Where can i go to fix a IDE hard drive

[erica12]

Im wondering where i can go to get my IDE hard drive fixed?

 

[nhasian]

its far cheaper to buy a new hard disk than to repair a broken one. if you need to recover data from the drive, that's a horse of a different flavor. what is wrong with your hard disk?

 

[erica12]

i dont think they sell ide's anymore or atleast not in like best buy or anything, but what if i wanna just get all my memory that i had in that hard drive in put it into a new one. would you happen to know where i can go to do that or if thats even possible of doing?

 

[Paperdoc]

It sounds like you want to "upgrade" your system by replacing your old IDE drive unit with a newer one, although it may not be an IDE unit - it may be SATA , but ONLY if your system's motherboard also has an unused SATA port to connect to a new SATA drive. At the same time, you need to preserve ALL of the information on the old IDE unit, right? If this is the only hard drive in your system, that preserving thing is really important because the IDE drive has your Operating System (Windows, I guess) on it, plus all your applications, plus all your data files.

If that is what you want, it is certainly possible, even if you are migrating from an IDE unit to a SATA unit. What you want is called Cloning. When you Clone a drive from one drive unit to another, the process copies EVERYTHING over for you. It makes sure the Destination drive is set up to work as your new Boot Device (your old drive is called the Source), and it puts all the important files that MUST be in particular places right where they belong. In most cases the upgrade also involves changing to a much larger new drive, so the Cloning process allows you to adjust how the new drive is set up. For most people, the best solution is to have ALL of the larger new drive be just one drive or Partition, and that gives you a LOT more empty space to add new files to. When the Cloning process is done, you shut down your system, disconnect the old drive, and connect the new drive in its place. When you turn it on again, it boots from the new drive and everything looks and performs just the same as it did before, except that your C: drive has a whole bunch of new space available.

Some hard drive manufacturers will let you download from their websites free cloning utility software as an incentive to buy their hard drive units. The "incentive" works like this: their software will only make a clone TO one of THEIR drives - they don't care whose old drive you are abandoning. There are also cloning packages you can buy on-line. However, if you are not familiar with hard drive organization and comfortable following the instructions of a cloning utility, maybe you can get the shop that sells you the new drive to do the cloning operation for you and adjust your machine to the new drive - for a fee, of course.

This whole post is mainly guided by your second posting, in which you imply that you just want to get a newer better drive. BUT your first post says you want your IDE drive "fixed". Do you mean it has already failed and you can't get your machine to work, or cannot access information on that IDE drive? If that is the case, cloning is NOT what you need, and the process becomes more difficult and less certain. Clarify what you meant, please.