How do i make my computer perform better ?

[tricky69]

I have a pentium 4 desktop, it has a very small harddrive and runs very slowly.
I have decided the best thing to do to combat the HD is to buy a new external one, as this computer is going to be used to download music and general backup of files i thought this would be fine....(correct me if i am wrong)

But want i want to do is increase the speed at which the computer works.... how easy is this to do ?

[puggit]

Unfortunately using Windows tends to bung up the machine over time - here are some steps to try and improve matters. Add more diskspace won't tend to improve performance unless you add a faster disk and use that instead (call that step 5 or 6)

1st step (free). Clear up the desktop. Take EVERYTHING off, or have a few shortcuts only. Everything on the desktop is loaded to memory and uses up resources at start up especially.

2nd step (free). Use disk defragmenter (go to windows explorer, right click on the drive, properties, tools, defragmenter).

3rd step (free). Use something like CCleaner (www.ccleaner.com) to clean off lots of rubbish.

4th step - Add more memory/RAM - depending on config could add the most speed to machine

5th step - Add more processor power - probably not necessary.

[tricky69]

thanks for your help mate, if i am going to be using this computer just for download and storage ( using external hd ) does it matter too much how fast it is ? How does it ffect download time ? or is that all to do with internet connection ?

[Tripps]

puggit said:

3rd step (free). Use something like CCleaner (www.ccleaner.com) to clean off lots of rubbish.

Cool, that's a rather handy tool, saved me 1/2 a GB on my laptop

Been doing the cleaning task manually for ages and meaning to find a tool to automate it but never got around to it.

Now, do I dare use it on by Vista Beta 2 machine...

[puggit]

tricky69 said:

thanks for your help mate, if i am going to be using this computer just for download and storage ( using external hd ) does it matter too much how fast it is ? How does it ffect download time ? or is that all to do with internet connection ?

Ahhh - ok.

Most of it will be down to internet connection. There isn't too much you can do about this, but I'd suggest if you're really keen that cable broadband from NTL () will provide a good fast connection - which doesn't slow down like ADSL can.

You might want to consider getting a system with striped disks for faster disk access using RAID 0 (or RAID 10 which is also mirrored for redundancy). Striping is when you read/write from 2 or more disks at the same time.

[Tripps]

puggit said:

You might want to consider getting a system with striped disks for faster disk access using RAID 0 (or RAID 10 which is also mirrored for redundancy). Striping is when you read/write from 2 or more disks at the same time.

No don't use RAID 0 unless you really know what you're doing or have backups available.

Yes it gives you extra speed in some circumstances, but your whole system is then dependant upon two or more drives, with a corresponding decreae in mean time between failure, which bearing in mind hard drives are the weakest link in terms of PC reliability (after Windows of course ) is not a good thing.

With the speed of modern drives and the purposes tricky69 has in mind, the extra potential speed gain won't be of much use anyway.

[tricky69]

OK, WELL THE INTERNET I AM USING IS 10MB TELEWEST BROADBAND... best i could get !

If i am using it just for downloading then do i need the extra speed or shall i just get a 200gb exteranl HD ?

[pincher]

I've had exactly the same problem recently - a 3 year old Pentium 2.4Ghz and it was running like an absolute dog even though the HD was only half full.

I tried CCleaner (as mentioned above) and it made very little difference in performance, although it did clear out loads of crud.

I then tried TuneUp Utilities (you can get a free 30 day trial from ZDNet (here) and it founds loads more stuff that CCleaner didn't find. You can also manage what gets fired up at Startup, as well as performance optimization tools etc. It currently has a 94% positive User rating too, which is very rare from ZDNet, given the number of downloads.

The best thing was that the system diagnostic tool it has was telling me that I was running at nearly 90% of my 256MB RAM. Off to Ebay and £22 & 512MB of new RAM later, it's absolutely flying - <30 seconds Startup compared to >5 minutes previously, even though I had disabled loads of stuff previously (using TuneUp)

My RAM is now at around 25-30% capacity - someone will probably come along soon and tell me otherwise, but I beleive that the RAM has made the world of difference.

HTH

[Tripps]

tricky69 said:

OK, WELL THE INTERNET I AM USING IS 10MB TELEWEST BROADBAND... best i could get !

If i am using it just for downloading then do i need the extra speed or shall i just get a 200gb exteranl HD ?

That actually Mbps as in megabits per second, as opposed to MB for megabyte, so a maximum transfer rate of less than 1 MB per second taking account of the surrounding packets of information that are also squirted down the line, lowered by other factors such as contention ratios (not sure if they are an issue for Telewest) and Internet usage in general.

That sort of transfer rate isn't an issue for any hard drive from the last five years really, unless the computer is clogged up doing something else.

Bearing in mind that the lowliest office network runs at a full-on 10Mbps, most at 100Mbps and an increaing amount at 1Gbps handling that level of Internet bandwidth won't be a problem.

So get the external hard drive for storage and as mentioned some extra memory could be helpful too depending on your operating system and how much memory you already have.