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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 ;)

That would be too easy, but So all's Good? :D and you have given yourself a pat on the back for being clever and sorting it out yourself ;)

Really it depends on the rest of your system but I have 2 SATA II drives and they leave IDE for dust, the system I built for my wife has a 3gHz AMD Dual core, with 4Gig of DDR3 RAM, and it leaves my system that's the same but for DDR2 RAM for Dust, However as my system is now getting old, I'm Looking at upgrading to a Quad core, DDR3 RAM and a Sata III HDD, I would like to go for a SSD but doubt if the pennies will allow me to do that :( But upgrading from IDE to SATA is a definate plus on speed that you will see ;), without using a stop watch that measures milliseconds

The Drive is fine so its ether the cable or the motherboard, if you can swap the cable for a new or known working cable, and it still won't work then that leaves the motherboard if the cmos is reset then its something hardware related with the motherboard, and will probably need the motherboard replacing, So now I'm waiting for the results of changing the cable, or resetting the cmos? :)

What makes you think we have something in common, Right back to designing that radio controlled lawn mower, ;)

The easy way is to remove the Battery for about thirty seconds, and it will reset all the Motherboard settings to default and when it's booted will check for all the components attached as it did when it was first built :) the not so easy way is to find the reset jumper, lol that done just pull the jumper of the two prongs its on and put it onto the Centre and third prong and count to ten the put it back to where it came from. what you are looking for is a little 3 prong connector by the battery normally, but no guarantee, that has a jumper across two of the connectors, it might be labeled CMS, SET, CMOS, RESET, or if your really lucky RESET CMOS, but then some don't even have that. But you will also have to go through and reset and Bios settings that change, or weren't set to default, Phone Camera, Hint ;) saves on writing ;)

At least the HDD appears to be working, so I would replace the cable, put the original master back in, replace the slave drive (Don't forget the jumpers :)) Re-set the cmos, and Boot up with fingers crossed ;)

while your looking for your XP CD it might still be an Idea to swap the slave to master and disconnect the present master, at least then we will ether get a no Boot file error or alike, or you will get a No HDD found error or similar, But if it is the hdd that's died, you wont be able to get chkdsk to run on it and so wont need your XP CD ;)

Hi Kitty I take it were talking IDE given the age? I would disconnect the master and plug the cable that currently goes to the master into the slave, Don't forget the jumper if it's IDE Then reset the Bios, Then if it's recognised in the Bios I would Boot from the XP CD and run chkdsk on it. this should Narrow down whether its a Disk or Motherboard Problem as it will be running from a Port that is known to be good, and if the ports good we will find out if the disks ok and can take it from there :)

13? 14? lol never mind thanks for letting us know, has no one told you that you should not allow teenagers near IT, they will have it working and set up, while your still working out where the power button is reading the manual :D

Déjà vu lol Happy Birthday Nev and all the best hope you have a nice day :)