Upgrade RAM or HDD?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gary Tait
  • Start date Start date
G

Gary Tait

My budget says RAM or HDD. Currently I have 128 Meg RAM, 3.2Gig HDD,
and am using Windows XP home on an Athlon 1600+ system. the system
runs okay, just want to know what to buy, HDD or RAM (leaning toward
HDD)
 
Gary Tait said:
My budget says RAM or HDD. Currently I have 128 Meg RAM, 3.2Gig HDD,
and am using Windows XP home on an Athlon 1600+ system. the system
runs okay, just want to know what to buy, HDD or RAM (leaning toward
HDD)
Click to expand...

I suspect your question is related to performance - that 3.2gb hard drive
has got to be an old EIDE PIO Mode 4 model and with only 128MB Ram & XP its
not long before your system is running slow. For performance a 256MB ram
upgrade would be best - if you need to install a few more programs and don`t
mind slugging it out as long as they run then go for the hard drive.
 
Gary Tait said this...
My budget says RAM or HDD. Currently I have 128 Meg RAM, 3.2Gig HDD,
and am using Windows XP home on an Athlon 1600+ system. the system
runs okay, just want to know what to buy, HDD or RAM (leaning toward
HDD)
Click to expand...

128Meg is minimum for XP really. You should notice a performance
improvement with more RAM. If you are not desperately short of disk space
I'd say go for more memory.
 
Gary Tait said:
My budget says RAM or HDD. Currently I have 128 Meg RAM, 3.2Gig HDD,
and am using Windows XP home on an Athlon 1600+ system. the system
runs okay, just want to know what to buy, HDD or RAM (leaning toward
HDD)
Click to expand...


even though 256 megs of ram would be a great idea

with a 3.2 gig drive i;m sure you must be pretty much our of free space

if you get a new 7200rpm drive then image your present installation over to
it
and get rid of the 3.2 gig drive

you will not only have more free space...but you should get a nice boost
in performance
 
Gary said:
My budget says RAM or HDD. Currently I have 128 Meg RAM, 3.2Gig HDD,
and am using Windows XP home on an Athlon 1600+ system. the system
runs okay, just want to know what to buy, HDD or RAM (leaning toward
HDD)
Click to expand...

Best setup for me was to get 512mb Ram, run XP without the pagefile and

setup about a 10meg freeware Ramdisk for web browser cache.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=1356
 
Gary said:
My budget says RAM or HDD. Currently I have 128 Meg RAM, 3.2Gig HDD,
and am using Windows XP home on an Athlon 1600+ system. the system
runs okay, just want to know what to buy, HDD or RAM (leaning toward
HDD)
Click to expand...

I agree, get a new hard drive. I like Seagate drives.
 
philo said:
even though 256 megs of ram would be a great idea

with a 3.2 gig drive i;m sure you must be pretty much our of free space

if you get a new 7200rpm drive then image your present installation over to
it
and get rid of the 3.2 gig drive

you will not only have more free space...but you should get a nice boost
in performance
Click to expand...

Face it, he needs 512 MB of RAM. He's going to need more RAM in any
case. I'd go for the HDD first. He's been slogging along with 126 MB
of RAM and can continue like that a bit longer, but that tiny, slow, old
HDD has GOT to GO. He has no room for a swap file, I'll bet!
 
My budget says RAM or HDD. Currently I have 128 Meg RAM, 3.2Gig HDD,
and am using Windows XP home on an Athlon 1600+ system. the system
runs okay, just want to know what to buy, HDD or RAM (leaning toward
HDD)
Click to expand...


If you are running out of disk space, that makes sense. 128 Megs is
not much for WinXP.
 
My budget says RAM or HDD. Currently I have 128 Meg RAM, 3.2Gig HDD,
and am using Windows XP home on an Athlon 1600+ system. the system
runs okay, just want to know what to buy, HDD or RAM (leaning toward
HDD)
Click to expand...


I would wipe out XP and install Win98SE. You'll get more disk space.
 
ToolPackinMama said:
Face it, he needs 512 MB of RAM. He's going to need more RAM in any
case. I'd go for the HDD first. He's been slogging along with 126 MB
of RAM and can continue like that a bit longer, but that tiny, slow, old
HDD has GOT to GO. He has no room for a swap file, I'll bet!
Click to expand...

You really do need both items, especially the memory if you are running XP. I
don't know what your budget is, but last Sunday I saw one of the Western Digital
drives, 40 Gb, on sale for $35.00. For sure you need memory, at least a 256 Mb
upgrade. You didn't say what kind of memory you need, but generic 256 Mb. is
about $30.00 for PC3200 right now.

In short, between $65.00 and $80.00 is what you will need for both items. If
you need to raise some cash, stand on the corner with a sign that says, "Will
work for RAM". ;)

Jon
 
run XP without the pagefile
Click to expand...

_________________________________________________________

No pagefile? Ok if you can make it work. I tried no pagefile and my
system would run ok for several hours or even days at a time but
eventually would crash. Put the pagefile back and no problems. I have
512 megs of RAM. I have now bought a separate small HD (1.6 Gb) which
I'm going to put the pagefile on and see how that works.

One of my main reasons for wanting the pagefile gone or on a separate HD
is reducing the size of my drive images. My pagefile is about 750 Mb
which is a complete waste of space when I image the drive.
 
Gary Tait said:
My budget says RAM or HDD. Currently I have 128 Meg RAM, 3.2Gig HDD,
and am using Windows XP home on an Athlon 1600+ system. the system
runs okay, just want to know what to buy, HDD or RAM (leaning toward
HDD)
Click to expand...

You should be a better judge of that than any of us. If your OS is
configured to use a fixed amount (maybe zero) of swap (AKA page) on
the HDD, then as soon as your running programs use up all of the
available RAM and swap area, then BAD THINGS will happen, like crashes
of programs or the OS. If the running programs mearly use up all of
the RAM, then your programs will tend to run slow as they swap memory
between the RAM and the swap area on the disk. If you're configured
to have a variable amount of swap, then the swap area on the HDD could
fill up the HDD too. So you need to decide whether you'd rather live
with this slow running, limits on running program's memory usage,
etc., and have lots of HDD space, or avoid the slow running, etc, and
have no additional HDD space. And you surely know more about your HDD
space needs than any of us do.
 
Gary Tait said:
My budget says RAM or HDD. Currently I have 128 Meg RAM, 3.2Gig HDD,
and am using Windows XP home on an Athlon 1600+ system. the system
runs okay, just want to know what to buy, HDD or RAM (leaning toward
HDD)
Click to expand...

Well it totally depends on what you're doing, and we can't answer that. Are
you running out of hard disk space? Do you plan on adding more stuff to
your hard drive that will make you run out? Check your system monitor while
running. Are you running out of memory? This is all pretty much common
sense.
 
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