When you put your computer on and it goes to a screen you have never seen before and at the bottom it says

HARD DISK S.M.A.R.T STATUS BAD, BACK UP AND REPLACE

Looks like another hole in my Pocket informed by Step son to get a New Hard Disk Drive Now hopefully turn up tomorrow and lots of Downloading Stuff

Gray

hate when that happens takes days to get your pc back to the way it was

Ouch, I had two hard drives with my computer so does that mean I could just change them over. I don't know how they work.

Most computers that have 2 hard drives work either

(a) one drive for the system (windows) and other drive for the data files (documents folder). This system is good if the system drive crashes as usually all you need to do is re-install windows and any application programs on a new drive, the data files are ok since they are on the 2nd drive. If the 2nd drive crashes, you lose your data, but windows files are ok. With this type of sytem it is wise to backup the data files to an external hard drive.

(b) some sytems, usually the more expensive ones use the 1st drive for system files and data files, but automatically back-up all the files to the 2nd drive. If the 1st drive crashes you just copy everything back from 2nd drive to a new 1st drive.


To find out what your system is doing, you can inspect the contents of both drives and see what files are stores on them, but if you don't know what you are looking for this can look like gobbledeygook.

Alternatively, look in file explorer for a screen that looks like this




This is my system and it tells me what the drives are doing.

It looks like 3 drives, but it is only 2 drives a boot (system drive) and the other drive is split into 2 sections called partitions.

Your computer may look like it has 2 drives, but it may be one drive that has been partitioned into 2 parts.

If you can not tell from this screen you use the right mouse button to click on the document folder, then select properties and then select location from the menu at top of screen and you will see something like this




This tells me that the documents (data files) are stored on drive D

As to your question about changing the drives over. This usually doesn't as the drives are set up differently.


Just a thought, but if you are not sure if the computer actually has 2 drives or 1 drive partitioned into 2 parts, try this to find out. These are windows 10 instructions.

Type device manager into cortana at bottom left of screen. Cortana should suggest a control panal app called device manager. click on it. Now click on the section called drives. It will list how many drives in your computer.

Jim my second one is doing nothing. If u open the door it just says on them to shut down before swapping hard drives.

Just a thought, but if you are not sure if the computer actually has 2 drives or 1 drive partitioned into 2 parts, try this to find out. These are windows 10 instructions.

Type device manager into cortana at bottom left of screen. Cortana should suggest a control panal app called device manager. click on it. Now click on the section called drives. It will list how many drives in your computer.


You can tell the compter to use the data drive by following the instructions above and the selecting the MOVE option from this screen. This moves the documents folder to a new location.

I found a step by step guide on the internet on how to do this.

http://www.windowscentral.com/how-manage-file-storage-windows-10

You can repeat this proceedure for the pictures, music, videos folders.

If there anything in the above guide you don't understand, I will try to expalin it to you. Just post your question here.