Hi guys, thanks for the replies, so sorry its taken such a long time to come back. I'm very easily distracted! To be honest the fear of disaster and minimal benefits meant I lost enthusiasm too. But now I really have to make the jump because our new digital camera comes with software which needs xp and it means I cant connect the camera. (the card reader doesnt accept the SD HC card I bought either - isnt technology wonderful?).
So as its been so long I'm going to review how I do this again, so any more tips ideas please?
Maybe I should have explained the current set up a bit better...
the case has space for 2 HDD (having removed the floppy); the primary (?) slot is occupied by the older 19GB drive which is C and has 7GB space left. The second slot is taken by D drive (although disk manager shows it in 2 sections both labeled D, 128 and 21 GB) with 120Gb free, but IPODs might be coming to the household in the next 12 months and now pic files are 3x the size with the new camera. The larger drive is of course faster too but also noisier which is why i never bothered to swap it over so far. D contains pictures and music mostly (all pics backed up).
If I start spending on hardware then I will probably end up with a whole new pc as the power supply is sounding ill on start up and mobo wont do SATA. But if it aint broke now why not stretch it out for another 6 months to a year?
Incidently I've seen the posts about not touching xp SP3.
PS. Very happy with new canon ixus 870 camera (good price on amazon). One of my better purchasing decisions.