Hard drive how big is to big??

noni1974

I have according to my computer a 149GB hard drive. That seems like an odd number to me. I'm not what you could call a computer expert or anything but I wonder if that's right. I though hard drive came in even numbered amounts like 80GB or 160GB. Not odd numbers like 149.

Ok now I have a question for you techy types out there. I have a 512MB memory hicky doo in my computer now. I looked at the Dell website and I can get up to 4 GB of memory. I have 2 memory slots and one is open right now. I could get another 512MB for a full GB or I could go bigger/faster and go with a 2GB or the 4GB memory hicky doo's. I read that they have to be paired up. So if I got a 2GB memory hicky doo I'd have to buy 2, 1GB memory Hicky doo's not 1, 2GB memory hicky doo's right??

Hicky doo = Name I can't remember for the part I'm talking about.

I have Windows XP as my OPS. How much is too much?? Can I expand my hard drive?? How big can I go?? Should I get 2GB of memory or should I get 4GB of memory?? I know memory is not the same as a hard drive.

Leolaia

160 GB (gibibytes) as advertised yields 149 GB (gigabytes) of actual diskspace. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte#Consumer_confusion

brinjen

Hi Noni.

First thing, your hard drive. Sounds like you have a 160GB drive to me. It gets a little complicated so I'll give you the simple version. Hard drive manufacturers (and they all do this) go by the rule that 1,000 bytes equals 1 kilobyte, 1,000 kilobytes equals 1 Megabyte, 1,000 Megabytes equals 1 Gigabyte etc. Your Operating System, however formats the drive to 1,024 bytes equals 1 kilobyte, 1,024 kilobytes equals 1 Megabyte and 1,024 Megabytes equals 1 Gigabyte. These discrepencies add up, and become more and more noticeable as hard drive capacities grow larger. Also, it's common for brand name manufacturers such as Dell to include a 'recovery partition on your hard drive (in case you need to re-install your Operating System). This also chews up some space. Do you have a 'D:' drive that isn't your CD/DVD drive?

Second, the Hicky Doo. Random Access Memory (or RAM) is the more technical term used to describe this component.

How much you need really depends on you. The 'sweet spot' for Windows XP is 1 Gb, after that the performance increase isn't so great (at least not considered great enough to justify the costs). If you upgrade to Vista (not recommended) you'd need at least 2 Gb to get an acceptable performance.

The real question is, what do you plan to use the computer for? If 3D gaming is part of it, I'd consider upgrading the graphics card as well, if you can as it's also common practice for brand name manufacturers to use on-board graphics (though many do still include an AGP or PCI-X slot for adding a better graphics card).

Is there a model number on the back of the computer?

pr_capone

The 512mb of memory you have is called RAM.

The 149GB is your hard drive.

One really has little to do with the other. Now, your motherboard (system board inside your computer) will dictate how much RAM your computer can use. As for hard drive size... anything should work as long as it is a compatible technology.

To find out how much RAM your computer can handle, do a google search for your computer's model number. A few websites should pop up that have sold / are selling your current model.

eg = http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/toshiba-satellite-a65-s126/4507-3121_7-30914580.html?tag=sub

If you look under the specifications tab, under memory, the majority of these sites will tell you how much RAM you can install.... and more often than not the speed you will require.

Same goes with the hard drive.

From there, purchase the needed parts at a trusted etailer such as newegg.com, install (which is really quite simple), and done.

OR

take it to best buy and pay a premium for it all... but they do it all and it is guaranteed work.

cheers

Kansas District Overbeer

noni1974

Do you have a 'D:' drive that isn't your CD/DVD drive?

No my D drive is my DVD drive. MY CD burner drive is my E drive. I don't yet have a DVD burner. I'm assuming when I get it it will be both a DVD and a CD burner so I may have an open D drive if they don't replace the DVD player. Or they will put it in the D drive and leave the CD burner in the E drive alone.

So 1 GB of ram is the sweet spot huh?? Why?? Isn't bigger, faster??

I only want to use it for music and movie storage. I also want to store pictures and burn picture CD's and Movie/video DVD's. I have a camera that has a 1 GB SD card in it and I want to use it to make home movies. It stores over an hour of video and 300 pictures.

brinjen

So 1 GB of ram is the sweet spot huh?? Why?? Isn't bigger, faster??

This is where to "what you use it for" comes into play as it depends on how memory the applications you'll be using need.

This is an example only, but say your running software than needs to use a total of 768Mb of RAM and you've got 512Mb. The computer then has to use some of it's hard drive space as 'virtual ram' which slows down your system. Increase the RAM to 1Gb, now the software can completely load all the files it needs to. Increase the memory to 2Gb however won't speed up the system anymore than 1Gb as the extra Gigabyte is unused. That's how the 'speed spot' is calculated.

You can add more if you wish, but as a rough estimation I'd say 1 Gb would do the job. I would add an extra hard drive (sounds like yours is ATA-133) and use that drive exclusively for your music, videos etc and the drive currently in the system for installing your programs on. It will help the performance particularly with the video editing if the files are on a drive seperate to the programs.

Do you have a 'D:' drive that isn't your CD/DVD drive?
No my D drive is my DVD drive. MY CD burner drive is my E drive. I don't yet have a DVD burner. I'm assuming when I get it it will be both a DVD and a CD burner so I may have an open D drive if they don't replace the DVD player. Or they will put it in the D drive and leave the CD burner in the E drive alone.

Yup, you assumed right, DVD burners also burn CD's.

WTWizard

How big is too big? Infinity. Today, hard drives go up to 1 TB (terabytes, or 1,000 gigabytes). And, that could still be too small. If you store lots of music and video, you need all the hard drive space you can get (and then some).

Even if you went up to 750 YB (and, trust me, that is huge), or more, it would still not be too much. It might be more than you will ever need, but the worst thing that could happen is that much of it will be waste. Which is far better than not having a big enough hard drive. Ditto memory--except the older computer systems only handle 4 GB. Any more, and it would not be able to access all of the memory addresses. But, once you work around that, there is no such thing as too much.

Simon

Unless you are running a 64-bit version of XP (good luck to you with that one!) then your computer would not make use of 4Gb of RAM - it would use 3 and a bit. However, if you get the right stuff and it's a matched pair then it will be faster. You have to decide if it's worth it over just getting 2Gb.

If you edit large files or have a lot of apps running at the same time then you may need the extra but otherwise, I'd go with 2Gb for everyday use.

The size of disk drive to get depends on how much storage you think you are likely to need. Again, if you have massess of music files, images and videos then these will east up space but if not you will get a nicer machine if you go for a faster drive rather than a bigger one. A 10,000 RPM disk will do far more for your PCs performance than a faster processor for instance although people always focus on the CPU.

Another thing to consider is backup - you need to have a copy of what is on your disk because they can and do fail. If you have a huge one then you need another huge one to backup to ... so just because you can buy a terrabyte drive doesn't mean you should.

Most computers will allow you to have more than one disk inside so you can always add more capacity later.

MsMcDucket

I need to learn more about external hard drives and flash drives.

Iomege 250GB eGo Portable Hard Drive , Red

Gateway USB Flash Drive, 8 GB

jaguarbass

I need to learn more about external hard drives and flash drives.

I have two 300 gig external hard drives.

You just plug them into your usb port and your computer should recognize it. Mine does with windows xp.

Then I can store extra data. And I can transfer data. I have 2 computers. I can plug the external hard drive into either and the data is there to access, or transfer.

Hard drive how big is to big??

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