Fred writes in with a hardware question
Q. I have a 20g hard drive currently. If I upgrade to a larger hard drive what is the easiest method to transfer data to the new drive?
A. This will depend on if you play on transferring Windows and your programs or just your personal files. If you want to upgrade your hard drive as your primary drive with Windows and your programs then you can clone your old drive onto your new one. There are many programs available that can do this such as Symantec Ghost or PowerQuest Drive Image. Your new hard drive may also come with software allowing you to do this.
What you will need to do is install your new drive as a slave in your computer along with your current 20 GB drive. Then use the cloning software to copy everything to the new drive and make sure you select any options to make the new drive bootable or a system drive. This process will vary depending on what software you use. Then you would remove the old drive and set the new drive to master and start the computer.
If you are just replacing a non system drive with another larger non system drive then you can copy your data to a recordable CD or DVD if you have a CD/DVD burner in your system. Or you can use a USB memory stick/flash drive and copy your files that way.
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