Gallery: Extend your storage

Unplug everything from your PC and refer to the owner’s manual to find out how to open its case. Before you touch anything inside the PC or the new hard disk, it’s important to touch something grounded, such as a tap or radiator pipe, with your other hand first to get rid of any static electricity or use an anti-static wristband. Once inside, look for the existing hard disk and see if there’s a spare drive slot next to it. Check to see how the existing disk is fitted to the PC. It may be simply screwed in place, but here the disk is held in using two green sliding rails. If this is the case, locate the spare rails and fit them to the sides of your new disk before sliding it into place.

Once the new disk has been slid or screwed into place, it’s time to connect the cables. There should be a spare power cable nearby, and in this case there’s a spare plug on the end of the power cable connected to the original disk. Plug this into your new disk. Next, connect the interface cable to the socket on the hard disk. Here we’re using a SATA disk, so we’ve connected the new, red SATA cable to the new disk. The cable’s plug is a special shape so that it’s impossible to connect it the wrong way around.

Connect the other end of this cable to your PC’s motherboard. Your computer’s manual should show you where to locate the SATA ports, but it’s usually easy enough to trace the cable that’s attached to the original hard disk until you see where it’s connected. Our Dell computer has four SATA connectors labelled 0,1,2 and 3. The original disk is plugged into the 0 socket. Plug your new SATA cable into another socket ­ we used socket 1 ­ and make a note of which socket you used. Your disk is now ready, so close the PC and plug everything back in.

Next, check your PC’s manual to see whether the spare SATA sockets need to be activated. If they do, turn on the computer, enter the BIOS setup utility and follow the manual’s instructions to enable the socket . The option you need should look like this photograph. Start your computer, go to Start, then Control Panel, then Performance and Maintenance and then the Computer management icon.

When the utility loads, click on Disk Management. You should see your new disk in the list. Right click on it and select Initialise Disk. Next, check the entry for your original hard disk: it should say either NTFS or FAT32. Make a note of which. Finally, right click on your new disk and select New Partition. Click Next, then select Primary Partition. Click Next, then Next again. On the Format Partition screen, select ‘Format this partition with the following settings’. From the File System dropdown, select the format you noted down earlier. Finally, click on Next and then Finish. Formatting will take some time to complete, so go and make several cups of tea.

When formatting is finished, your new disk is ready to use. Open My Computer, and check that you can see both your original hard disk and the new one you just installed. Right click on the new disk, then select properties. Here you can check the total capacity of your new disk ­ our 500GB model provides 465GB of space to Windows ­ and you can give your new disk a name by typing one in the box at the top and clicking OK.

When formatting is finished, your new disk is ready to use. Open My Computer, and check that you can see both your original hard disk and the new one you just installed. Right click on the new disk, then select properties. Here you can check the total capacity of your new disk ­ our 500GB model provides 465GB of space to Windows ­ and you can give your new disk a name by typing one in the box at the top and clicking OK.