New harddrive

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Guest

I have a compaq presario 4824 pent II 233mhz with 256 memory and only 6gig.
So I have only 2.21 gig free space. I want to speed things up. If I get a new
hard drive would that help, like a 20gig. I know I should just get a Pent 4
but can't afford at this time. What can I do to help this system.

Tmb867
 
A new harddrive would indeed help, as with only 2.21GB free on a 6GB drive
your harddrive is probably very fragmented, have you run Disk Defragmenter
lately? (You can get to this from Start, Programs, Accessories, System
Tools, Disk Defragmenter)

Another thing you may wish to consider aside from a new system (as Microsoft
lists 233MHz as the minimum requirement for Windows XP), is to upgrade your
memory to at least 512MB or more.

Hope this helps :)
 
Hardware upgrades won't help you very much. If your existing
drive is a 5400 RPM, you might get a little performance bump
going to a 7200 RPM. However, you're really limited by the
age of the Motherboard/Chipset. Even a memory upgrade from
256 to 512 isn't likely to improve performance. With prices on
new systems falling into the $350 range, you might want to save
your money and just go for a complete new PC.

For performance improvements, you should turn off XP's GUI
enhancements (Use Classic Theme), trim back System Restore
to a small allocation and make sure all your drivers are up to
date. On an older machine like yours, defragmenting the drive
on a regular basis will help. Sometimes a Motherboard, CPU
& Memory upgrade is advisable. With that you could get a MB
with on-board Video/Sound/Nic & USB2 for $70. You could
go for a AMD Sempron 2.4 Gigahertz for $75, 512 Memory
for $50. But you'd be at $200, so you'd be approaching the full
new system cost from Dell. Those prices are from my local
distributor and you might have to get a new Power Supply rated
300+ Watts. Without knowing your intended use, it's really hard
to advise you on the best approach.
 
In
tmb867 said:
I have a compaq presario 4824 pent II 233mhz with 256 memory
and only
6gig. So I have only 2.21 gig free space. I want to speed
things up.
If I get a new hard drive would that help, like a 20gig.
Click to expand...


It would probably help a little, since newer drives aren't just
bigger, but also faster.

Depending on what apps you run, adding more RAM may help too. But
don't expect that anything you do is going to turn an
intrinsically slow computer into a fast one.

I know I
should just get a Pent 4 but can't afford at this time. What
can I do
to help this system.
Click to expand...


Probably very little, and any money you put into it would be
better saved for a whole new system.
 
Ken Blake said:
In


It would probably help a little, since newer drives aren't just bigger,
but also faster.

Depending on what apps you run, adding more RAM may help too. But don't
expect that anything you do is going to turn an intrinsically slow
computer into a fast one.




Probably very little, and any money you put into it would be better saved
for a whole new system.
Click to expand...

Bear in mind that there may be BIOS limitations on drive size that you may
encounter if putting in a larger drive. These occurred at 504/528Mb, 2Gb,
4Gb, 8Gb, 33Gb and some other sizes. A BIOS upgrade may be needed to use a
larger hard drive (or a separate IDE controller card).
 
R. McCarty said:
. Even a memory upgrade from
256 to 512 isn't likely to improve performance.
Click to expand...

Have to differ with you on that one.

Going from 256 mb to 512 mb of RAM on any system running XP *will*
provide a performance boost.


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm
 
You're probably right, I just sort of omitted that since he was
inquiring about drives. However, Since most system's are now
using DDR, it seems like SDRAM is getting harder to find &
the prices have risen on it. My local supplier actually charges
more now for SDRAM than the equivalent DDR stick. But I
guess a ~$55 investment might get him some additional boost
and I would assume his correct configuration is maybe a single
256 module. (Has available update slot)

Thanks for the correction.
 
No, its not ging to help your performance. Not in any way.Your cpu is your
most likely bottleneck here.
 
After sticking his head out from his XP firewall, Manny Borges had this to
say:
No, its not ging to help your performance. Not in any way.Your cpu is your
most likely bottleneck here.
Click to expand...

I'd say his biggest bottleneck is the operating system he's running.
 
Ron Martell said:
Have to differ with you on that one.

Going from 256 mb to 512 mb of RAM on any system running XP *will*
provide a performance boost.
Click to expand...

That would depend to a great extent on the applications being run on the
machine. I type the same speed regardless of the amount of RAM in my
machine. ;-)
 
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