Help: Possible Hardware Failure

[Angrboda]

Noice! This was exactly the type of help I needed/wanted. Looking into disk cloning. I lost my code that I had when I purchased windows 10. I don't know if I can recover it somehow. But it's looking like if I have to buy software to clone the drive, I may as well try to just nab the important files off it and reinstall windows on a new drive (as some recommended).

As for the "grinding"... it might just be the fan. But there are worrying sounds coming from it, especially when I boot up. And I know the drive didn't always make those sounds. My computer is old. I recently added 12 MB of Ram and a graphics card (well... 5-6 months ago). I did see that my power supply was less than recommended when I put in the video card, but everything else was up to par as far as I could see. My processor barely made it iirc. Until now, the thing purred like a kitten. I made doubly sure everything was compatible when I purchased the new hardware. The only oops was the power supply.

Having just done the water heater thing and with holidays on the horizon, I don't have the dough for a new system. But I'm willing to get a new hard drive and power supply if that will fix things temporarily.

Like, I'm trying to fix this for under $100. And hopefully make my current setup last another year or two.

Remember: In most cases, the target drive must be larger than the source drive for cloning. (Which may suggest getting another standard hard disk rather than an SSD; if your computer is old, the difference between HDD and SSD will likely be modest.) Otherwise you'd go a different route.