upgrading hard drive in a Dell computer?

[nikko]

I have a Dell Dimension desktop that is running two 250 GB hard drives in RAID as a single 500 GB drive. When I boot up of late, I get the following error message: ?Warning: Dell's disk monitoring system has detected that drive channel 1 on the primary SATA controller is operating outside of normal specifications. It is advisable to immediately back up your date and replace your hard disk drive by calling your support desk or Dell Computer Corporation." So I assume one of the two drives is failing. I have a spare 250 GB SATA drive so I am planning on swapping it out with the one that's failing. My concern has to do with reinstalling the OEM version of Windows that came with the computer. Am I going to encounter any problems because the system configuration isn't exactly the way it was when it left the factory? Or is that just an issue if you change the motherboard?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

 

[GrammatonJP]

2 250 with 500 space = raid 0 or JBOD.. u can't just swap.. u need to image the drives out and swap and back in..

 

[DaveSimmons]

The restore CD looks at the motherboard not the hard drives, so it will work.

Like GrammatonJP said, you will lose all files and will need to reformat when you do the drive swap.