Speed Up Your Computer
This is a beginners guide to speeding up your computer. This is step one of the guide. For step one we will focus on hard drives. The slowest components in your computer are those with moving parts. This is why it is best to start here. The more RAM, faster CPU craze is something that even consumes some of the experts. The fact is though, that more RAM, faster CPU might not actually be what you need. Indeed spending money on these components might not do anything to speed up your computer at all!
This is the first in a series of articles designed to make it easy for you to know how to speed up your computer (pc or laptop) with the least amount of money or work.
How to know if you need a faster hard drive
Laptop Users:
Most laptops come with slow hard drives to help increase battery life. Although this is the case, putting in a faster hard drive is not likely to cause any battery life problems.
Step 1: What am I working with now?
Most laptops come with 5400 RPM hard drives and most PCs come with 7200 RPM drives. If this is the case for your computer and you are looking to speed up your computer and extend its life, you need to upgrade that to a faster drive. First, though, let’s check your current drive speed. Click: Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Information. This should give you a screen that looks like the following:
System Information - Disks
Using the above image as your guide, expand Components, Storage then select Disks. On the right-hand pane you will see a description of your disk drive. Write down the Model (In my case HTS721080G9AT00) and do a search for it on Google. This should bring up results that will give you specification information for your drive and tell you what speed it is. To find the speed look for the numbers 5400 or 7200 and the letters RPM. Drive speed is measured in many ways, the RPM specification shows you how fast the disk spins. Here are the specifications on newegg for my drive:
I have highlighted the RPM specification to make it stand out a little more for you.
Once you know your speed you know if an upgrade can help speed up your computer. This is the case if you are using a laptop and you have a 5400 RPM drive (or less) or if you are on a desktop and have a 7200 RPM drive (or less). Here are some links to some good drives that I can recommend to help speed up your computer.
All of these links are from a company called Newegg. I have been a Newegg customer since October of 2003 when they were first getting started. I cannot recommend any online retailer more highly which is why all of my product recommendations link to them.
These links are for some great hard drives focused at performance for your PC or laptop (ordered by most highly recommended) - Updated 09/2008:
Laptop (price range before shipping: $99.99 - $164.99):
PC (price range before shipping : ($149.99 - $294.99)
