Why did I buy a PC!!??

Erm.......The latest Ubuntu has ext 4 and cooperating with Windhoze is not really a love affair. I wouldn't go that route. Experimenting with Linux is fun, but not to solve this particular problem.

I happen to agree.

The Photomonk

Mobo drivers, HDD drivers etc can all be downloaded for free from the mfrs websites, just identify what you've got and let your fingers do the walking as we used to say.

Unless your mobo is really old then it should cope with SATA if it already has the connectors physically on it. My PC has XP and happily uses SATA drives. I've got XP on 1 HDD, and two other much larger drives as a mirrored raid array which suits me. IIRC there are some issues about the order of setting up raid arrays and installing XP, worth checking before getting your hands dirty, not a problem with some nvidia stuff though IIRC.

You should first check the Dell web site to see if a newer BIOS is available for your motherboard.

Why do you need/want a 1Tb partition for Windows?

Thanks for the kick up the butt guys (reminded me of a few things), went out for a couple of beers, calmed down, went back into the shop and got on with it.

Eventually found the drivers and found the USB floppy drive!

Put original drive back in, formatted both new drives as NTFS.

Got windows installed then hung around till 3 am making sure all updates were done so that I could come into the shop this morning with a (tired!) clear head.

Now to learn about all the different PCI slots so that I can get the 3 monitors running, as it's been several years since I've had my head in a desktop PC!

Thanks again!

Glad to hear things are working now

The new ATI cards support 3 monitors and up, might be the simplest solutions if you've PCIe (PCI express).
Something like the HD56xx or the HD57xx would be more then enough.

I had an external usb laptop drive go down a couple of weeks ago so took it apart and checked the Samsung drive on their web page and it still had 2 weeks warranty left (result) so sent it back. It was returned yesterday, put it all back in the case, plugged it in .. nothing, not a sausage. Emailed the returns depot and had a right go about them about sending the same drive back and it not working (same date as the one I sent).

Got a email back saying it was a different drive and quoted the serial numbers .. yup, different drive ok but still not working.

Then I realised it probably wasn't being found because it was a new drive and not recognised by Windows ... went to disk managment and formatted it .. works fine now

Well... now I've got to deal with all the crap again.

Windows update - update the update program first.

Then update the update program again....

Software taking 2-3 times as long to load compared to the massively slower laptops I used to use. Machine was bought to be faster, typical.

Keyboard and mouse stop working for no bloody reason so have to re-boot

Microsoft Security essentials refusing to install, please reboot. Reboot and still won't install.

Updates saying Windows isn't genuine, after it's been activated and verified.

Updates saying Office isn't genuine after it's been activated and verified.

Just the usual.........

It's at times like that you just want a Mac/MacPro with VirtualBox

Best of both worlds then!
Matt

We use a lot of Dell Precision computers at work, and have good experience.

But extremely large haddisks for operating system has never been a good option. Why not run Windows on the original 80 GByte disk, and use the other disks vor data/programs? I'm pretty sure you will find the system much more resposive.

And install at lease 2 GByte of RAM. Lots of memory is the best gift for any computer (and XP will support up to 3 GByte).

A modern 1TB disk may run faster than an old 80GB disk. Unlocker has a second 1TB disk for data, though it would make sense to use some (most) of the first 1TB disk for data as well.

On a big disk containing Windows, I would make a 30 or 50GB partition for Windows, and another for data, to minimise defragmentation and to simplify backups.

Agreed, that is the way I normally set up a large harddisk. However, since the 80 GB disk already was at hand, I thought it might just as well be used.

Simple reason for wanting to use the full 1TB is that I will be installing several hundred GB of flash files for phones. As an example the 100MB flash installation for the Nokia 6230i uncompresses to 1.8GB! An extreme example perhaps, but multiply that enough times and 1TB might not be enough!

These automatically go into Program Files, and is where all the software I use will expect to find them, so primarily this is for ease of use and time. Once installed I can just copy them to the 2nd 1TB as backup, so next time I won't have to go through several hundred installations, just leave it to copy 800GB+ over night!

Have been meaning to do this for 2 years now since I didn't have the need to work mobile anymore, and with one of the laptops dying, took the opportunity to go back to a desktop with cheap massive storage, which to be honest is the main priority. Speed helps with uncompressing all those files too!