Can a damaged hard drive slow down a computer?

NONE@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 43 points –

My mother's laptop has been running as fast as a turtle on a snail going uphill for a long time now. Everything has been done to it, including formatting it and installing another, less cumbersome OS, but nothing improves. I have an HHD available, I have done some tests and it does work.

Would changing the hard drive do any good?

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I hate to be "anti-environment and pro-capitalism", but... just buy a new one. The worst thing about HDDs (in my opinion) is that it's hard to tell when they'll fail. You don't have this problem. Clone the drive, spend $20-$50 on the same storage size, and you're done!

Or double the budget, and upgrade to an SSD. I know it's easy to suggest someone else spend their money, but that's really the only option here...

Or double the budget, and upgrade to an SSD.

SSDs <1TB are competitive, if not outright beating, HDDs. You don't need to double the budget anymore. It might not be the fastest SSD at the cheap range, but the slowest SSD is still going to be faster than any (consumer grade) HDDs

Where I live (Venezuela) computer components are not very cheap or easy to obtain, and I don't have the money to afford an SSD (at least not now nor a near future)...

You could try getting a SATA SSD. Those are slower than M.2 or NVME-based product, but it will serve you well. Try looking for a low-storage solution for now. Maybe 128 or 250GB should work fine. Since you have a spare HDD, I think it's okay for now.