Which is more important, RAM? Drive Size?

[Cali]

I just upgraded memory to one of my computers to 2 GB(did it myself). And I checked the avail free space, 46.1GB. This computer is used for surfing the web, emails, different MS Office stuff, listening to music and sometimes watching videos. Is this enough RAM? and is the avail free space enough, or should I add more?

TIA!

[Keebler]

I just upgraded memory to one of my computers to 2 GB(did it myself). And I checked the avail free space, 46.1GB. This computer is used for surfing the web, emails, different MS Office stuff, listening to music and sometimes watching videos. Is this enough RAM? and is the avail free space enough, or should I add more?

TIA!

2GB of RAM is more than adequite for Windows XP and tolerable for Windows Vista.

46.1GB is a modest amount of space on your hard drive. Most people won't fill that up while others that collect music and photos will use that much up fairly quickly.

[Cali]

Thanks Keebler. The total size is 71GB.

I hope your are having a great day.

[CompTweaker]

Well, for performance, RAM is more important as long as you have a normal capacity hard drive for your system. The hard drive just stores the data, and the Ram stores how the data on the hard drive is accessed. The more ram and the faster the ram, the faster your computer can run (just picture when you are trying to remember the name of a song and after thinking for a few minutes, you remember it...your ram basically dug through your brain until it found what you were trying to remember). But yea, 2 gigs and you should be just fine.

The HD can boost performance too according to how fast your hd is, but upgrading ram will be a lot more noticable as long as you're not trying to cram 9.5 gigs on a 10 gig hd.

Now if someone could just invent a human ram upgrade for our brains, it would make life a whole lot easier for me.

[Keebler]

RAM is important -- but you only need ENOUGH RAM. If you don't have enough RAM you'll suffer, but having more than enough doesn't improve anything. The only time the definition of "enough" changes is because Windows will make decisions on what to keep in RAM based on how much you've got to work with. In this case, adding more generally helps but not as much as you would think.

Imagine this analogy...

Your RAM is your computers workbench or desktop. All the information your computer needs is right there just by quickly glancing over at it. Clearly the workbench or desktop can't hold everything your computer knows so it only keeps the stuff it's using at the moment in RAM.

The hard drive is like a file cabinet. It holds tons of information that can be retrieved fairly quickly but not nearly as quickly as glancing over at a document that's already on the desktop right there out in the open.

Imagine you with a little desk with room for two or three sheets of paper. If all you need to think about is on those two or three sheets, then you can work very quickly. But then imagine the phone rings and someone asks you about something you worked on earlier in the day. By now you've filed it away in the file cabinet and you need to pull the file out again to answer the persons question. First you scoop up the papers on your tiny desk and file them away and then you find the other file and spread it out on the desktop to look at it instead. You can see how doing more than one thing at a time becomes slow and inefficient with your tiny little workspace. This is true when your computer has not enough RAM and wastes tons of time shuttling things in to the file cabinet and out of the file cabinet. The work gets done but very slowly.

Now imagine a big desktop or workbench. You still have the same work to do but you can have the papers fron this morning over on one corner of the desk while you work on something completely different. In fact, with your big desk you have the luxury of leaving a bunch of papers in plain view so anything you need to know or think about is just a glance away. You'll still file things away in your file cabinet when you're done using them but it'll be much less often. This is true when your computer had plenty of RAM.

Now imagine you have a desktop or workbench thats HUGE. There's a limit to how huge it can be because you can only read your papers from so far away and your arms can only reach so far. With this huge desk you might be able to go faster but you probably only need enough room to do the work you need to do. Some people will need more than others and some jobs will need more than others but the corners of the huge desk will almost never get used because you never really have that much work to do. This is the case if you have a whole big bunch of RAM in your computer. It impresses people when you talk about how big it is but it doesn't really do much to make you work faster.

How do you know if you are low on RAM? Computers usually have a little hard drive light on them. Watch the light when you do things and see if it's on more than it's off.

Youre hard drive can fill your computers RAM in a few seconds! If you see the light stay on almost constantly and it stays like that for more than a few seconds at a time, you're actually seeing your computer juggle data from RAM to the hard drive and back again while it struggles to find the information it needs as you would with the tiny desk. If the light is only on for brief little bursts, then you're seeing the normal activity as the computer quickly picks up what it needs and ocassionally puts data back.

[Cali]

My DH says I am such a geek, but I wasn't sure if one was more important or they were equal in importance.

Thanks for the great replies, helped a lot.

[CompTweaker]

Yep, and 2 gigs of ram is plenty enough and even overkill for most casual users. I have 2 gigs in my gaming machine and it works just fine.....probably doesnt use full capacity even with the newest games.

Now if you're running CAD software or doing major picture and video editing with professional software, thats where the extra ram comes in handy.

[AngelinaCatHub]

My DH says I am such a geek, but I wasn't sure if one was more important or they were equal in importance.

Thanks for the great replies, helped a lot.

[Cali]

ACH - I make sure to defrag every week. Thanks for the explanation.

[HHM]

RAM is RAM, as others have said, so long as you have "enough" you are good to go.

What you want of focus on for the Hard Drive is drive speed, not so much capacity. Granted, depending on your computers use, you need "enough" capacity, but you will see noticable performance increases if you get a "faster" hard drive.

[Cali]

How do I find out the drive speed?

And I use this computer for emails, downloading music/pics, classes and different programs in MS Office.

[HHM]

For drive speed, you are looking for RPM (revolutions per minute) and Cache Size

The faster the drive spins, the quicker the pick-up can load information. The cache size, although not vital, it is nice to have cache so the drive can preload certain things for quicker access. Think of cache like the hard drives own set of RAM.

Most drives are 7200 RPM. Given the size of your drive, I am guessing it is older and is probably 5400 RPM or less and has no cache. 10,000 rpm drives are becoming more available and there are also 15,000 rpm drives. How good a drive you get depends on what sort of connection yoru computers uses for the Hard Drive, IDE Ultra ATA, SATA, or SCSI, SCSI 68 pin. My guess is, you are probably IDE-ATA, or SATA.

If your willing to splurge and assuming your motherboard is compatiable, you can pick-up a 74GB or 150GB Western Digital Raptor that is 10,000 RPM with 16MB of cache and is a SATA 1.5gb for between $150-$180. But for you, a more bargain 7200 RPM drive with a modest cache would probably be a good upgrade.

[Cali]

Yes this desktop is 4 yrs old, why I don't use as much as I do my laptop.

Thanks for suggestions HHM.

You guys rock.

[WhatMoney]

Two utilities that will test your HD speed, and much more:

HD Tune 2.55
http://www.hdtune.com/download.html

Also see http://www.hdtune.com main page for details of program.

HD Tach 3.0.4.0
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public...request=HdTach

Both are free. HD Tune gives more drive information - maybe too much. HD Tach is quick. Both good for HD drive comparisions.

[AngelinaCatHub]

HHM is right about the hard drive. It is the slowest part of your machine because it is mechanical. It fetches data in milliseconds that the cpu works with in nanoseconds because the actuator has to physically move as well as the media has to spin under the heads. The fastest to date is a scsi (skuzzy) drive as it is never seen as a hard drive and is controlled by a separate board and reacts while the cpu is doing other things. This type of drive is not used in home computers. The best out now is SATA as HHM said (serial A T A) The electronic through put is higher, the cache is usually bigger and yes the speed is greater. Upon our very near horizon will be things like thumbnail drives that are not mechanical at all. Our next generation will be NVRAM hard drive replacements and will be superfast as they are actually Ram in big numbers. The device is out now but very expensive.

Another way to speed up your machine is get rid of programs that load behind the scene. Everything in the tray (where the clock is) are program add ons’ that sit looping waiting to do something. Identify them and get rid of them. Check your startup folder for some of these. It would be another lecture on how to stop some of these so not today. LOL 'Hub