Can somebody give me a step by step guide to doing this?

I want to keep all the data on my existing hard drive btw. It has sensitive info, my entire music library.
I want to keep the MS Office on there but since it's an illegally copied version will this cause problems?
Do I have to reinstall windows and will that destroy my data?

What bits do I stick where, what copying software if any is needed.

Or should I just lug the tower to the PC shop and let them do it?

It partly depends upon which drive you're going to use to run your system. If you use your existing drive as storage, you'll need to format a new hard disk, then load Windows, and probably most of your programs - not sure you can run MS Office from a hard drive that is not yourmaster drive (the one which runs the system), though I might be wrong.Music files you can keep on yourexisting drive.

Somewhere on the cable connectingyour existing drive to the motherboardyou should find another connector (plus one for power), which is where your new drive fits. You should also have aslotto fix the drive in with screws in line withyour existing drives.

You'll also need to configure the jumpers on each drive to tell your system which is master (your system drive)and which is slave (storage).If you don't know what I'm on about talking about 'jumpers', tell me and I'll explain more - if you don't do this your system won't work.

Some drives will come with a utility disk which will help you through the process; the same programs on those disksare often downloadable if you go to the drive manufacturer's website (like Maxtor or Seagate). Theutilitiesmight allow you to copy files from one drive to another without having to reinstall programs - I have done it before, but don't know whether it's a regular procedure. Probably better to have the ability to install programs from a CD if you can, if you've got product keys and so on.

Kinda summarised it here, will explain differently if need be.

Im not keeping the old one, it's too small. I want to keep the new one only

So you'll be running from one drive? In that case, you might be able to copy files from one to the other, but you'll need to connect them to the system at the same time to do that. That's easiest with one of the disk utilities, which you can get when you buy the drive. You can use it to format the new drive, and then copy. The stuff about jumpers is still relevant, if only as something to check.

If you go to a computer fair, ask the person selling you the drive for what you need.

So is it better to keep both drives then? I mean can any motherboard even do that or do I have to check and see first?

Thanks for that

What is the size of your current drive?

If you have a music library on there it can't be terribly small.

Umbra is correct in suggesting running a second drive and keeping the master.

What I suggest is to simply chain the new drive (you don't need to run both on the same cable as you should have primary and secondary connectors on your mainboard)-set up the second drive in the BIOS. If you're not sure about how to set the jumpers just remove the jumper completely which usually defaults the drive to canle-select. As the old drive should already be set as active, you needn't do anything to it.

If your new drive is quite large you REALLY should create as many reasonably sized partitions as possible. Say it is an 80GB drive, then divide by some number-8 will give you 10, just under 8GB; 10 will give you 8-you get the idea.

You don't need to do anything to the old drive. Just plug the new one in, start up windows and go to the disk management application in the control panel/administrative tools/computer management. from there you can pretty much do anything you want-

Unfortunately in XP the fdisk utility is on-existent, which I personally prefer over graphical disk management. You can still use fdisk if you have an ME bootdisk, and if you go this route just be careful to CHANGE DRIVES and answer NO when prompted to use the entire drive as a primary and extended partition.

If you're nervous about not being able to 'see' what you're doing just unplug the old drive while you're working. Of course you'll need to wait for the F1 prompt once the BIOS fails to detect it; OR you can tell the BIOS that it isn't there anyway-but then you'll need to re-set with auto-detection when done.

Once you're new drive is set up all you need to do is format your partitions (again you can do this from within Windows), create new directories for whatever and then drag-n-drop right into them!

Be sure to create at least one Program Files folder per logical drive, and reserve the LAST LOGICAL drive you create for virtual memory. Name it VRAM and set the minimum and max allocation for the partition.

While cloning utilities are okay I would have to say that that sort of thing is usually best in a network environment. I say this because what you wnat to avoid is the need to install more software on the system to get the job done-and anything could go wrong in the meantime. You have better control manually even though you might sweat a little...