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  • PC World editors make your system tweaks and upgrades easier than ever with visual guides that take you through each process step-by-step.
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Step-By-Step: Get Maximum Speed From Your New Drives

Stan Miastkowski

It's a buyer's market for drives. Low prices for fast CD-RW drives, cutting-edge rewritable-DVD drives, and the most recent generation of high-capacity hard drives make it a perfect time to upgrade. But unless you do some installation planning, you may be disappointed with the performance of your new peripherals. Your new CD-RW drive might create coasters instead of finished discs, and in some cases your PC could slow down.

But that doesn't mean you should be reluctant to upgrade. Just follow the tips presented below to make sure that your new peripherals will be on friendly terms with your PC's existing drives.

For more of the nitty-gritty details of installing drives, see "Install a Bigger, Faster Hard Drive" in the June 2001 issue and "Manage Your Drive Connections" in the November 2000 issue.

And as always, do a complete backup before you start your upgrade project.

Stan Miastkowski is a contributing editor at PC World. Address your questions to him at stan_miastkowski@pcworld.com.

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