Another computer question.

Cal Price · February 08, 2009, 11:26:41 AM

I have about 23% free space on my hard drive, at what point should I start getting concerned and looking to shifting stuff to free up more space.

I recently upgraded my RAM memory to the max my pc will handle and re-loaded internet explorer as i was getting a problem with it taking an age to get online. The all round performance is now good but I think it still takes too long to get on-line but I can live with it.

joshr08 · February 08, 2009, 11:29:57 AM

how big is your hard drive? I have an 80Gig in my computer and ive never even came close to running low on space. if you dont want to dump anything you can always get another hd and run them together. That is if you have a deck top computer

trumpetguy · February 08, 2009, 04:14:30 PM

The HD space is not such an issue if you have plenty of RAM. When you have minimal RAM, the computer uses the HD as virtual memory (this is why it sped up when you got more RAM).

As long as you have a couple of gigs free, you're probably fine, now that you have sufficient RAM.

That being said, HD prices are pretty good right now!

ohgood · February 08, 2009, 05:07:55 PM

Quote from: Cal Price on February 08, 2009, 11:26:41 AM
I have about 23% free space on my hard drive, at what point should I start getting concerned and looking to shifting stuff to free up more space.

I recently upgraded my RAM memory to the max my pc will handle and re-loaded internet explorer as i was getting a problem with it taking an age to get online. The all round performance is now good but I think it still takes too long to get on-line but I can live with it.

1 - now

by getting online, do you mean dial-up ? maybe internet exploder just takes it's sweet time loading your home page ? set it to something light like www.google.com and it should help. most folks have ditched the heavy, flash intensive sites for more reasonable blah blah blah.

23% free space means you have a bunch of stuff, wether it's a 20Gb drive, or a 200Gb. i'd buy two more. one to move all your stuff to, and one to BACKUP to weekly.

ntfs needs a good defrag from time to time to speed things up. xp gets corrupted easily over time. re-loasds are likely still the only way to cure this. orrrrr switch to a better ... nevermind, wrong rant

scottpA_GS · February 08, 2009, 05:30:50 PM

I have to STRONGLY dissagree w/ Ohgood...

NEVER! NEVER! backup to an internal drive. Only backup to extrnal media that you can remove from the building or store in a fire proof box. Even if you used CDRs or DVD-Rs

Hard Drives are CHEAP! and yea using 2 is a great idea, move all your stuff to the new drive then format and re-install windows on the old drive... keeping all personal info on the seccond drive.. That way everytime you need to restore windows, you can w/o worying about loosing data.

I would reccomend an external 3.5 or regular IDE, SATA drive for back up... I have 1 terrabyte of storage in my PC on 2 500 Gig drives.. and one 80 gig running windows... then I back everything up to a Seagate external 1TB drive about every 2 weeks or so and lock it up in my safe.

No one wants to know what its like to loose all your pictures because of drive failure, house fire or electronic problems... BACK UP YOUR FILES, OFTEN and OFF SITE if possible

I work on PCs all day and its AMAZING how many business let alone home users dont back up their data.... And they never seem to understand that its gone forever! if you have extensive drive damage, or dont have over 1K to pay for some company to recover your burned up drive...

In your case I would say, buy an external... dump all your stuff to there, then restore the old drive w/ a fresh copy of windows... copy back over the files you need and keep a full backup on the external in a fire safe place

jserio · February 08, 2009, 06:15:00 PM

well, it's not "completely gone forever" if my understanding is correct. but it is extremely, extremely difficult and probably expensive to find things that have been "ereased" from your computer.

unless my undertanding is false. which may be the case.

scottpA_GS · February 08, 2009, 06:45:28 PM

Right... Just like I said.

Also recovery sometimes isnt an option if you have no idea what is gone. Its cheaper and safer to do an off site backup 100% un desputable.

annguyen1981 · February 08, 2009, 07:46:55 PM

Quote from: jserio on February 08, 2009, 06:15:00 PM
well, it's not "completely gone forever" if my understanding is correct. but it is extremely, extremely difficult and probably expensive to find things that have been "ereased" from your computer.

unless my undertanding is false. which may be the case.

The only way it's not "completey gone forever" is if the HD platters are intact and prestine. best case senario.... The head fails... the data is "safe".... Like Scottpa stated... it's EXPENSIVE to recover data from a damaged HD.

Worse case senario... hard drive burns in a fire. No data recoverable. aww.

If my post hasn't eluded you to my thoughts, I'll say it now. I complete agree with Scott.

(the bad thing is... I don't listen to my own logic and advice. No virus scanner ATM. No backup in sight.)

scottpA_GS · February 08, 2009, 07:52:38 PM

AVG Antivirus is free

yamahonkawazuki · February 09, 2009, 02:03:58 AM

Quote from: trumpetguy on February 08, 2009, 04:14:30 PM
The HD space is not such an issue if you have plenty of RAM. When you have minimal RAM, the computer uses the HD as virtual memory (this is why it sped up when you got more RAM).

As long as you have a couple of gigs free, you're probably fine, now that you have sufficient RAM.

That being said, HD prices are pretty good right now!

aye. but you can get another one HDD, set the original one to master, second to slave etc and go from there. or get an external one. ive got a 2540 on mine now. and am thinking of upgrading to a terabyte drive. on sale south of a hundred

Cal Price · February 09, 2009, 04:25:56 AM

Right guys thanks for the info.
I have dropped my IPs portal site in favour of simple search engines, two on tabs (Blackle and Magic Taxi)and i think this helps. There certaily is a load animated ads and stuff on the providers sites.

Supposedly Iget 8gig broadband band but it is usually a bit below this.

I also have an external hard drive with my stuff periodically backed-up. I recon I could probably keep stuff like pictures and music on the external drive and keep a minimum on my internal hard drive, hopefully that will do it. I am not a huge user but I do store a lot of pix & music.

yamahonkawazuki · February 09, 2009, 04:48:04 AM

www.carbonite.com

platinum_black · February 26, 2009, 11:02:15 PM

firstly it doesnt really matter how much you have used until it says warning you are running low on disk space, however the more of your hard drive you use up the slower your system will run.

secondly get rid of internet explorer because its gash and repalce it with firefox, its a damn site more secure, alot more adaptable, and it loads a damn site faster plus u can make it look like you want with skins,

ohgood · February 27, 2009, 04:28:31 AM

Quote from: scottpA_GS on February 08, 2009, 05:30:50 PM
I have to STRONGLY dissagree w/ Ohgood...

NEVER! NEVER! backup to an internal drive. Only backup to extrnal media that you can remove from the building or store in a fire proof box. Even if you used CDRs or DVD-Rs

Hard Drives are CHEAP! and yea using 2 is a great idea, move all your stuff to the new drive then format and re-install windows on the old drive... keeping all personal info on the seccond drive.. That way everytime you need to restore windows, you can w/o worying about loosing data.

I would reccomend an external 3.5 or regular IDE, SATA drive for back up... I have 1 terrabyte of storage in my PC on 2 500 Gig drives.. and one 80 gig running windows... then I back everything up to a Seagate external 1TB drive about every 2 weeks or so and lock it up in my safe.

No one wants to know what its like to loose all your pictures because of drive failure, house fire or electronic problems... BACK UP YOUR FILES, OFTEN and OFF SITE if possible

I work on PCs all day and its AMAZING how many business let alone home users dont back up their data.... And they never seem to understand that its gone forever! if you have extensive drive damage, or dont have over 1K to pay for some company to recover your burned up drive...

In your case I would say, buy an external... dump all your stuff to there, then restore the old drive w/ a fresh copy of windows... copy back over the files you need and keep a full backup on the external in a fire safe place

hmm, i didn't specify external/off site/etc. should have. right on scotty !

now, thar are specifics like raid0/1 etc, but since we're talking redundant external backups, let's assume that's already covered.

as far as re-installing winders - ya, it happens. shame really, since there are a billion pc's out there that require it so often. i have fresh disk images of (virgin, latest service pack, updates, etc) xp for the old man for when his computer takes a dump. takes about 25 minutes to clone one drive image to a freshly zero'd drive. i'm lazy and only zero write the first 1-2Mb, then format the rest ntfs.

dumping a disk image from one machine to antoher is such a fantastic idea. so glad 'dd' (linux/unix) and other mountable disk images with recursive file/directory synchronizing is possible. it completely rocks my socks.

someday, there will be a button on the side that just automagically clones the 'good' drive back onto the 'crappy' filesystem when the old man makes a mistake or whtever. until then, there is DSL (damnsmalllinux), ssh (openssh), and rcp/rsync. thank god for shells !

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