First you need to find a hard drive. Look online for the best deals. Obviously you want to pick one with more gigabytes of storage space, but pay attention to rpm, too. That tells you how fast the hard drive spins. The faster the hard drive, the better some programs will work, especially if you spend a lot of time writing data to the hard drive.

I also recommend getting a hard-drive enclosure. That way you can clone your current drive, then you just put the cloned drive in the laptop and boot up. That's what I'm going to show you how to do. If you don't use an enclosure and don't want to buy one, you'll have to do a clean install of the operating system on a blank drive, then restore your data from a backup.

I'm going to tell you about the cloning method here. The procedure is pretty much the same for Mac or PC. First you need cloning software.

For Windows, I've got two options. Clonezilla is less prone to errors, but you have to burn it to CD and boot off it, rendering your PC unusable for anything else.

Macrium Reflect can image the drive while you're still using Windows. Just don't go changing significant amounts of data while it's running.

For Macs, Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich software is super easy to use and clones the drive while OS X is running.

In both cases you're making a bootable copy of your current hard drive onto the new drive.

Next put the new drive in its enclosure and plug it into the laptop. Launch your preferred program, or boot from the CD if you're using Clonezilla. Make sure you're making a bootable copy and start things off! This can take several hours for larger drives. My 300GB drive took 4.5 hours to image. Once you have the drive copied. You'll need to take out your old drive and put in the new one.

The procedure varies for different computers. I'll talk about two examples. We'll start with a Windows machine.

Make sure the computer is off and unplugged. Touch something metal to make sure you don't still carry a charge.

In the old ThinkPad T61 I have, the hard drive is in a slot on the side. You unscrew one screw and the carriage slides out. Almost all hard drives are in some sort of carriage. Unscrew the drive from the carriage, and put the new drive in, screw it back up, and put it in the machine. Then boot up.

It should start just like normal, but with a lot more space on the hard drive.

Now let's switch to a Mac. Again make sure it's unplugged and touch something metal to discharge any static electricity you carry.

On this 15-inch MacBook Pro, the hard drive is underneath. Slide the silver lever to open up the bottom compartment. Unscrew the holding screw and remove the bar. Then pull out the drive and unhook it from the connector. Instead of a carriage, the Macs have four Torx T6 screws, so you'll need a torx screwdriver. Unscrew those and then screw them into the new drive. Now hook the drive back up, and slide it in so the screws sit in the little gaps made for them. Then replace the bar and screw it back in. Close things up and again, it should boot just like normal!

Consult your laptop's manual for exact instructions, but this should give you an idea of how it goes.

A nice mix of questions today, including SATA drives that can't be formatted properly, how to run DVD backups on Apple TV, and more.

Watch the show on CNET TV.

First Look

Windows & Ultimate Build 6801

Best of the Web

Noteflight

Insider Secrets

Create a multiroom iTunes music system

Discussion

Is Theora the video codec that will save us from the tyranny of video incompatibility? Your video calls

Rob's question: You can watch converted DVDs on Apple TV in several ways. Brian explained a way to use iTunes. You could also put them on an external drive, AppleTVHacks.net has a solution for that. Boxee is another solution, if you can get into the private beta.

Your calls
Looking for a good MP3 player for Linux? I like the Archos 605 WiFi, though it is a little bulky and pricier than the iPod Touch. You can use the iPod Touch with Linux, but it takes a little work. Here's a HowTo on syncing the iPod Touch with Linux.

Michael was having problems getting Windows to recognize all the bytes on his hard drive. Others who've faced this issue have had to tweak a registry setting to enable 48-bit LBA support. Here's a thread on Annoyances.org and another on Tech Support Guy that deal with this issue.

E-mail us!
Whether it's a regular text note, or a recorded video question, you can send it to cnetlive@cnet.com. Keep your videos to 15 seconds or less, post them to a Web site like Youtube, and then e-mail us the link.

I'm sure you're thinking two things.

1. Hidden operating system. Cool.

2. Why would I want to do that?

And I quote. "TrueCrypt allows you to create a hidden operating system whose existence will be impossible to prove." Let's say you're being extorted. You can reveal a password to a dummy operating system and they'll never be able to tell another OS exists. It could also be used to hide sensitive data from someone you share a computer with. Or for keeping private data private when inspected by a foreign government at a border-crossing.

In any case, first, you'll need to create a partition. I recommend GParted LiveCD for this. Although some folks speak highly of Parted Magic.

First, defragment the drive. Then run your partitioning software. If your new partition will be NTFS, make it 2.1 times the size of the first partition. If you're fine with FAT32, the new partition only needs to be five percent larger. Keep in mind if you use FAT32 you can't store files larger than four gigabytes.

Once you've partitioned, launch TrueCrypt. Choose System and Create a Hidden Operating System. Read the description and press OK. Read the bit about Hidden Operating System and press Next. It will ask you if your machine meets two criteria. It has no sensitive data. And the OS is already activated. If so, press yes. Read the warning about not letting the computer go into hibernation. Press OK.

Now we're into the real stuff. Tell TrueCrypt how many operating systems you're running. For this demo, I'm only running one. Next, it will ask you to set up the outer volume. This will be accessible by the dummy OS. Choose your encryption type. Then it will guess which is the new partition where the hidden OS goes. Confirm by pressing next.

Create an outer volume password. Now it will ask what file system to use for the outer volume. It will then ask to format the partition and warn you that this will destroy all data there. Make sure you don't have any data on that partition, then press yes.

Depending on the speed and size of your hard drive this can take a while. My partition was 60GB and it took a bit more than a half hour. Once the format is done, TrueCrypt will ask you to move some sensitive documents to the outer volume. Just to make the decoy operating system look plausible.

Once you've done that, press next and you'll begin setting up the hidden operating system. Again, choose your encryption. Choose a password substantially different from the one from the outer volume.

Then format the hidden volume. Press Format. Once it's done, press next. Now you'll need to create one more password for the decoy operating system. That's the operating system you're currently using. Press next. Again, it will create the encryption keys. Once you're ready, press next.

TrueCrypt will then prompt you to create a rescue disk, just in case anything bad happens. Press next and an ISO will be saved for you. Open your burning software and create a rescue disk from that ISO. Next TrueCrypt will encrypt the first partition and the copy the OS into the hidden volume.

TrueCrypt notes that this can take hours, or even days, depending on the size of the partition and speed of your computer. You can interrupt it and shut down or restart the OS but that means you'll have to start the whole process over again. So make sure you have the time for this step before continuing.

It will reboot into a very dos-y looking screen and ask for the hidden OS password. The process of copying the hidden OS took about 45 minutes for me. When done, it will ask you for the decoy operating system password, and then reboot into the main system. That system will become the decoy.

TrueCrypt will launch and ask to encrypt the decoy operating system. This again took about a half hour, but you can use the OS while it's being encrypted. Although it does slow things down a bit more if you do.

And that's it.

Next time you boot, you put in the hidden OS password and you'll be taken into the hidden OS. If you put in the decoy password you will be automatically taken to the decoy OS. And you should go to that OS every so often so it looks lived in.

A couple more notes. Remember you can't save files from the hidden OS to the outer volume. Otherwise that would defeat the purpose of the decoy OS.

And I'd definitely recommend a good thorough read of the documentation at truecrypt.org. And if you love the software, why not drop a few pennies in the donation jar.