Comstar external hard drive is it good,bad, ok?

[Simon]

CPU Usage 0 - 4 % and sometimes jumps to 16% and 32 %

That's not too bad, as long as it's mostly 0-4%

Do the "Analyze" portion of the defragmentation and see if the drive is heavily fragmented. That can make a big difference.

[rush356]

Man he is a cheap date. All this work for a coffee. Thanks Simon.

[rush356]

You say that like you think the IT Geek likes coffee or something.

Hey he is a cheap date. All this work for a coffee. Thanks Simon.

That is why i love this club, everyone is good at something and willing to help others.

[rush356]

Ok i found disc defragmenter, did analyze, i dont know many names and numbers Now it doing defragmenting very slow.

[Snafu]

My computer hard drive is 80 gb and 53 gb are used. I am upgrading my ram from 2 X 256 mb to 2 X 1gb cards.

Personally I do not like to run more than half full but that's me. I try to find out what's taking up space and clearing it out or burn it to a disk.

As for the ram upgrade that is a good idea but know what you have and what you are getting before slapping any money down. All ram is not the same and depends on what your system can handle.

I would also not trust the future chop guys to do your upgrades.

[rush356]

I had friend from work install DVD-RAM and he checked my ram and specs and said i could go with 2 X 1 gb ram cards.

[Nd4SpdSe]

Here's my 2c....

Defrag more likely will not resolve the issue, it's very rare that I've seen a noticable increase in performance never mind a considerable increase or having the computer run back to how it used to.

My 2 suspects would be 1)Spyware/Adware 2)Just a bunch of applications running in the background because every piece of software like to install something that does nowadays. It could be a virus, but ironicly that's not really typical for computers to get infected with them as they once used to, and to cause that type of symptome. Hey, even a component form Windows Update could be causing problems, slowing down your computer, you never know, I've seen it a fair amount. As it's been said too, an (almost) full hard drive will affect performance.

My opinion on external hard drives, unless you get the bay and the hard drive seperately, a bay that you can put your own hard drive in, don't bother. I've seen the controllers fail way too many times,especialyl on the cheap ones, but even on the ones made my Maxtor, WD and the like. And you void your warranty if you want to pull your hard drive out to get your data. Plus, the case will come with a one year warranty, but you can still get hard drives with 3 and 5 year warranties. Considering that's holding your valuable data, it's a nice piece of mind, but still no guarantee. Make backs and keep copies. I've had it happen many times in the past and learned. I had a co-worker that lost his external drive, literally lost it. A few months later, sadly, his hard drive in his laptop died. He was very SOL, unfortunately. CD/DVD backups are a good idea. Discs are cheap, make many if you want.

Snafu is right, if your getting ram, let us know what kind of machine you have (if it's brand name) or the make & model of the motherboard if it's custom built, and we can let you know exactly what RAM, max supported and even required specs, that you need to get.

[Simon]

If you haven't seen a performance upgrade from defragmentation in the past, I'd venture to say that your drives weren't highly fragmented. I've done it on quite a few machines, that need it, with good results. Also, in a computer built by yourself, your drive speeds are probbably faster than those in an "out of the box" system. They're not going to throw in 10k rpm drives, if the average customer doesn't recognize the benefits.

A slower drive will show the effects of fragmentation before a faster one.

Granted, it's not going to turn a PIII into a Centrino Duo, but you get the point.

[0ddb4ll]

Serge, I'd say the best thing would be for one of us to take a look at the computer itself just to see what is running on there and what could be done to give it a little "umph". Could either stop by your place or we could go the route of remote assistance. What I've used in past with my parents and friends is this SharedView application from Microsoft that lets two or more people connect and share control of the system (http://connect.microsoft.com/site/siteh ... ?SiteID=94). Either way would work fine...

[Simon]

That's an option, Damir. I could pop by Serge's place this evening as I believe I'm free. Shouldn't take too long.

[rush356]

Ok so today i got 2 X 1gb ram cards and new external hard drive. Went over to Simon's and he checked my computer, moved somethings, got rid of somethings, changed somethings. Now it runs like new. Huge thanks Simon. Also thanks to everyone for their input and advise

[Nd4SpdSe]

If you haven't seen a performance upgrade from defragmentation in the past, I'd venture to say that your drives weren't highly fragmented. I've done it on quite a few machines, that need it, with good results. Also, in a computer built by yourself, your drive speeds are probbably faster than those in an "out of the box" system. They're not going to throw in 10k rpm drives, if the average customer doesn't recognize the benefits.

A slower drive will show the effects of fragmentation before a faster one.

Granted, it's not going to turn a PIII into a Centrino Duo, but you get the point.

Yes and no. I've seen some slight improvements, Windows boots up a tad quicker, apps opens quicker, computer seems a bit more responsive, but it's not a night/day difference, no matter the system. If ever a a customer/client called and complained about their computer being slow, 100% of the time, a fragmented drive was not the cause.

And yes, 10k rpm drives are nice...even better striped.

So, I'm curious tho Simon, was was the diagnosis?

[Jayman]

Yes, I'm curious as well.

[Simon]

A lot of useless startup apps. Multiple versions of Java Runtime environment, Serge was still using IE (installed Firefox) and I set his swap file to the correct size based upon the upgraded ram.

Disk fragmentation was low after defragmenting yesterday. Basically a little cleanup, and further cleanup by Serge to get more data off the local disk to the external, and she'll be fine for a long time.

Serge, no worries buddy. Glad it was an easy one.

If ever a a customer/client called and complained about their computer being slow, 100% of the time, a fragmented drive was not the cause.

I agree with that statement 100%. Typically it's a hung process taking up 100% of the CPU, though, sometimes it's a HDD on it's way out, or simply too full.