My System... Upgrades?

What's your hard drive configuration?

That's one I'd start with if you only have one.

For example:
Disk 1 - OS, System, Apps
Disk 2 - Audio Projects
Disk 3 - Samples (if you use a lot of them)

And, if you don't already have something like this:
A backup disk and some backup software... like Ghost or True Image or something (I used True Image before moving Windows to a Mac...). Not really an upgrade... more like a requirement for long-term sanity.

- zevo

If the machine has the slots for more than one hard drive (most desktops do), and the power supply has an extra cable (most of them do), then installing a new hard drive is really, really simple.

Opening the machine should be relatively straightforward (couple of screws or a latch).
Then find out whether if you have a bay and the power cable... and find out if your machine uses IDE or SATA drives.
Hopefully, it will be SATA (simpler cabling, and no jumpers for cable ordering... don't worry about what that means, just hope it's SATA and you won't need to worry about it).

The benefits are organization, as well as performance, as well as data protection/backup related:
- The organizational one is straightforward... everything's nice and "segmented" logically this way... no Program Files directory sitting right beside your projects and samples
- The performance one is because system drives are busy while you interact with programs, even if you're not opening/closing/saving anything... this "competes" with your audio project data, which works far better sitting on a drive with nothing else going on. Same with samples/loops in many cases (not all... depends on whether they stream from disk or are loaded into memory). Now, if you're projects don't have a lot of audio tracks, then it's not likely to just completely change your world or anything, the next point (below) of multiple drives still applies:
- Data protection/backups... drives fail. Keeping your data organized across separate drives reduces the amount of "restoration" you'll have to do should this happen (or if you get a virus or something). Also, keeping your projects/audio/samples/data files on separate drives helps simplify backup restores of the system drive (and you definitely need to be making at least system drive backups and project backups).

I have 6 drives for my machine:
1. System/Applications
2. Projects
3. Samples (first partition) and Data Files (second partition)
4. Video
5. Backup Drive 1 (Mac side)
6. Backup Drive 2 (Windows side)

You don't have to go that far, but everything is easily organized, relatively fail-proof, and backup restores are simple.

Good luck,
- zevo