If I add more memory to my laptop. will I need to reinstall all my software? Can I add an external drive?

Question

Can I just add an external drive to speed up my computer?

Answer 1

Another drive "may" speed up performance of the existing drive if you use it to transfer all non system files such as documents, music & video off the C: drive.

This will allow the C drive to defrag more efficiently & thus provide better performance.
In itself, however, an additional hard drive is by no means a conventional method of speeding up a computer's performance.

No... it will not require you to reinstall your software.

regards,
Philip T

Answer 2

No and yes! No to having to re-installing software and yes to adding an external drive. In fact you can even make a USB external drive. Buy the following:
External case with power supply.
Buy a hard drive, whateve size you want that will fit into the case. This is a project that basically can be done with a screw drive and socket wrenches (small sized at that). Now you have saved yourself approximately $150.00 for an external drive because it should only cost about $125.00 to build your own. Look if my sister can do it from the get go, then you should not have a problem.

Usually when a system slows down it is due to the disc being too fragmented. Try de-fragging the drive. It will accomplish two things, should your apps load quicker and free up some space.

Answer 3

An external hard drive will not speed your laptop up. They make very easy to use external drives now, powered by USB2.0 or FireWire. They are almost always "Plug and Play" drives that require no deleting of your current software/drivers, meaning you can plug it in and use it as additional storage on your computer.

RAM (memory) can be installed with ease as well. Make sure you wear a grounding strap and don't shuffle your feet across the carpet while doing it, any static electricity generated can be harmful ad damage the RAM and other components on your computer. You will not have to reinstall any software as RAM is not software based. If you have a laptop that is under warranty I recommend you let the company do it as opening the case may void your warranty.

There are lots of guides available through tech sites on do it yourself upgrading if you are not familiar with this process.
www.anandtech.com
www.tomshardware.com
www.hardocp.com

Answer 4

If you add more memory, as in RAM, you wont have to do anything. Its all hardware side.

Adding an External Drive isnt going to speed anything up, but it will allow you to STORE more information.

Memory/RAM is temporary storage the computer uses when thinking. The more you got the faster it can think.

Hard Drives (internal and external) store data for longer periods of time and in larger chunks. When the computer needs to 'think' about something (like when you open an application), it copies the parts it needs from these slower but larger drives, and loads them into Memory where it can quickly manipulate it.

Answer 5

Adding memory will speed up your computer slightly, but only slightly and it may be so small an increase that you won't notice. One thing, if you do add memory, on your next startup, delete the swap file so Windoze makes a new one according to the new memory size. The size of the swap file on disk is proportional to the amount of memory installed. Once made, the swap file size remains relatively constant. It may grow from time to time as needed, but it never shrinks, at least not that I've ever seen. You need to force a new beginning, a do-over on the swap file. What happens with more memory is the swap file on disk is smaller. Access to memory is faster than disk, so the more program in memory and less on disk for the swap file, the faster the overall access time. So, yes, it will speed up a bit, in proportion to the amount of memory and amount of disk space in use for memory swapping. On external disk drives, well, all that does is add storage space, which does nothing to affect speed.

Answer 6

adding more ram will not need reinstallation of any software. just plug it in and go. adding an exteral hard drive will surely not speed anything up. but you may use an exteral harddrive if you are running low on storage room. if you want to try to speed things up on your pc you can check it for spyware at www.pcpitstop.com and do a full test or a spyware test, itll give you a few somewhat helpfull hints on performance increases and recommendations. also might want to setup a defrag schedule or run the defrag often. the defragger that comes built into windows works over multiple passes rather then one pass so it helps to run it often, like at night time or when you know you wont use your laptop for about an hour or two. if your tech savvy enough you can find out what background processes are running and see if there are any that you dont need running or if push comes to shove something that really really helps if you have not reinstalled windows in about a 9month or so is save all your personal data to another harddrive or dvds or something and then do a full format on your harddrive(lowlevel format) and then reinstall windows. that had been found to help speed up many peoples operating systems since it gets rid of all the jump thats piled up over time(registery entress that link to nothing and take up space, misc programs that run in windows background that are no longer needed, gets rid of old stuff you prob forgot about that can suck up resourcesand other reasons)

Answer 7

If you add more memory to your laptop you will not need to re-install all your software. You may add an external drive if you want but it will have no affect on the performance of your laptop. To get better performance out of your laptop I recommend adding double whatever the amount of memory you have right now. For example if you currently have 256 megabytes of RAM, add another 256. This should greatly increase the performance of your laptop.

Answer 8

IF YOU ADD MORE MEMORY ('RAM') YOU WON'T NEED TO RE-INSTALL YOUR SOFTWARE. RAM MEMORY IS JUST A CHIP (OF SORTS) AND THE COMPUTER USUALY DETECT ITS SIZE RIGHT FROM THE START.

YOU MIGHT NEED TO UNSCREW A FEW THINGS OPEN TO GET RAM MEMORY INSTALLED, SO BE CAREFUL NOT TO LOOSE YOUR WARRANTY (IF ANY) BY OPENING THE MACHINE.

RAM MEMORY IS NOT STORAGE AND IT IS ERASED EVERY TIME YOU TURN YOUR COMPUTER OFF, SO IF YOU WANT MORE STORAGE ROOM, YOU MAY WANT TO REPLACE YOUR HARD DRIVE (AND REINSTALL EVERYTHING), OR GET AN EXTERNAL DRIVE. JUST KEEP IN MIND THAT USUALY YOU CAN'T START A MACHINE FROM AN EXTERNAL DRIVE.

Answer 9

You can ad more memory without any need of reinstalling any software.
You can add an external hard drive but that wont speedup your PC only add storage space.

Answer 10

No, you don't have to install software after installing memory.
External hard drives are quite slow. It is OK to have some apps or data on external apps on external disk...but don't have anything on it that needs to be used constantly...like, say, operating system.