[tjpearson]

Hello,

This is the second posting with this request but as I've not had any answers so I thought I'd try this forum.

My internal hard drive is beginning to pack up in my Compaq lap top, can I do a reinstall of the operating sytem to my external Maxtor hard drive and use it as the lap tops hard drive rather than paying out to replace the internal.

Thanks

[Hybr!d]

Yes, regardless swapping the internal is childs play and the drives are cheap as chips.

[tjpearson]

Thanks for that, my problem is that I believe Compaq put the operating system on a partioned part of the drive and supply recovery disks. How would I know if the disks are recovering the system from the hard drive or installing from the disks. I know this sounds like a stupid question but I've had so much trouble with my PDA Mobile Windows with regards to what it thinks I'm stealing as software even though it's purchased. What I mean is, if I put a new drive in the Compaq will there be issues of warnings spouting up such as 'this is not a recognised drive' or 'your windows disk does not beong to this drive' and so on. What starts as buying a cheap drive will then possibly force me into buying a new operating system as well, wives understand less than me on this subject but her answer is to not spend at all. I also think if I can get by utilising the external, until I can afford a new computer next year, would do. If the operating system back up is on a partitioned part of the internal, can I copy this some how to the external and then reinstall/recover whatever to the external drive. If this is so, as you say, please how! I realy appreciate the help here.