can a larger hard drive make a computer speed up?

Question

I've already increased my memory so I'm trying to decide if a hard drive will work and what type of hard drive is best for a laptop.

Answer 1

no. a larger hard drive will not make your laptop faster. try a video card with lots of memory.

Answer 2

You may see a minor increase in speed. Your computer uses RAM (what you mentioned having already upgraded) for information it access often or needs to get to quickly. However, it also treats a part of your hard drive like extra RAM to improve performance on occasion. This section of the hard drive is known as a "page file." If you current hard drive is very full, it cannot use as much space for the paging file and will move slower.

All that said, increasing response on a computer is best addressed by increasing RAM, upgrading the processor, or in some cases ensuring that your computer is not starting unnecessary programs that run in the background and use up RAM that you would prefer used toward the things you're actually doing at the time.

Answer 3

No it won't. But, a larger buffer, a faster spinning rate, or a better transfer rate will make your computer speed up.

Buffer: Nowaday the typical buffer for harddrive is 8mb. The newer ones have 16mb. It will make a difference.

Spin rate: There's a reason why Western Digital's Raptor series harddrives cost a lot more than their other drives with higher capacitance.

Transfer rate: SATA is replacing PATA right now. PATA (e.g. ATA, ultra ATA, EIDE) is pretty much capped at 100, with some able to go to 133, or even 150. SATA starts at 150, and newer ones at 300.

EDIT: Oh crap sorry. I didn't notice that it is a laptop. It is most likely the spin rate. Typical laptop drives (2.5") have only a spin rate of 5400 RPM. Getting a new 2.5" drive with 7200 RPM will definitely help. See source for Newegg's price. Feel free to get it somewhere else though.

Also make sure it is compatitble with your laptop.

Answer 4

I believe that laptops have SATA drives. That's a plus right there. The size of the drive will not speed things up, it is the RPM's that will speed things up. The highest RPM for a desktop computer is the 10,000 RPM Western Digital "Raptor". If your looking to speed things up more, you have to look at cleaning things up and maintenance of your files. Get rid of any of those factory programs that you will never use. Empty out your Recycle Bin and clear out the temporary Internet files, history in the Internet options under the tools menu in IE. Do a "defrag" , My Computer, right tic on the C-drive and select properties and tic on the tools tab, tic the defragment button. Next, download some free stuff! AVG Anti-virus from Grisoft, Ad-Aware from Lavasoft, Windows Defender (a rare freebie from Microsoft), Spy-bot Search and Destroy. Update these and run them often. You'll see the speed that you need!

Answer 5

If you're using your drive at the top (or near it) of its capacity, then yes. A bigger drive will make it more responsive as the disk won't have to worry so much as for moving it's heads towards a little area within the disk to write new stuff.

If you have enough free space (lets say more than 30% of the disk), then, the answer is no. You need it to be faster, more than larger (though with current prices you won't find the second feature regrettable at all) :D

Answer 6

Not specifically a larger hard drive but a modern faster hard drive can speed a computer up. Have you used a hard drive clean up software or a computer optimising software, these can speed up computers

Answer 7

Speed of computer depends upon the processor and graphics/display card more than that of hard drive but large hard drive can be helpfull to yr pc speed depend how much work u hv do on yr pc ......

Answer 8

No a larger one, a faster one:
One with faster RPMs and faster data transfer rate, with data buffer.
Lately SATA models supports up to 300 Mb/s, you need to know what kind of tech your laptop uses (PATA or SATA) and choose a fast hard drive.

Answer 9

yes; go to an online computer ?s forum and ask there for a completely correct answer from professionals. I want the 10pts but i just got a laptop and i kno i wouldnt want someone messing w/it like the people answring this will be messing w/ur laptop! good luck

Answer 10

the bigger the demanding force you placed in, assuming it runs on a similar p.c., may have an prolonged search for time for tips, yet this can be negligible, rather in case you retain your disks defragged etc. keep your 160GB, and installation the 500GB one as a secondary force, then you honestly can use the single hundred sixty on your courses etc, and the 5 hundred on your documents information. I at present have an 80GB for equipment force, and a pair of 300GB drives, and except for my track and action picture folders, which have a lot of information in them, issues are rather a lot prompt.