgraded what was already in there with a G-Skill 8GB stick and kept the 4GB stick of stock RAM. It may seem janky but the system says there's 12GB so we think it's fine)
-A 500GB 7200RPM Hitachi HDD (Model #: 7K750-500 HTS727550A9E364) SATA 3.0Gb/s
-Whatever internet connection thing that the 4540s comes with.
-One loose screw that we can't figure out where it goes
UPDATE: Thank you all for your help. I recently attempted to load a hard drive from an Acer laptop (An Acer Aspire ES1-511-C59V) running Windows 8 on it, but was told that there was no bootable drive found. This has me concerned that the laptop will not take certain drives, maybe something to do with its original drive being SATA 3.0Gb/s, whereas maybe the drive on the other laptop has SATA 6.0Gb/s or something. I don't have the drive on me, so I can't check, but would that difference in SATA render the drive unable to boot?