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The "easiest" way would probably be to install it in your case as a second internal hard drive but this depends on if you have space in your case. your next best option would be to buy a external enclosure and plug it into your PC using a USB Drive Personally I prefer to have two separate drives in any machine I build for myself so that I can keep a backup image of any important files on both drives, so should one fail, the data is safe on the other, also should my Primary C drive with the OS on it become Infected with a Virus or the OS registry get corrupted I can have everything back to how it was last week in 20mins. But for better advice we would need to know if they are SATA or IDE, the size of the installed one you have and the size of the "Spare" one you are looking at, and what case you have.

your RAM will be dependant on your motherboard unfortunately a Google search gives me two hits Asus M487AT-E and here so is there a chance of giving us a link to a site that lists your motherboard specs as for the amount you will never use more than 4 Gig even in high end gaming the only thing that I have found that requires more than 4Gig of RAM is if you are running virtual Machine software as a rough guide as I have been really busy of late and might not be able to reply, your motherboard will decide on you using DDR2 or DDR3 I'll put my money on DDR3 Dual channel, your Budget will dictate the speed. 1066,1600 or 1800MHz these numbers the higher the faster and the more expensive. the next set of numbers to take note of is the latency, a set of 4 numbers, IE. 9.9.9.25 or sometimes shortened to C9 these are the clock cycles that it takes to perform the various actions access,read,write and erase so the lower the faster, and more expensive Hopefully if you can post your Motherboard specs and some idea of budget, someone if not myself will give you a link to your best option ;)

Hi Carpruncher It's not a hardware fault as you C and recovery partition would have failed. This would make me think it's now malware related, normally malware also targets windows system files not data files Not sure how good PC Tools file recovery is but I would have expected it to find something unless the drive was erased with a format!!!! this brings me to the Question...... Are you the only person with access to the PC? did you turn the PC on and they were missing? or did you turn the PC on and were they there and then disappeared while you were using the PC? If so what were you doing when they disappeared ? also do you have problems writing data to the partition now? normally I would say that trying this would delete and make any data that was there irretrievable but it would already seem to be lost :( !!! Have you looked in the Recycle Bin?

Basically the important thing about PSU's is making sure you have more than enough power, and they fit your motherboard. if you had a 350 watt PSU you can replace it with any PSU that has 350 watt's or more :) if your motherboard has a 20 pin connector you will need to make sure your new PSU has a 20 Pin plug most modern motherboards and PSU's use a 24 or a 20+4 connector. if you get a 20+4 connector you can split the extra 4 pins off and just fold them out the way and then just plug the remaining 20 pin connector into the mother board ;)

Hi Zyniker Assuming that the problem is static Electric, and you have no live cables that are un sheathed coming into contact with and conductible material your problem may be being caused through a number of things. Nylon, Woollen carpets. Nylon, Woollen clothes. Electric Cables next Metal. To mention but a few, But here is a link to a sight that will give you a lot more information on the subject. Static shocks and how to avoid them

Generally they cost less, If you have a dodgy copy of Windows that fails Validation, Tool available from Microsoft update site, you will be given the option to buy a legitimate key from them, but I can't remember how much for? but I think its at the upgrade price ?????

If he hasn't got the message by now I don't know what to say Google

Only if you pay Microsoft some money for a new licence :) http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/#tab=1

I think you misunderstood, although the symptoms you describe can be the start of a failing HDD, they can also be caused through Boot and Disk Management files being corrupt, or windows registry issues, as you don't mention the HDD is making funny noises I doubt your HDD is heading for a terminal failure. But Dalo's knowledge on this is greater than mine and I advise waiting on his next post, although that may depend on how busy he is with work ;)

Personally I swear by Avast at the moment :D But that could change tomorrow :p But Avira is just as good if not better, depends on your opinion. One thing I do know is that Norton is renowned for being heavy on resources, although some say they fixed this in the 2009 edition, but as I have not tried that I can't really say or comment. This makes me think that you may have a HDD issue, however I will wait on Godlo Harkin to comment, Did I just say Godlo, I meant Dalo, say things like that and his ego will be to big for the planet :p But he does have more Expertise than I :D

Hi James First what Antivirus do you have running, AVG by any chance? Second here is a link to a site with a few tips that you've missed to check Optimize Windows Vista for better performance

Defrag, Clean out temporary files, Scan for Spyware, and Viruses, BUT Please Please Don't run any registry Mechanics,Optimisers,Cleaners Check to see what is running in the background and at start up as well (MSCONFIG)

Hi Sadistic Panda great name by the way :) For anyone to help you we need to know What graphics expansion slot you have on the motherboard? How big your computer case is? How much Power your Power supply has to spare? How big your Pockets are? So if you can tell us The Make and Model of your PC or Motherboard, PSU wattage, how many hard drives, size of your case and any external devices that you keep connected to your PC? and How Much you would like to spend Maximum that should help us along with being able to assist you :D

Yes, you may well have the Bios set to Boot from CD, But IF YOU DON'T SET THE KEYBOARD to be enabled in Boot, then you won't be able to PRESS ANY KEY TO BOOT FROM CD Same as if you Don't read my Post correctly I will Disappear and help someone else :D

Sounds like you need to alter the Keyboard boot option's in Bios to enable in Bios/Boot From enable in windows ;)