I need a bigger hard drive - the one I have is only 2GB which was fine years ago but isn't now. Would you advise i) getting a new hard drive installed (I don't have the technical skills to do it myself) or ii) buying an external USB hard drive If I do the latter, is there anything I need to know. (Does the OS still have to be on the internal hard drive? What about other software? Will I struggle to find one that doesn't require Win XP? That sort of thing) Thanks.

The best (imo) and least expensive option would be to just get a larger internal HDD - although you likely can't used the newest & biggest drives on an older computer - nor would you really need something in the hundreds of Gb range Installation is rather simple, all you need is a screwdriver and an IQ near 100 ; ) You can either clone your existing Windows installation to the new drive, or reinstall everything 'fresh' "Does the OS still have to be on the internal hard drive?" Well, kind of - the C: drive is the boot drive, although the rest of Windows & programs can be installed on other drives or partitions We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true

#1. it doesn't require any special techincal skills to install a hard drive, just a screwdriver :) #2. you're running a 10 year old computer... do you even have a USB port on that thing??? #3. I can't believe that you have survived this long with only a PII system. I'm also surprised that you could install anything past windows95 on a 2GB HDD. #4. XP takes up about 3GB itself, nevermind any programs or files so that's out of the question for you. ... to actually answer your questions... almost all external HDDs come with drivers for w98, but many of them require USB2.0 which is far beyond your ancient computer's capabilty. If you aren't going to install it yourself, then just buy a new computer... sheesh! for the price you'll pay to find an old ATA33/66 hard drive (i don't remember which one an old system like that uses) and then pay somebody to install it for you... you could simply buy a new system. go on ebay, you can buy a complete P3 system for under $100 (which is what you'd pay to have somebody install your HDD) It says not to put a question here... why not?

I guess 'the King' isn't all that familiar with older machines (or versions of Windows) Yes, even PI machines had USB, and Win95 or 98 install just fine in a few hundred MB, depending, although it's not hard to fill a 2Gb disk once you start installing programs. We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true

"I'm also surprised that you could install anything past windows95 on a 2GB HDD." Funny how that worx. I've got w2k on a 2.2GB with Office, three browsres, two email clients, an Apache server, Borland C++, three media players, three burners, a pictuce editor and 57 other things I can't remember. LOL And yes, XP is doggy doo. ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2Go

As OSes get bigger and more bloated (but sure, with more features) folks seems to *radically* overestimate hardware requirements and underestimate the capabilities of older systems. Still, a good point - in the long run it would be more cost effective to purchase a newer machine, rather than sink much cash into an old one. I've seen some real deals locally, a few hundred bucks (CDN) or so for 1.7GHz, 256Mb, 20Gb - hard to beat In the short term though, if you can get a 10 or 20 Gb drive for not too much (and if the motherboard will take it) that would be a good simple upgrade. We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true

To answer your question, instead of just getting superior about old hardware, your best bet is a new internal drive. A machine of that age will not be able to handle a very large one, so stick to 10Gb or so - which means second hand and should be quite cheap, say $10. If your machine has a spare drive bay, then the best bet is to install this as a second drive, whcih will appear as Drive D, pushing your CD to E. You may have to re-install some software if it is looking in the wrong place for your CD Drive. I say this is best because it is the least technically dificult. You need to set the jumpers on your existing drive to MASTER, or MASTER w SLAVE, and on your new drive to SLAVE. The jumper settings will be on the drive, or from the manufacturers website. Then connect the cables - master in the last position on the ribbon, slave next along, and power lead plugged into the drive. If this is the first time you have tried anything in this line, try and find somebody who knows what they're doing to keep an eye on it and check it is OK. Best of luck!