Rip I installed my HD myself "read its really easy" These guys are making it sound complicated.
Using rosco's non geek terms
1: Set it as master, it will be stamped in the hd itself or have a sticker with jumper positions.
2: Put it on the main ribbon, "the right most connector on the MB" with the red wire facing out
3: Make sure the next device in that same ribbon is set as slave "reread #1"
4: Use boot disk, start comp and at the prompt type fdisk and it will tell you what to do basicly, creat a partition, make it bootable enter volume lable "i just hit enter for volume lable, for none" then youll have to restart.
5 restart and then format your new partition. format/c youll have to restart ag ain i believe
6 restart with cd rom support and start your windows installation
I created 2 partitons, one main one and a second one for my data, MP3's and stuff. That way I can wipe the c partition, start from scratch and not have to copy my fav music back to HD from cd every time. This doesnt mean you dont do regular backups though
And i bought a ibm deskstar, 30 gb. It works, its really quiet, what else does one need?
Sit down with your geek friend and watch what he does, nothing to it at all. All this techno babble isnt necessary. Its only purpose is to confuse us computer illiterate people. Fat this DMA that, who cares, you tell the guy at the store what you have, he sells you something compatable with your system and you just do it. you dont need to know all that stuff