Exteral Hard-drive?

[fosseboy83]

Hi folks,

my computer is on its arse but wont have the cash to replace it for a couple of months. Its starting to run slow and really piss me off.

If i bought an external HD and transferred all my music (90% of the HD space) and non-essential stuff to that and cleared the hard-drive would that help the situation?

any advice would be ace.

Cheers

 

[Jeff]

Hi folks,

my computer is on its arse but wont have the cash to replace it for a couple of months. Its starting to run slow and really piss me off.

If i bought an external HD and transferred all my music (90% of the HD space) and non-essential stuff to that and cleared the hard-drive would that help the situation?

It depends what's causing the slowness.

I would start by checking what's running when the system starts up, you probably have loads of stuff running that's not required. Stop anything that's not essential from running and it can speed things up and free up some RAM.
Also do a full virus scan and defrag your hard drive.

Getting more RAM might be a better way to speed things up than getting an external hard drive, but the hard drive might be more useful when you get a new PC.

 

[Matt_B]

It depends what's causing the slowness.

I would start by checking what's running when the system starts up, you probably have loads of stuff running that's not required. Stop anything that's not essential from running and it can speed things up and free up some RAM.
Also do a full virus scan and defrag your hard drive.

Getting more RAM might be a better way to speed things up than getting an external hard drive, but the hard drive might be more useful when you get a new PC.

Also, if the slowness if being caused by a virus or adware etc then it could conceivably jump across to the portable harddrive. If you have downloaded some of the music illegally or any other files then they could even be the source, and backing them up would transfer it to the new HDD. As soon as you then put them onto your nice new shiny PC you are back in the same situation.

 

[Macky]

Hi folks,

Hi fussyboy,

what operating system do you have?

 

[fosseboy83]

Thanks guys, system appears to be clean, think its just age. and capacity. gave it a bit of a clean up.

Mackster, im on XP

 

[Macky]

Thanks guys, system appears to be clean, think its just age. and capacity. gave it a bit of a clean up.

Mackster, im on XP

Computers don't slow down with age in of themselves, it can always be made to run as fast as it ever was when you first bought it.

Getting everything backed up onto an external idea is definitely a good idea, whatever you decide to do. Did you get restore discs with the PC or do you have the XP install discs?

A good place to start would be to clear out the startup list, that usually makes a huge difference.
To do that, close any windows that are open then go to the Start menu and select Run. In the box that opens, type msconfig and click OK or hit Return.
In the window that opens, click on the Start Up tab, then click on the Disable All button, then Apply, then OK. You'll get prompted to restart the PC, go with the restart and when you log back into your desktop you'll get another prompt, tick the box that says something along the lines of "Don't show this message again or blahdeeblahdeeblah" then close it.
If you have anti-virus or a firewall installed, it's important to manually start them first time after you reboot, they'll enable themselves in your startup list again after you run them.

 

[fosseboy83]

much appreciated. i'll get an external to back, will make it easier when i finally do get a new PC and give this a bash.

ta very much