I am always amazed when people say they have loads of photos or music that they do not want to lose or cannot replace yet have never backed up these valuables. If your hard drive fails tomorrow you have a very real problem. You are not alone in this and I am not trying to be mean spirited but if you fail to look after you and your possessions then who will? For less than $50 you can buy a name brand DVD-RW and for under $20 you can buy 100 blank DVDs. You can buy a lesser amount of blanks of course, that is a choice you can make. The DVD will come with software you install to use it. Or if you already have blank CDs you could use those in the DVD burner. If you back some of that stuff up and remove it from this computer it may well run faster because you will have more free space on the hard drive for the swap file to work better. Does your activity light come on frequently and stay on for long periods? If so this is an indication the swap file is have a problem. Then if you really want to get carried away you can visit Big Lots where they have (or did recently in the Buffalo, NY store) CD or DVD labels and the software to create your own labels for $10 or $11. Another option would be to install this hard drive as a slave in the new computer you intend to buy. You would need to check that there are compatible data connections in the new computer. Older hard drives are IDE or ATA but the newer and faster technology is SATA.

What great options. Digitizing a lifetime of music, voice recordings, movies, etc sure is time consuming. But it's wonderful there are so many options out there. Raven- I had forgotten all about Heartland catalogue. It's been probably 20 years since I ordered from them. Those are some great gadgets. The one with lp too is a bit pricey - esp. since I have a cd recorder connected to my turntable. It's a lot less convenient than having it by the computer - but it works well. The one for just tapes looks good. Grandms'- I don't need the turntable portion, but your post made me think that with the right cables (do you happen to know what they are?) I should be able to hook up my old compact stereo/cassette player to my computer. My question about that has always been that I don't think i have an input into my sound card. Does that mean I have an integrated sound card (without its own input port). But there must be cables that could transfer from a stereo to a usb port. Heck - are there cables that go to a firewire port - or perhaps that's overkill for music files. What's Pyro? Did that come with turntable - or just a program you have? I assume Roxio cd creator could do that - burn a cd? how did you find Cakewalk easier than Audacity? I think I've heard good things about both. And Urlee and Jean love Audacity and find it easy. So I'd appreciate any other thoughts in deciding which software to use? Thanks. Lynn.

You can "export" your email addresses to a USB drive and "import" them on your new computer File->Export->Address Book->Text File-> using "Browse" find the location of your USB drive. Name your file and follow the steps in the wizard to finish. On your new computer go to File->Import and follow the steps to import the data from your USB drive You can do the same for exporting/importing your Internet Favorites. It is located under File->Export. Just follow the wizard. I have never had any luck moving the actual email files. I am sure there is a way - but every attempt I have made has failed. I know there was a software you could purchase to "back up" OE, and then restore it on a new machine. I didn't want to buy anything though. You could try forwarding the emails (from your old machine) that you want to keep to yourself - then retrieving them on the new machine.

You did not provide enough information about your two computers for someone to be able to make an accurate recommendation, and you did not wish to buy 'anything'. This is a challenge, but her goes anyway. I'll be making a lot of assumptions about your two systems. First off, you said both computers had XP as operating systems, so I assume that the new computer is set up and running, and all you want to do is transfer data files, and not installed software. Secondly, I assume that both computers have only one hard drive each, and if so, the chore become easy. You will need, however, a second IDE drive cable for hooking up a 2-drive system. [See also the end of this message about "thumb drives"] a. Remove the hard drive from the old computer and set its jumper to "slave". b. Look at the hard drive in the new system and insure that it is set to "master". If has no jumper in place, ass one in the "master' postiion. c. Commect the old hsrd drive to the second IDE conector. With caution, you don't have to install the old drive into a bay. Tape some cardboard across the bottom of the drive to prevent it from shorting the exposed solder points. d. Boot up and both drives show show. Create whatever folders and/or subfolders that you require on the new drive and merely 'copy' files from the old drive to the new as desired. The transfer will be super fast compared to other methods. I recommend using "copy" over "move" because if anything happens, you will still have the files on the old drive. e. After the files have been copied, shut down and remove the old drive and its data cable. d. Close up the new computer and you are done. You can leave the 'master' jumper on the new drive. If the old drive is not too old, it can be used as a second drive in the new computer or as a external drive throgh a USB connection. To use as a USB drive, you will have to buy an adapter and put the drive into this adapter. But before you buy the adapter, check out the prices of external drives already housed in a case for USB ports. There may not be much difference in price. As an alternative, you can get "thunb drives" that plug into a USB port and use this for data storage and file transfers. I do not recommend using a thumb drive as a hard disk since these do have limited write/rewrite life. By the way, if you do not have humungeous amount of data to trandfer to the the new computer, you can use a 'thumb drive' for this. These came in several capacity sizes, BUT you will have to buy one. These are very easy to use and do not require an installation work - just plug and go (afer the system finds and recognizes the drive) and most are 'hot' swappable meaing you can plug and unplug without powering down. One caveat: before unplugging, click on the "safetly remove hardware" icon in XP's lower right tray. A popup menu should appear showing the installed storage devices. Click (or double-click) on the device you are about to unplug and wait until the system tells you it is ok to remove. Why do this? This is done to insure that all files on the storage device have been properly closed thus removing the danger of smashing a file on the next write to the device.