When I bought this computer four years ago, I was convinced that I had the coolest, most state-of-the-art machine ever. It had 32 megs of RAM and 2- that’s right count ‘em TWO big ol’ GIGS available on the hard drive!
Okay, stop laughing. It was better than the Commodore.
Okay, now REALLY stop laughing this time, I mean it.
My business is very graphics-intensive and I am constantly processing digital pictures and sound files and all kinds of stuff and now that luxuriant 2 gig is pretty well full and stuff is starting to work very s-l-o-w-l-y and freeze up frequently. I bought more RAm and it helped immensely and ditched several extraneous files, which also helped, but I’m still running pretty slow.
Can I buy additional hard drive space like I bought additional RAM? Would I need to replace what I’ve got or can I just spuck a new one in there?
I’m pretty happy with the machine so far. The processor speed may not be the best currently out there but it works fine for any application I’ve tried for it. I don’t have the money to buy a whole new computer, so I’m thinking if this is possible it would help me immensely.
Thanks!
You can put in a new hard drive pretty easily. I would leave the old one in place. Most computers have space for two. Any computer store will be able to sell you an IDE hard drive for less than $100. Get a 30 or 40 GB model. Brands don’t matter much. If you have a CompUSA nearby, they can sell you a store brand model cheaply.
Your old hard drive is probably drive C: so your new one will be drive D: It will only take about 20 minutes or so to put it in. It is just a matter of popping the case open, sliding it in under your existing hard drive, connecting the power cable, and connecting the IDE ribbon cable and screwing the hard drive to the case.
Oh, one more thing. You will have to set a jumper to Slave mode since this will be a secondardy hard drive. The directions will tell you how to do this.
yeah, you can add an additional hard drive without a problem. This, however, isn’t the forum for computer how-tos, so just search google for “adding a second hard drive” or something like that. A problem you might have is that your motherboard is too old to recognize IDE drives bigger than 2 (i think? or is it 8? unrelated to the FAT limit, btw) GB. There are work arounds and hacks and stuff like that, but if you’re doing graphics-intensive work, you might as well buy a new comp. Or a used one for really cheap, in fact.
you can get an amazing deal for a refurbished Dell at http://www.dfsdirectsales.com/dfsdirect/
Also: www.dellauctions.com
my brother has bought something like three or four there, without problems. If you feel uncomfortable, you might want to stay away from private merchants.
for $215, you can get a pIII 500mhz, 128mb RAM, and a 10 GB hd. Without a monitor or OS, however.
By comparison, a good new hard drive is gonna cost around $100. You might as well buy the pc.
If it were me, I’d just replace the hard drive entirely. Unless you just don’t want to bother with transferring the old files (a fair excuse), there’s really no point in keeping a hard drive so small, when your new one is probably going to be at least ten times that size. IMHO.
There are utilities you can buy–Norton Ghost, for example–that allow you to “clone” one hard drive to another hard drive; so you could take your old 2 gig hard drive and copy all the files, including the OS, applications, and any data files you have created, over to your new larger drive.
(I see you’re talking about buying a new PC–you could install the old 2 gig drive in the new PC, and clone it over to the new computer’s drive–assuming you don’t buy the new computer with a new OS included, or assuming you just don’t want to change from the OS you have now.)
You get a new hard drive and slave it off the old one…Use the program that came with it to partition it and make it bootable.
Like that one guy said your old drive is c: and your new one will be d:…In windows transfer all your data from c: to d:
Take out your old hard drive and change the jumpers on your new one to the master…You might have to go to the setup thing when you start your computer or it might do it for you…
Now you start getting into the nebulous universe of copyright licenses and whatnot. Legally (for the most part) if you stop using the old machine you can install the OS on the new one, i.e. have only one working copy in your possession at any given time. You can check your various manuals and paperwork for “license agreement”, or possibly search the OS company’s website for all the legalese.
In any event, if you are going to get a new hard drive, I’d strongly suggest the following:
[ul][li]Download a trial copy of Symantec Ghost. Put it on a self-booting floppy disk. These guys have a manual available. Read it first so you’ll have few surprises along the way.[/li][li]Install both hard drives (or move your current drive into the new computer), with the new drive as “master” and the old one as “slave”.[/li][li]Boot the computer with the floppy.[/li][li]“Ghost” the old drive to the new one. This makes a bit-for-bit copy of the old drive onto the new one. This can take from 10 to about 60 minutes.[/li][li]Reboot the computer without the floppy. It should operate exactly as before, with your OS and all files intact. The new drive will be “C:” and the old drive “D:”, with “D:” retaining a copy of all your files. You can keep this as a backup or format D: to get more space on your computer.[/li][/ul]
I find this is the easiest method to ugrade your hardware without having to reinstall your OS or programs. It’s also pretty safe, since your original files are still on your old hard drive. Unless you screw it up (like copying the “master” to the “slave”) you should be fine. It also doesn’t matter how full the old drive is, while backup software run under Windows may demand a certain amount of free space.
