speed of prcessing slow

[OllyS1971]

so my machine runs too slow. I have tried moving all my photos onto an external drive - no joy. Upgraded RAM - no joy. What's the next step?

[karmaking]

Hi OllyS - it would be useful to know the spec (type, processor speed, amount of RAM, size of hard disk(s), operating system etc.)...

However, I'll make some assumptions and generic recommendations:

1. Hard Drives (HDDs) - moving files to an external HDD will only make a noticeable difference to performance if the HDD you move them from was getting very full (the fuller a HDD the slower it reads/writes - when you get to about 80% full you want to consider moving files/installing more HDDs, installing a larger HDD etc.)

In fact, moving files to an external HDD will, most likely, slow down reading and writing of those files as most external drives will have a slower connection to the PC than internal ones (depending on the drive types).

Note that INTERNAL HDDs are far more cost effective AND usually faster than external ones (albeit without the flexibility of being able to take it with you). The cost differential can be as much as 100% for similar spec drives.

2. RAM - assuming you have either Windows XP or Vista 32 bit (unless you know it's not 32 bit, it WILL be), the most RAM that Windows can use is around 3.5GB. More then this is broadly wasted. As RAM is fairly inexpensive, you might want to consider max-ing this out, though.

3. Processor - if it's a new-ish machine, I suspect it will probably be 2.0GHz or more. This should be plenty for running MS Office and other standard software. If you are trying to run more intensive software such as Adobe Creative Suite, you would need a pretty "top spec" (max RAM, faster multi-core processor, high capacity graphics card) machine. Upgrading to "top spec" usually costs at least as much as buying a new machine (sadly)...

4. Graphics Card - won't be an issue for standard software, but high end graphics and photo editing software (Adobe Photoshop, for example) can use a better graphics card... as can games. The sky is the limit re. spec and cost, so I won't expand more here unless you say you are a graphic designer and/or gamer!

This is probably all too generic, so feel free to add some more detail below for more detailed responses!

Cheers
KK

[smiley]

I'm not so good at the high tech stuff... but I can forward some advice that has been given to me that helped a lot with both my PC and laptop:

1. "Defrag" (think that's what it was called?!) - run a program called "defrag", or "defragmenter", or something like that (sorry!). It is part of windows and, apparently, cleans up old deleted files that hang around on your hard drives. It took all night on both my machines but the speed increase was noticable afterwards.

2. Delete old internet files on you hard drive - someone else showed me how to do this using Internet Explorer. Under settings, there were a set of buttons to remove temporary files, cookies and browsing history. The file containing temporary files on my PC was massive and a fair amount of free space was freed-up on my hard drive when these were deleted. I also changed the settings on Internet Explorer to create a maximum limit for the temporary files folder and number of days browsing history that kept it down once cleared.

3. Don't keep all your files on the desktop - I used to use the desktop as my only documents directory as it's the easiest one to get to (it's always there in front of you!). The same clever friend as above told me not to do this as that directory has to be completely read by Windows when it starts up (or something like that) so start-up times get slower and slower with the more stuff there. He told me to use shortcuts on the desktop and to keep the actual files in My Documents and this had a huge effect on loading times when I first switch on.

Hope all of this gets you somewhere!

Smiley