Question:
I have a 2 year old HP Pavilion p6610f desktop PC. The hard drive died a month after the warranty expired and I need some advice about installing a replacement drive. Speed is more important to me than cost when making the repair.
In a nutshell,would it be better to simply buy the fastest hard drive I can find or replace the defective drive with an SSD? Thanks! –Cameron L.
Answer:
Cameron, I recommend that you replace the bad hard drive with a small SSD (say 64 GB) and then add-on a high-speed USB 3.0 external drive. Then install the operating system and swap file on the SSD to drastically speed up the boot process and overall operation while putting your programs and data on the external drive.
As you probably know, your Pavilion p610f doesn’t have native USB 3.0 ports, but you can easily install a 2-port USB 3.0 expansion card into an empty PCI Express slot. Although the USB 3.0 drive will be backward compatible with the PC’s existing USB 2.0 ports, installing the USB 3.0 PCIe card should be a no-brainer since it will only cost you around $30 and the speed increase for the drive will be substantial.
Placing Windows on an SSD and everything else on a fast external hard drive will give you both the speed advantage that you are obviously seeking AND the portability that comes with having all of your data stored on a USB hard drive. That way you can simply unplug the external drive from your desktop PC and plug it into your laptop for instant access to all of your files on both machines.
This setup will be considerably more expensive than simply replacing the bad hard drive with a new one, but since speed is more important to you than money, I say go for it.
About the author: Rick Rouse is the owner of RLROUSE.COM. He is also an A+ Certified computer technician with over 30 years of experience in the computer industry. Do you have a computer question that you’d like to have answered? Send it in and we’ll answer it right here (and via email as well).