Morning All,

I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to PCs so thought I'd ask some advice here!

The wife and I were given a desktop PC and we'd like to upgrade a few bits on it to suit us a little better.

For some reason its running 2 Hard Drives, both of which are a little on the small size for what we want and I wanted to upgrade the smaller one to a larger capacity. The smaller one tho seems to contain the operating system. Can I just transfer all the files over to the one I'm keeping and install the new HD without problem and transfer back or will I need to completely reinstall the OS on the new drive?

Once this is done we also plan a DVD RW and an uprated graphics card to handle DVDs which I don't think will be a problem.

Any comments / advise appreciated.

Ta

Mike

I think if you are upgrading the hard drive a fresh install of windows would be the best course of action!

Saves any corruptness with windows.

Make sure you check what graphics card you need first! Could be PCI, AGP and lastly (although unlikely as it sounds like an older system) PCI-e

Lovely, thanks for that. I'm pretty sure its PCI but I'll double check to be on the safe side.

If you were given the operating system disks (or you have the little OEM sticker with the code on it) then a reinstall is always best. you have no idea what crud is lurking on the disks.

If not you can recover the license key to use with a copy of Windows. I can't remember the name of the program but I can have a dig about if you need.

Failing that you might be able to use some software like Norton Ghost to carry over the OS to a new drive. It make an image of the drive (bit like a photograph) that you can write to CD then rewrite back to a new drive.

If it's a bit old (3yr+) you might have some problems with very large hard disks. I think some of the older kit goes a bit funny with stuff over 120Gb. If it's very old they can go a bit funny over 32Gb.

As said If it's old pick up a cheap 80GB HDD with an 8MB cache.

You can use Acronis Migrate Easy:

Data migration software: copy a hard disk drive to another one

This will copy the old HDD to the new and you can let it make the partitions bigger when it does so. Top product.

You could then ditch both the old HDDs or just use then to back up important files from time to time.

I always recommend 2 hard drives when I build a PC. This way you run less risk of corrupting your HDD with your OS on it. I only have a 36Gb system disk and 1.3TB of storage elsewhere. I run either Windows XP on one partition and Ubuntu Linux on the other. This I always find better so if you have your system disk go corrupt then it is just a case on re-installing the OS and some programs rather than losing any precious files such as photos, music etc.

You state that it appears to have 2 small HDD's have you had the case open and looked or just going by what windows tells you, it may be the case that you have one HDD partitioned to look like 2.

Be careful when you buy a new HDD make sure that you get the correct type either IDE (which is more than likely if it is an older system) or SATA newer PC's. You can tell the difference IDE has a flat cable with a long (4cm ish) oblong plug on the end where as SATA has a small plug with a thin cable.

There are size limitations depending on which version of Windows XP you are using. Windows XP will only address HDD's upto 137GB until you get the service pack 1 installed .

If you don't have the original disks for the OS consider installing Ubuntu linux it is very easy to use looks a lot like Windows and is free to boot. It runs on anything, I currently have it installed on my PS3.

Post more details of the system so we can give better advice. You may not need a graphics card, any modern card with 64MB of memory will be more than adequate for video playback.

When people ask me to build a PC I always ask what exactly they want to do with it that way I can give them the best system suited for their needs.

Sure, thanks for the advice. I'll have a proper look tonight and list out everything it currently has and post it here tomorrow.

Right, Have looked at this in a little more detail and we have as follows:CD

Windows XP SP2

AMD Athlon XP 2000+ 1.67MHz

512MB RAM (However I have been told there is 1GB installed and that the BIOS may need updating as its last version is 2002)

Graphics card is a Maxtor MGA-G2000 AGP 8MB

Hard Drive is 38GB in total which is split into two partitions, one of 14GB for the OS and programs and 24GB for My Docs

I think we can get away without having to install a bigger HD as at the present time we won't be using anywhere near that much space!

My Questions are:

Will updating the BIOS software sort out the issue with the system only showing 512MB RAM when there is 1GB onboard?

I plan to install a DVD RW (IDE). Would this be a problem and would we be able to play DVDs with the current set up with no problems?

Thanks

Mike

You only have one physical drive so if you need more space it would be trivial to ad a second IDE disk.

A DVD writer will work fine. Just make sure you have enough connections on the IDE cables - big wide ribbon cables. They should have 3 connectors on each (one to the motherboard) they sometimes get supplied with cables with only 2 each.

You can put 2 devices on each cable, one needs to be set as a master and the other as a slave. There are little pins and a jumper plug on the end of drives to select this, normally labeled M, CS, S (Master, Cable Select, Slave).

BIOS shouldn't need touched to recognise an extra 512Mb of RAM. Someone is telling porkies there or the memory is faulty. Take the RAM out and put it back in. Sometimes reseating it will sort problems. Be careful of static around memory. Leave the PC plugged in if you can but switched off at the wall so it's still earthed. Touch the metal case before you touch the memory and try to only handle them by the edges.

Graphics card is a bit weedy. You could get a used AGP from ebay for pennies. If you don't need to play games a 32/64Mb basic card (probably fanless to stay quiet) would do fine.

Your current set up will play DVDs fine IF you have a DVD drive AND DVD playback software. If you buy a DVDRW retail drive rather than OEM you should get software with it but will cost a bit more.

good good,

just what I needed to know.

THanks very much.

Mike