I recently bought an external hard drive an I backed up my files. Now I want to use it to speed up my PC, how?

Question

do I use it to speed it up...

Answer 1

There is one thing I can think of which is to relocate your computer's paging file from your internal hard drive to your external hard drive. The paging file is the so called "virtual memory" which your computer uses in addition to the physical memory (i.e. RAM). I rather not get in to specifics because it would take a chapter to explain it. Instead, I recommend you read the following articles on the benefits of relocating your paging file to another hard drive:

1. "Locating the Page File" -- written by the Elder Geek (http://www.theeldergeek.com/locating_the_page_file.htm)

2. " Optimize The Paging File " -- written by PC Magazine (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2119602,00.asp)



"...in spite of the name 'virtual memory' the paging file is really just a chunk of reserved hard drive space where data may be written and retrieved as needed. Since the paging file and operating system files are by default located on the same drive, concurrent access to both locations is impossible. One or the other has to wait, slowing down overall system performance. What can you do to minimize the delay? If your system only has one hard drive the best option is to pack the motherboard with as much RAM as possible to minimize paging file accesses." -- excerpt from the Elder Geek's article

Answer 2

There's really only 2 options that this would actually help in speed if any...
1. Rad configuration.
2. Move your Pagefile to the external drive. (if it's faster)

Answer 3

You could try using you external hard drive as a swap space or virtual memory for your computer to free up your RAM and speed up your computer

Answer 4

The speed of your PC depends on many factors.

1 RAM
2. The applications that runs on your pc
3 . your processor speed etc

Your speed does not increase if you free up harddrive, much