Today we are finding the files and applications are getting larger and larger and the files we download onto our machine are getting larger as well. Audio, database, graphics, photos and video files can gobble up a lot of disk space.

For any serious work or play for that matter you need as large a hard drive as you can possibly afford. With 500GB SATA hard drives available from people like Geeks.com at a cost of US$145 you can afford to ensure you get a drive large enough for any future needs you may have.

If you already have a drive (as I’m sure you do) you don’t have to worry. There are two approaches to installing and using a new drive on an existing machine.

1/ Copy all your critical files onto CD or DVD and then copy them onto the new drive once it’s installed and Windows carrier over onto the new drive or

2/ Install the new drive along with the older one and start using the new drive for all your new files. Windows will still boot from the old drive as it did before. (Note: If you are installing a new IDE drive you will need to set the jumpers on the new drive to ‘slave’ – there is a small stamping on the top-rear of the drive that will show you where the jumper needs to be placed to make this happen).