# hard drive in death throes

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-in-death-throes/115687>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 24, 2002, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-in-death-throes/115687 "2002-06-24T11:57:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![pohjonen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pohjonen/32/423_2.png) [@pohjonen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pohjonen)\
**Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-in-death-throes/115687/1 "2002-06-24T11:57:14Z")

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My HP Pavilion 8575C has a dying hard drive. It works for awhile before it warms up. My question: When I get a new hard drive can I use the recovery CD that came with the computer to boot it? If not, how do I make a boot disk? Any suggestions on the best brand of HD to get? Thanks, all you computer brains!

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**Author:** ![Servo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@Servo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Servo)\
**Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-in-death-throes/115687/2 "2002-06-24T12:11:56Z")

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Most hard drives come with a utility to copy the contents of your old drive to the new one. You can use the recovery CD but you’ll lose all of your data and installed applications. Although, if your up for it, this might be the best way to go. Installing a new HDD is a perfect time to start off with a fresh new install of everything. Just keep your old drive and copy your data over.

As far as brands, I usually buy Maxtor.