theres alot of factors on your hand drive that effect your performance...
the best way is to regularly wipe your pc with the restart disks... everything can be backed up...
Baring that... You need to do the following on a 2 week/1 week basis...
Clear out all files you don't want
burn as much off as you can
Run windows(or norton and the likes) Drive cleaner
Get a windows Reg cleaner
Run windows(or norton and the like) Defragger
Get some form of windows error checker
Get some form of windows optimiser
Anyone know of any good software I'm open to recomendations... I'm currently trying to find the best in all catagories...
Last but not least.. Open up your PC and hover out all the dust... Try to get around the heat sinks and fans.... I recomend you remove all the wires and gently hover over it... then use a duster to get the rest... BE CAREFUL THOUGH! its fragile!
Dust can cause the PC to over heat and grow noisy... plus dust reaks!!!!
With a 40gb hard drive though.... how are you a hardcore gamer??? that pc must be old or a laptop... I would of though A serious gamer would keep upto date!
On a budget, college student here. I keep up well given the circumstances, i wager. I have a GeForce 6600 256mb vid card, 1 gig of ram and a cable connection, a laser mouse, surround sound and a 19inch flat monitor. Works fine for me, for now.
And trust me, I am a serious gamer. when i get outta school, i'm gonna get/make the uber ultimate PC gaming system and update everytime a better performing piece of hardware comes out thats worthy, what, like every 6 months.
Until then, bills 1st..
__________________ "The darkside, Sidious, is an illness no true Sith wishes to be cured of, my young apprentice .."
I use to think like that... then I realised.... I might as well get a games system... they got most of the games... and you don't have to piss around with all the faults that can happen.... And I use to think there would be alot less cheating...
At the risk of "off topic-ness" what games do you play???
I gave up on consoles in like 2001, i think, went into PC gaming and never looked back. But I must say that the next Gen systems are looking hot. But there's nothing like PC gaming.
I use to fiercely play: MOH:AA, Warcraft 3, Call of Duty and the expansion pack, Battlefield '42, Nam sucked, Medieval: Total War, Command and Conquer: Generals, i liked Max Payne 1&2, Battlefront 1, Half Life 2, Doom 3, KOTOR, the Jedi Knight/Academy games, some counter strike, Beat all these games within a month except KOTOR, it took me more than a few weeks to beat it, not into RPG but since i love SW, i figure I'd try it and i loved the story too.
I play:
Battlefield 2, Act of War, Battlefront 2, thats about it.
Waiting for Battlefield 2-Special Forces (expansion pak) due Nov. 22 and Star Wars: Empire @ War due Feb '06
Why, what do you play..?
__________________ "The darkside, Sidious, is an illness no true Sith wishes to be cured of, my young apprentice .."
So can I buy a Hard Drive, install it in my PC and have my PC automatically add the gigs onto my computer? Like i'd have 2 hard drives. Or will I have to completely replace my current Hard Drive and just get a higher capacity gig Hard Drive?
__________________ "The darkside, Sidious, is an illness no true Sith wishes to be cured of, my young apprentice .."
You can get an external HDD, which I think plug in to a USB (not sure though) but if you get an internal, you will have to replace your current hard disk, and reinstall Windows and everything.
Gender: Male Location: Chaos.
There can only be CHAOS!
Not necessarily. You can have two or more physical hard drives. I have two on my VAIO, and I plan on adding a second to this machine as well. External HD's are usually much slower than an internal, and unless you were transporting large amounts of data on it, I wouldn't recommend external.
not only does getting a higher gig capacity Hard Drive work well but one also has to look at the rpm's, i dunno if thats the correct terminology.
It's basically how fast the drives spins, which can mean a lot.
It's possible to have 2 of the same capacity hard drives, like say two 40 gig hard drives but the one with the higher "revolutions per minute" will be better and faster for your PC. It'll cost a bit more though. I'd cough up the extra loot cause Im a heavy gamer with a need for PC speed.
__________________ "The darkside, Sidious, is an illness no true Sith wishes to be cured of, my young apprentice .."
Im gonna revive this thread instead of starting an entirely new one.
Im starting to run a bit low on space (not too low, but enough for concern) and I noticed that I have the option to "compress drive to save disk space". I was wondering if this is a good thing to do, and what the pros and cons are to compressing the hard drive.
To compress data is to make files and any other type of stored info smaller for the purpose of having more space (a higher capacity) in your Hard Drive.
It is a good thing to do moreso if you need space badly. The con in retrieving any compressed file is that it would take longer than usual to retrieve it due to the PC having a hard time finding the compressed file cause it's so small now among anything extra you have added on your Hard Drive on top of other forms of data that are in your Hard Drive that are not compressed.
If you have the option available, you can always get a higher Gig capacity Drive; it'll solve all your problems. If not, compress.
__________________ "The darkside, Sidious, is an illness no true Sith wishes to be cured of, my young apprentice .."
I installed a 80GB hard drive after my 120GB HDD started to fill up, you dont need RAID to install a second Hard Drive.
Also you can go out and purchase a mobile hard drive for very cheap price, it goes connected via usb cable and there wouldnt be a need to install a hard drive.
I also wouldnt recommend to compress your hard drive because it takes longer to load your your stored files because it has to go thru the process of uncompressing then compressing when your done.
If you've got the internal space for it, you can easily stick more than one harddrive in your computer. You don't necessarily need to replace your old one. I had to put my mom's harddrive into my computer to recover some files after it got corrupted by a power surge and it accessed them fine.
As for where to get a new harddrive, online I would check newegg.com, they've got tons of stuff and are decently priced, as well as free shipping on a lot of items. If you have a Microcenter or Fry's store near you (if you live in the US), check those as well. I plan on building myself a new PC this winter and I'll probably be using all three for the parts. You can get a 250gb harddrive for under $100 if you know where to look.