As more files are stored on your computer, your hard drive is likely to run out off space. Today Hard drives are much bigger and cheap. In this excises I will walk you through the steps you need to take when installing a new hard drive.

1.Remove the case cover, make sure you have an open IDE slot or change the IDE cable you’re using to the one with more connectors. You can purchase IDE at a computer store near you. Next make sure you have a space where you can install the new hard drive.

2.Depending on how many devices are currently installed on both master and secondary IDE slots, you may have to change your jumpers to slave if the is a device on the cable that is already set to master. You will usually want your hard drive to be master unless there is another device on the cable ( then on must be a master and the other slave)

3.Place the hard drive in a proper bay. You must put the silver side of the hard drive on the top, and the connector facing towards the motherboard so that you can plug it in. Find extra power cord from the power supply and connect it to the hard drive. Plug you IDE cable into the hard drive. Close the case

4.DEPENDING ON YOUR Operating system, you will have to boat from the CD and create the partition and format it if you’re using windows 98, Me. If you are using windows XP and Windows 2000 then you can do this after restarting your computer. You go to computer manager and then select Disk manager on the left side, select the new drive and create your new partition from there, then format it so that you can use it.

5.If you want to use the new hard drive as your primary hard drive then you will need software to use to clone like (Norton Ghost), it will make an identical drive with all the software and drivers with windows just like your old hard drive, the difference will the space. For more information on Norton Ghost please read the manual that comes with it.

Alfred Moloto is a computer consultant and owner of http://www.compuplanet.co.za. He can be reached at moloto@compuplanet.co.za.

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