hi, my old computer finally gave up the ghost, and i am now using a spare, i saved the hard drive from my old computer, because i have some photos on there that i really don't want to lose, is there any way i can extract these photos from the old hard drive using my present machine? pat.

One way is to pick up an external USB inclosure and copy them off that way or you could hook it up inside the new machine on an available cable and copy them. Keep the old stuff running

ok, thanks for that. i have available cables, is it just a matter of hooking it up? how do i find the hard drive once i'm up and running again?

Pay attention to the MASTER and SLAVE settings on the hard drive, once that is sorted out all you need to do is hook the drive up reboot the machine and you will find that a new drive letter has been added, as an example if your system as is right now has C: primary hard drive, D: CD rom, after adding the second HD your drive assignment might look like this, c: primary HD, D: second HD "<-- this is the new drive just added" E: CD rom Check theses links to configure your drive for install: http://www.ehow.com/how_6031_change... http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/i... Keep the old stuff running

hi, thanks for the advice, i will have a go at the weekend, it does'nt sound quite as daunting as i thought, many thanks, pat.

i just took a look inside my pc and realised that i don't have any spare cables, can i unhook the cdrom? and use those cables. TIA, pat.

Yes you can, again pay attention to the master and slave settings of the drives on that cable. Keep the old stuff running