[Dame]

I know this is probably dumb of me to ask but I am hoping that someone will take pity on me and help me out.

My mom has a Gateway GT5026E which can be found here: http://support.gatew...8/5648sp3.shtml

Now they say the HD for that computer is a 250 GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA hard drive

My ex boyfriend told me this would be the one I'd want to buy as a replacement http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822136113 It's a Western Digital Caviar Blue WD2500AAJS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive for anyone who doesn't want to go look at the link.

I want to double check that this is the correct one to buy because when I went to upgrade my RAM, he told me the wrong one to buy so now I am a bit wary. He also told me that it is easy to replace it yourself, what do you guys who are more knowledgeable on this subject than I think about this? I replaced the Ram myself, but that is the extent of what I've done.

Thank you so much for any help. I am good with software but hardware is not my friend.

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Hard drives are very easy to find replacements for, as opposed to RAM. You can throw any hard drive in your machine as long as it's 3.5" and has a SATA connection. There is no need to match storage size. So for example, if you wanted to go with a 320GB, 500GB, 1TB, etc. hard drive you can. I would recommend upgrading the size while you are replacing the drive, since hard drives are very cheap these days.

Is there a reason you are replacing the drive? Is the current drive still functional? If so, you can just clone the current drive and not have to worry about transferring data, reinstalling programs, etc.

If you get a WD HDD, you can use this free program available from Western Digital to perform the drive clone. Keep in mind that most bare drives do not come with a SATA cable, so if you want to clone your drive, you'll need to buy another one when you get the drive. Something like this will be fine, but you might want to check with your local computer shop. They typically have them lying around and might even give you one for free.

[Spyderturbo007]

Hard drives are very easy to find replacements for, as opposed to RAM. You can throw any hard drive in your machine as long as it's 3.5" and has a SATA connection. There is no need to match storage size. So for example, if you wanted to go with a 320GB, 500GB, 1TB, etc. hard drive you can. I would recommend upgrading the size while you are replacing the drive, since hard drives are very cheap these days.

Is there a reason you are replacing the drive? Is the current drive still functional? If so, you can just clone the current drive and not have to worry about transferring data, reinstalling programs, etc.

If you get a WD HDD, you can use this free program available from Western Digital to perform the drive clone. Keep in mind that most bare drives do not come with a SATA cable, so if you want to clone your drive, you'll need to buy another one when you get the drive. Something like this will be fine, but you might want to check with your local computer shop. They typically have them lying around and might even give you one for free.

[123Runner]

Hi Dame and welcome to Geeks to Go.

Sometimes you will not find an exact duplicate of what you are looking for. That is ok because things change all the time.
The main thing about the hard drive is that it is the same interface. What that means is you have SATA (serial ata) instead of the older ide.
Different manufacturers label their drives different.
You will have techs that prefer WD (western digital), or Seagate, or Toshiba, or Maxtor, or whatever.

What you need is SATA, 7200rpm, 3.5 inch, and cache size can be any size. The larger the cache, the less the drive will have to work (so to speak), but the average person will not notice the differance.

As previously stated, I would look in to a larger size drive. They are not that more expensive.

Are you replacing the main drive for a reason?
What issues are you having? They may not be related to a hard drive.

You can use the drive manufacturers cloning software or Easeus Partition Manager

123runner