Replacement Hard Drive

[joroma]

Got to fit a new hardrive and still a bit unsure so would appreciate some advice:

1) How can I save the contents of my Outlook Express Mail Boxes so that I can keep my old emails?

2) I've got another two hard drives in my PC that I have backed up all my data and photos onto. When I reinstall XP how can I make sure it doesn't install it to one of these drives and not the newly installed one? Is it simply a case of making sure in my BIOS settings that the new hard drive is read first?

3) My version of XP never recognises the whole of my 160GB hard drive and I have to fomat it into partitions. Can I install XP then get the updates from Microsoft before formatting the drive which it should then hopefully see as a 160GB drive?

Any help much appreciated.

 

[joroma]

Thanks guys. As far as I can remember I have formatted the hard drive as part of the Windows XP installation process ie before installing SP2 when I last had to reinstall Windows. Are you saying I can go through the installation process then format the hard drive as a single partition?

I have backed up my documents and settings using the XP built in Back Up tool onto a seperate hard drive but I normally do a completely fresh install. Is this a good idea or should I simply Restore my Back Up??

 

[joroma]

It was around 125Gb and I think this is down to not having SP2 installed.

I have looked in the Outlook Express folder as advised above and can see some DBX files but Windows will not open them. Are these the files that I need to save??