I want to upgrade my hard drive from 20 gb to 160 gb.Can i just plug it in and use sys. restore disk for my os

Answer 1

You can do that, but that just creates a factory image of the original system on your 160gb drive, without any of the software or files you have installed/saved since you first got the machine.

At the very least, you'll probably want to copy your "My documents" folder and any pictures/music from your 20gb drive to CD or a USB drive and copy them back afer you've finished the system restore. And of course, reinstall any application software like Office, printer drivers etc.

Of course you could also reconnect your original 20mb drive as a secondary/slave drive and copy things directly, without using removable media.

Your machine would have to be VERY old (more than 7 years, probably) for the BIOS to have that 32gb limitation... Even if the BIOS was that old, you could buy a $20 drive controller card to get around that.

Answer 2

Not necessarily. Some older BIOSes does not recognize a Hard Disk capacity of more than 32 Gb. This is known as a 32 Gb limit. Windows 2000 Professional and XP Professional cannot format a volume larger than 32 GB in size using their native FAT32 file system.

But this is only if you have BIOS that is rather old and if you decide to format the Drive in FAT32 File system. If you use NTFS system it will work. The BIOS still has to recognize the Hard Disk Drive. Since you computer has a 20 Gb Hard Disk drive now we cannot be sure that a 160 Gb Hard disk will even work. Find out more about your Systemboard and its BIOS and only then decide whether you are going to buy a larger capacity Drive.