Hard Disc On Laptop

[dollymay]

My laptop, using Windows 10, is around 9 years old. A friend told me that the hard disc should be replaced after approx 5 years, can this be true?? It still works fine, but is sometimes slow to respond, especially accessing Firefox for email. I only use it for emails, word processing, storing photos and googling information, i.e. I dont download films, tv programmes etc. The friend 'lost' all her data when the computer froze, and replacing the hard disc enabled her to recover most. Advice please, dont want to risk losing everything.

[aelmpvw]

//The friend 'lost' all her data when the computer froze, and replacing the hard disc enabled her to recover most//
i'm not an IT expert but that makes no sense to me at all

[bhg481]

No point replacing the hard disc just for fun but it's ALWAYS worth making regular backups of important things, like photos, on either a second hard disc or a flash drive. You should also make a recovery flash drive so that, if your hard drive does fail, you can recover the system.

[youngmafbog]

Replacing the HDD with a SSD will speed it up no end.

To be honest a nine year old laptop is probably nearing end of life. It was never built for such a resource hungry piece of software like W10.

And it wont be running Win 11, even much younger ones probably wont.

[barry1010]

I agree with ael. Simply replacing the hard drive does not recover lost data.

Your pc is working fine, it could probably do with a few simple and free tweaks but there is no need to replace the hard drive. Youngmafbog is right - replacing the hard drive with an SSD will speed things up but for your purposes really isn't necessary.

Speed Firefox up by clearing the cache https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-clear-firefox-cache

[dollymay]

Thanks to you all, I had my doubts about needing to replace the hard disc, and I will certainly clear the cache. I already back up my photos on a USB. Will probably need to get a new laptop eventully, but meanwhile it works!

[barry1010]

Windows 10 will continue to be supported for at least 4 years and there is no reason why your machine shouldn't last at least that long

[Espresso125]

and after 4 years ? not essential back ups?
looks like ubuntu going on my excellent running fully maintained Toshiba satellite then, i dont throw out good equipment

[barry1010]

Espresso, in 4 years time dolly's PC will be around 13 years old. Microsoft will probably extend the support beyond the 4 years (according to the PC mags) but if they don't the PC will probably need replacing or upgrading.
I've been using Linux on some of my machines for years but still prefer Windows overall. Still, it is good to have a choice :)