Re: Slow HDD

Aosmosis wrote:
> Reason why I wasnt keen on it was because its a 160gb HDD. Are we talking
> days?

Are you backing up to floppy? If so, then yes.
DVD backups will take a long time too, if you want to back everything up.

The fast options are:
A) Find another hard disk of suitable capacity and use Norton Ghost, or
a similar product to do the backup. (160Gb hard disks are <£60
(Redstore.com, Maxtor DiamondMax 10 160Gb 8Mb 7200 PATA (MAXSTO064),
£45.05+Vat))
B) Only back up useful stuff that you cannot recover by some other means
(i.e. you don't need to backup C:\WINDOWS, but if running XP, you should
atleast save the WPA (Product Activation) file to save you grief should
you need to re-install)

> There seems to be a lot of downloaded things (22Gb worth)...could this be
> the reason?

Zarking fardwarks! What are you downloading? Have you run AdAware
recently?
IE (and netscape derivates to some extent) can 'lose' cache content. Do
a disk cleanup (explorer, My computer, select C:, Properties, Disk
Cleanup) and clear out any IE cache; if using Firefox, Tools->Options,
Select Privacy, scroll down, Cache [CLEAR].
Reboot and nuke anything in windows\TEMP older than the reboot time (and
there will be all sorts of crud)

THEN do your defragmentation run, because doing it with all that crud on
the disc, and then deleting the crud afterwards is, shall we say,
sub-optimal as far as free-space fragmentation goes.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Need new computer
    ... Good processor, you'll be able to use 3GB of the 4GB of RAM, giving ... Good sized primary hard disk drive. ... I recommend one with at least a 4MB cache. ... there are advantages to a quad I'd go strongly in that direction. ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)
  • Re: URGENT - how to copy hard disk to a new PC???
    ... No reason it shouldn't work if it's still functioning. ... This is assuming that you have a bootable CD with Windows and a key. ... what if I take the hard disk from a fried PC and put ... I might easily get fired over it if I don't fix it. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Event ID 32 - write cache enabled
    ... The local domain controller could not disable the software-based disk write ... cache on the following hard disk. ... So, it does appear the Windows is attemtping the disable the write cache, ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.general)
  • Re: System Spec (OT?)
    ... but the Core2 processors with only 1 or 2MB of cache ... *Memory - 1^st Hard Disk* ... *Graphics Card* ... Sound BlasterAudigySE with 7.1 Surround Sound: ...
    (Ubuntu)
  • Re: New FAT32 performance
    ... Copy from local hard disk to USB hard disk (via File Commander): ... CACHE has space for 4096 sectors ...
    (comp.os.os2.setup.storage)