hi I am running my pc with an 80gb hd. I have never tinkered inside my pc but i have now purchased a 200gb hd. So, is it best to add this hd and reinstall windows to it (quite a daunting task for me) or is it easy enough for me to just use this new hd as a storage drive that i can download to and burn files to dvd from this drive, any guides and recommendations will be greatly appreciated thanks Total Newb (but wanting to learn)
Your second option posted would be my suggestion. Install as a storage device...however, you may want to partition the drive to have two partitions. 10 gig partition first, 180 partition second. After you've formatted the 10gig to NTFS, move your pagefile to that partition. Windows likes having it's own space for the pagefile...and it won't get all mixed up with other files on the drives. Then, you should be set to go.
thanx for the info m8, thats the way i will go but is it all straightforward for even me to do, do i need to go into the bios to partition this disc, i was hoping it would be just a case of plug n play
just put the drive into the computer and power it up. the bios should automatically detect the new drive so you dont need to fiddle about there. when windows loads it will find and install the new hard drive but you wont be able to see it in my computer until youve initialized the drive. to do this right click my computer and go to manage - select disk management from the left hand side of the manage window - you should see your first hard drive as C: Ntfs healthy (system) and you other hard drive will show up as unpartitioned space. right click the unpartitioned space and select "new partition" just click ok and it shold format the drive and then youll be able to use it
Never used that myself, can it make more than one partition? I always use the drive's disk to create partitions...or XP setup CD.
