Random Access Memory (RAM) in our computers only holds information while the computer is turned on. Your word processor sits in RAM - as does that five page document you spent two hours typing in.
Turn your computer off, or (heaven forbid) you have a power cut, the contents of RAM is emptied and the word processor along with all that work simply disappears in a flash. You obviously need a way to save your work and that's where the hard disk drive (hdd) comes in.
Essentially magnetic media, the disc (or platter) inside the hdd works in a similar way to a cassette tape in as much as the information on it doesn't disappear when the power is turned off.
But, after we have had our computers for a while, the hdd can either fill up or even start to fail, causing slow loading times and error messages. In this article, we'll look at the former - adding another hdd when your current hdd is full.
How long your hard disk takes to fill up depends on how big it is and what you use your computer for.
For a normal computer user, this can take a very long time. In fact, some users will never fill the hdd in their computer.
But, if you've taken up amateur photography for example, and take hundreds of photos a week, you can fill up the hdd in a few months. If you've bought a new video camera and want to create, edit and store movies, filling a hdd can happen much quicker.
So if you get a message on your screen telling you that you are getting low on disk space, it's time to start deleting stuff... or sort out a new hdd.
Yes, you can always plug in an external USB hard disk, but if you are on a budget, you can fit an internal hdd for a lot less - or spend the same and get a much bigger hdd!
The actual process is fairly straight forward and if you know how to use a screwdriver you should find it quite easy.
Preparation:
The first thing I do is check the computer's BIOS to see the current hdd configuration. The chances are that the BIOS screen is something you've never seen before and I strongly suggest that after doing what I'm going to talk you through now, you don't go into it again.
We are only going to look at existing settings now, but there are things in the BIOS that you can change to the wrong values and although your computer won't blow up or anything drastic like that, you could stop Windows loading or even stop your computer from switching on.
To get to the BIOS, turn on (or restart) your computer and watch the bottom of the screen for a message which tells you what to press to go into the Setup screen.
On most computers it's the Del key (the Supr key on Spanish keyboards where I live), but on some computers it's the F2 or F10 key. I've even seen the Ctrl
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