anyone know much about computers?
 

im looking at picking up an external hard drive for my parents for christmas, their computer has 200 mb left of storage on the C drive. unfortunately neither me or my parents have the money to afford a new computer (this one is from like when XP just came out) and i was wondering if i can take all the info thats on the existing hard drive (such as like java updates, microsoft office and such or even anything operating system wise) and put it on the external hard drive so that the computer can run faster.

yes but id recommend leaving the OS on the computer itself...

How big is their regular hard drive to begin with?

I'd start my moving non system data such as documents, music, pictures, and video over first. That stuff is irreplacable if the main HD goes south. You can always dowload java, adobe, etc.

If they use outlook for their mail, take a look at their PST file and try to move that, or at least set up an auto archive onto the external.

Moving the operating system isnt a good idea.

Depending on how big your current drive is, you are probably better off doing this...

-Buy a larger internal drive. (Cheaper than an external)
-Install it, put a fresh copy of windows XP on the new drive
-Then move all of your personal files from the small, old drive to the new drive.
-If your existing drive is a decent size, you can keep it and use it for holding your music, movies, photos etc. That will keep the new drive clean to run your new operating system. If you decide to keep your old drive, make sure your format it after moving all of the files you want to keep onto your new drive. That will make sure you only have one operating system on your computer.

oh, i always thought internal hard drives were more expensive than externals. and their hard drive is 60 gb, i dont know how its filled but the computer constantly puts up error messages that its full (and i checked and it is) and it doesnt really have anything else but operating system requirements left in itall of the documents and music and such have been pretty much deleted

or just buy a second drive cause there should be another IDE port if it isn't older then a few years there should be a internal sata port or 2 free.
All you would need to do is take the side of the pc off put the drive in one of the bays plug it in then once you turn it on go to my computer and format the new drive then you can start moving things over to the new drive.

external drives are more expensive just because you have to buy the enclosure.
a internal 60gb drive is fairly small as windows will on recognize 52gb or something like that plus the OS itself uses almost 20 gb I believe you can get a smaller drive 100gb or 80 gb for under 50.00

http://cgi.ebay.com/MAXTOR-DIAMONDMA...item33581abfa9

Stupid question. Are they emptying their recycle bin? Win XP should be NOWHERE near 60gb. Oh, and one other thing to note- if it's from the early 2000's it may not have USB 2.0- so using a USB external HD will be tedious.

I would go with an external HD and start transferring pictures/music/and other non-OS essential files. You probably have a USB so it will take a while but w/e, it will really help out the comp.

These files have to be on there somewhere. No way XP should be anywhere near 60gigs.

thats what i was thinking too, i couldnt possibly imagine xp taking up all that room. and yes the recycling bin has been emptied several times over. it seems like every 2 weeks i have to find one or two more non-essential programs to delete, next onthe list will have to be microsoft office if it comes down to it cuz java and crap are still on there for the web.
would it matter at all if the computer was reformatted? cuz i think it was like 2 or 3 times and i was told that old information stays imbedded on the hard drive even though its says its been deleted. if that is true that could it possibly be fromthat? i know a bit about computers but no where near enough to deal with this problem lol and we dont quite have the money to spend to take it to a shop to speed it up

reformatting on a prebuilt computer is real pain unless you have all the driver cd's, and as billy said if the computer is more then a few years old it probably doesn't have USB 2.0 and that would make a external drive complicated.

IMO getting a second internal would be best.

Long winded answer:
When you delete a file, it does not scrub it from the disk. It just breaks the "file pointer", which is metadata that tells the computer where/what the data is. Breaking the pointer marks the sector on the disk as "free space" and when you use that space again (fill it with new data) the bits of data are overwritten and your original file is gone. (Side note: this is how disks get "fragmented"- when the new data is too big for the first available spot on the disk it gets scattered about to different sectors, making the arm move around a lot, increasing seek time and making the computer "slower". When you defrag, it makes all of the files exist in one block of space each, so the arm doesn't have to search as much).

So, if you were to delete a ton of data at once, then shut down, pull your hard drive, and take it for recovery, they could get your data back- because the 1's and 0's are still there. You just can't get to them through conventional means.

Try this before buying anything:

http://windirstat.info/

It will tell you what your biggest files are and where they reside.

Sounds to me like rather than throwing money at it you need to give your parents 101 on not downloading everything there is to click on the web.

No one has really commented on the OP's actual question. Moving data onto the external will do absolutely nothing in terms of making the computer run faster. Physical storage utilisation has nothing to do with performance.

Low swap space? Heavily fragmented drive?

the swap space is almost always reserved and is flagged as "used" no matter if it is being used or not to ensure that there will always be enough when needed.

Fragmentation has nothing to do with high disk utilisation. Disks with almost nothing on it can be fragmented worse than disks which are filled. This is irrelevant anyways as any defrag utility will fix any serious issues.

The only remedy without buying new hardware is to do a fresh install of your OS. By the sounds of everything your OS is most likely trashed and loaded with junk. Reinstall Windows with a disk or throw on Ubuntu :)

Right about the swap space. I forgot. I know that fragmentation doesn't depend on disk usage. But if it hasn't been defragged in a while and there's been a lot of delete/installs then the seek time has to be up there.

I agree 100% on the clean reinstall though. Zero argument there.

i would format the drive, and re partition it. id give it 50GB main (where windows will be) and 10gb backup. i will tell you that that will solve your problems.

unless your rents are doing heavy gaming, 3d design, creating libraries of music, movies, games, etc. you wont need an external hd.

lol no, theres no gaming here...hardly even computing lol. and yes, they do click on every damn thing there is on the internet and ive discussed it with them and they haven't changed their horrible ways lol. so pretty much my best decision is to get a new hard drive, and then reinstall xp and crap onto that hard drive? (internal i mean) would make a good xmas present seeing as how they were contemplating a new computer if/when my dad gets a new job when his back heals up

u dont need a new hard drive, u can format the one you have.

even one as small as 60gb and less than 350mb of memory left? i thought you needed to have more room left on it.

Shane suggested this assuming you don't want your data anymore

oh ok...i think i may lean towards a new internal hard drive after all this info. thanks for all your help guys!