Some basic hard drive questions?

Question

OK, the stats first:

Compaq presario s6000nx
256MB RAM
2.7ghz
C drive 32.1GB : 7.68GB is free
D drive 5.13GB : 993MB is free
(think these are 1 drive split up?)

The system properties says the HD is an IDE.

First off I know that I need more RAM, gonna get it. Recently the thing was running real slow because I almost filled up the C drive so I deleted all games and unecessary stuff, ran the disk cleanup and defragmentation and it helped.
I would like to buy a new HD to add on to the exsisting one(s?), lets say 100 GB. Question #1
1) Can this model handle that size?
I have heard that the more space you keep on the HD (that contains windows-mine is C) is a good idea. Question #2.
2) Is that true?
3) If I put things like ALL my large aftermarket applications or very large games on the new HD (soon to be F drive), Will they run any slower (trying to access F drive) than if on C drive?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

First of all, 256mb is the bare minimum to run anything these days, I would recommend at least 512mb or as much as you can possibly afford to max out the system. just punch in your model number on the compaq website, and it'll tell you how much and what kind it'll take. don't buy the RAM from compaq, as it's astronomical, try either http://www.newegg.com or ebay. I'd look at newegg, as they're a supplier first and foremost, and sometimes you don't know what you're getting on e-bay.

secondly, your assumption was correct, the more free space you maintain on your windows drive, the faster windows will run, Microsoft recommends leaving at least 25% of your drive free, as the defrag program won't even run with less.

Third: Your computer being a compaq (I have one, as a matter of fact I'm on my s3200nx right now!), is capable of handling drives up to 500gb in size as a single drive, depending on what your operating system allows. Windows XP for example allows you to have drives up into petabytes (petabyte=1000 terabytes or about a trillion gigabytes) however, keep in mind, the larger the drive, the longer it's going to take the OS to find your data if it's all spread out!

Compaq PCs usually come with one physical hard drive that's split into two partitions, one being your C: drive and the D: being unavailable to the user, as a factory restore drive (the system restore feature, where you press the F10 key at boot if something goes awry)

If you're planning to install a second drive, go right ahead, as hard drive space is very affordable these days. If you're a bit scared to open the box yourself, for a few bucks more, you could spring for an external USB drive, which windows supports natively, just plug it into a free USB port, and you'll be up and running in minutes, no drivers to install. It may be a bit slower however with large apps like PageMaker and Cakewalk pro. for data intensive applications, I always recommend installing on an internal drive, as the data rates are much faster.

A tip on installing drives in a compaq pc, always set your jumper to 'cable select' as the master and slave won't work with the compaq bios, or at least it doesn't like them!

As long as you install your drive inside the system, the speed of applications shouldn't be affected, as windows just sees it as another drive. it SHOULD load as fast as any other app. I like to keep all the applications themselves on the C: drive and games and data (Music, videos, documents, and yes, PORN) on another hard drive. Defragment your hard drives and run the disk-cleanup utility NO LESS than once a month, and if you notice a lag, more often. don't forget your spyware removers and antivirus utilities either. Usually I spend about an hour on friday nights doing maintenence on the system.

BTW, you can give the drive any letter you choose! Right click my computer, go to manage, and then go to the disk management utility, find the drive you want to change, and choose "change drive letter and paths" (I would do this (if you plan to do so at all) before installing any applications on it, unless you want to spend hours wondering why every song in media player isn't where it's supposed to be!)

Now a word on hard drives themselves: Since your system is obviously IDE or EIDE (Same thing these days) based, that's the interface you'll want to shop for. I've found that the cheapest drive isn't the best way to go. Stick with good name brands like Seagate or Samsung. I find that although Western Digital and Maxtor drives are a bit cheaper, they tend to fail after about 5-7 years, whereas I've had my segates and Samsungs for almost a decade with NO problems! Every time I install a Western digital drive, it's dead within six months, and Maxtor's like to catch fire sometimes....

Pricing is usually between 1.00 and 1.50 per gigabyte now online and off. If you have a lot of music, video and other multimedia, I'd recommend buying a drive that'll take all your current data, with at least as much free space afterward. for example, if you have 50 gb of music, buy at least a 100gb drive, if you have more, go for a bigger drive. you can never have too much free space on your hard drive! And, since drives are getting cheaper for the average consumer by the day, you can always expand later. USB supports up to 127 different devices on a daisy chain. that means that you can have up to 127 different hard drives plugged into the same USB port with the use of hubs and miles of cable. I wouldn't recommend this, as it will get slower with more things on the same bus. but it can be done.

Anyway, I hope this helped you out and answered your questions effectively!

Answer 2

Yes, it is true that you preferally want to have your operatig system seperate from your access files, like music, pictures, movies, etc..., the reason is because you don't have to wait for the hard drive to read one location when your trying to do a system process and your listening to music, or so on. And for your other question, yes your system will recognize you 100gb hard drive, pretty much any system that is more than 6 or 7 years old will recognize hard drives that are larger than the old 2gb limit. Hope this helps.

Answer 3

100gb is a nice upgrade size,and it will work with your computer,but it will be a better idea to use it just for storage..if you install new programs,and want to change the installation folder to somewhere on "F" this may cause problems as the same if you transfer already installed program file to different location because C: is the Logical drive,and only one logical drive can be used at a time.the default installation drve is C for all programs\and software.

Answer 4

the drive is split into 2 sections the C: drive is the user partition the other is your restore drive you can probably tap the f11 key on bootup and restore your pc to factory