Yeah, and get that friggin thing cleaned up - NOW!
need a new hard drive
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In this case that is likely.
It may be too full of files, too many temp files or too many sectors marked as bad so it's not running at full capacity. The BIOS or OS or drive ROM - don't remember and it doesn't matter for this discussion - will mark bad sectors in the drive as unusable and ignore them - to a point. It may also just be loaded up with .tmp files using up drive space.
I would guess, given the nature of what you are seeing that it may be happening. Meaning sectors are going bad as drive deteriorates.
Hard drives ALL fail. They have a fixed lifespan just like the motor in your car. The "When" is what we don't know. When will it fail? While you have the machine or when the next guy gets it?
If the rig has issues, sees regular use and the drives are more than 3 years old - best to replace if you have the $ rather that screw around with diagnostics - expecially, if you're not familiar with it.
It may be too full of files, too many temp files or too many sectors marked as bad so it's not running at full capacity. The BIOS or OS or drive ROM - don't remember and it doesn't matter for this discussion - will mark bad sectors in the drive as unusable and ignore them - to a point. It may also just be loaded up with .tmp files using up drive space.
I would guess, given the nature of what you are seeing that it may be happening. Meaning sectors are going bad as drive deteriorates.
Hard drives ALL fail. They have a fixed lifespan just like the motor in your car. The "When" is what we don't know. When will it fail? While you have the machine or when the next guy gets it?
If the rig has issues, sees regular use and the drives are more than 3 years old - best to replace if you have the $ rather that screw around with diagnostics - expecially, if you're not familiar with it.
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Project EJ2
Jailbroken iPhone YO
Would it be hard to put a new hard drive in?
Generally no. There are exceptions - but typically is plug and play.
Now, if your machine is older than dirt - that's another story.
Have a read of this for an example: Asus A7v600 / Seagate SATA drive problem - PC Perspective Forums
And there can be other issues such as simple hardware incompatibility.
But, the issues are the exception - in most cases it's simply plug and play.
Damn dude... honestly, it's time for an update. If you have a Fry's nearby (you're in Cali, probably do) you can buy a bargain tower with Win 7 on it for under $300. They run Compaq and HP towers at that price every month.
Yep, if you can swing the $. Working on a 5 year old build, that was probably a low to mid grade setup when new is akin to polishing a turd.
The rig I call the "Daily Driver" (using it now) is 4 1/2 years old and still on Win XP. But, it was an Ultra High end gaming rig when I built it - so it's still vaible today in terms of desktop performance.
endlesszeal
Senior Member
if you dont do anything besides web surf and type papers or whatever, there is no need to upgrade. anything circa 05 should have at least 512mb with a decent single-core. it sure as hell will beat the pants off any "netbook" type POS with Intel atom.
virtual memory low is very bad. it means u're doing more than your RAM can handle and its paging and storing info on the hard drive. if this happens often you can see a significant performance drop and increased hard drive failure.
anyway, if youre strip for cash, replace the hard drive for like $50-60 bucks. if you got leg room, you can get a new system that for said $300-400 and be on the "bleeding edge" from 2-3 years ago
. which is plenty fast for 80% of population.
virtual memory low is very bad. it means u're doing more than your RAM can handle and its paging and storing info on the hard drive. if this happens often you can see a significant performance drop and increased hard drive failure.
anyway, if youre strip for cash, replace the hard drive for like $50-60 bucks. if you got leg room, you can get a new system that for said $300-400 and be on the "bleeding edge" from 2-3 years ago
. which is plenty fast for 80% of population.
I disagree. Even the lowest priced AMD Sempron single core chip just about doubles the performance of anything from the Pentium 4 era 4-5 years ago. With a new OS, larger faster hard drive (even the cheapos are faster than quick drives from 5 years ago) you can do pretty well buying the cheapest system in the store.
if you dont do anything besides web surf and type papers or whatever, there is no need to upgrade. anything circa 05 should have at least 512mb with a decent single-core. it sure as hell will beat the pants off any "netbook" type POS with Intel atom.
virtual memory low is very bad. it means u're doing more than your RAM can handle and its paging and storing info on the hard drive. if this happens often you can see a significant performance drop and increased hard drive failure.
anyway, if youre strip for cash, replace the hard drive for like $50-60 bucks. if you got leg room, you can get a new system that for said $300-400 and be on the "bleeding edge" from 2-3 years ago
The Atom performs on par with a mid to high level P4. Go dual core and you're even better. 512MB really isn't enough to run XP smoothly- 1-2GB will make sure that you're totally happy. RAM is cheap these days anyway.
Running out of virtual memory doesn't mean that you're just paging to the hard drive- it means that you're running out of space on the hard drive for the swap file to expand. Every M$ OS since XP defaulted to a dynamic swap file (which I hate) so that it expands and contracts based on system requirements. That just means that you have this monster file that's fragmented all over the hard drive- which is really bad if you're doing a lot of stuff that requires you to hit the swap file. Running out of space to expand the file is REALLY bad because that means you're definitely fragmented all over the damn place.
My favorite way to set up an XP system (especially if the user is just doing light web/office stuff) is to stuff 2GB of RAM in it, then disable the swap file completely. Another method is to create a fixed size swap file so it doesn't fragment, then use a defragger (not the crappy M$ one) to put it at the front of the drive where the read/write speeds are the fastest. I prefer to create a separate partition for my swap file on all my systems.
if you dont do anything besides web surf and type papers or whatever, there is no need to upgrade. anything circa 05 should have at least 512mb with a decent single-core. it sure as hell will beat the pants off any "netbook" type POS with Intel atom.
virtual memory low is very bad. it means u're doing more than your RAM can handle and its paging and storing info on the hard drive. if this happens often you can see a significant performance drop and increased hard drive failure.
anyway, if youre strip for cash, replace the hard drive for like $50-60 bucks. if you got leg room, you can get a new system that for said $300-400 and be on the "bleeding edge" from 2-3 years ago
yea.. web surfing, papers, torrents, streaming torrents to xbox.. thats it
money is tight so a new system is out..
I think maybe you misread my post:
"Yep, if you can swing the $. Working on a 5 year old build, that was probably a low to mid grade setup when new is akin to polishing a turd.
The rig I call the "Daily Driver" (using it now) is 4 1/2 years old and still on Win XP. But, it was an Ultra High end gaming rig when I built it - so it's still vaible today in terms of desktop performance."
I'm telling him to replace what he has.
We are in agreement. (But, if you still want to disagree, that's ok with me)
"Yep, if you can swing the $. Working on a 5 year old build, that was probably a low to mid grade setup when new is akin to polishing a turd.
The rig I call the "Daily Driver" (using it now) is 4 1/2 years old and still on Win XP. But, it was an Ultra High end gaming rig when I built it - so it's still vaible today in terms of desktop performance."
I'm telling him to replace what he has.
We are in agreement.
(But, if you still want to disagree, that's ok with me)
I'm telling him to replace what he has.
We are in agreement.
Hmm. Maybe I did, and I think I still am for some reason. No big deal.
Project EJ2
Jailbroken iPhone YO
Thanks bro haha because i think its time for a new hardrive too mine is really slow but then again we bought it when i was in 8th grade back in 2003 haha
alright, i'm ready to buy a HD .. my comp is really pissing me off lately so i've been using my sis-in-laws laptop
which would be the best to buy??... i'm leaning towards the straight plug in
Straight plug in will be the easiest way to go.
id opt in for the controller card, and the 250gb 16mb cache sata drive.
decent storage, 7200rpm, should be great.
decent storage, 7200rpm, should be great.
endlesszeal
Senior Member
food for thought. although a native IDE drive is easier to go, its not as cost efficient and "future-proofing" than getting a SATA controller.
SATA 1TB drives can be had for $50-60. Also, motherboards are coming with either 1 or no IDE ports anymore. Why is this important?
Your hard drive will probably out live your system at this point. True, mechanical hard drives can crash anytime, but with most warranty going from 3-5 years, its not too bad as long as you back up. Also, itll be easier to get an external housing in SATA than IDE if you do decide to use it as an external hard drive down the road. Lastly, if you get a decent controller, most if not all drives are now SATA 3.0, meaning itll be much faster than an old IDE drive.
So, i would get an SATA with controller. its a tad "more difficult," but the benefits outweigh the negatives.
SATA 1TB drives can be had for $50-60. Also, motherboards are coming with either 1 or no IDE ports anymore. Why is this important?
Your hard drive will probably out live your system at this point. True, mechanical hard drives can crash anytime, but with most warranty going from 3-5 years, its not too bad as long as you back up. Also, itll be easier to get an external housing in SATA than IDE if you do decide to use it as an external hard drive down the road. Lastly, if you get a decent controller, most if not all drives are now SATA 3.0, meaning itll be much faster than an old IDE drive.
So, i would get an SATA with controller. its a tad "more difficult," but the benefits outweigh the negatives.
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