Move Data to Portable drive - Speed up Laptop
Hankwt
Loc: kingsville ontario
ok all you UHH computer gurus - I have an HP dv7 6160ca laptop AMD vision A8 with 6Gig of Ram my hard drive is getting pretty full almost overflowing I do copy data to another drive for back up purposes. I do have a work station as my main computer for editing ( LR5 , Elements 11 , PSP 5, and On One Perfect Photo 8) my problem with the laptop is it is quite slow running the editing softwares. if i would move all my data off of my main C drive to a portable drive - would i see any performance gains?? I have about 400 gig of music , photos , and movies that I like to keep with my laptop when we go away for extended periods. This way way my main drive has only software . make sense ???
I know this isnt a top notch laptop but it does work in a pinch when away- i just hate the sluggishness. Thoughts suggestions ??
I believe you will find little improvement by freeing up space on your existing drive (unless you have a dangerously small amount of free space left at this point; in that case you could see some improvement). Unless you replace the internal drive with one that round at a higher RPM (which may not be worth it, even if technically possible), the critical factor is internal memory that can be used by the editing software. More important than disk is the amount of RAM; if possibly you should increase your RAM to allow for less swapping of data from drive to memory.
I would purchase a usb3 plug in hard drive and save some lesser used files to that, if you really want to keep everything with you look at a Westen Digital passport usb3 drive. The drive is no larger than most cell phones and a 1 terra byte is fairly inexpensive. I would also update my memory, your laptop will take up to 16gb, go to crucial.com and there are places to search for matching the right memory to your pc, if you are comfortable doing it yourself then go to newegg.com or tigerdirect.com and search for your memory or you can buy it direct from crucial. You might save some money at the other sites, but crucial is good memory. You can of course get a faster hard drive but the change over is not easy as you must clone your existing drive to your new one do that before updating your memory.
Cibafan wrote:
I would purchase a usb3 plug in hard drive and save some lesser used files to that, if you really want to keep everything with you look at a Westen Digital passport usb3 drive. The drive is no larger than most cell phones and a 1 terra byte is fairly inexpensive. I would also update my memory, your laptop will take up to 16gb, go to crucial.com and there are places to search for matching the right memory to your pc, if you are comfortable doing it yourself then go to newegg.com or tigerdirect.com and search for your memory or you can buy it direct from crucial. You might save some money at the other sites, but crucial is good memory. You can of course get a faster hard drive but the change over is not easy as you must clone your existing drive to your new one do that before updating your memory.
I would purchase a usb3 plug in hard drive and sav... (
show quote)
The only problem with a usb3 drive is that computer is only usb2.
Hankwt
Loc: kingsville ontario
i believe there is 2 usb 3 ports
Hankwt wrote:
i believe there is 2 usb 3 ports
How old is the computer?
Files on your hard drive do not slow down your computer, unless it is almost full. It is processes running in the background that eat up RAM that slow your computer. The best thing is to back up all your files, then do a clean install of your OS.
Hankwt
Loc: kingsville ontario
It supports 16gb of ram it only has 6gb of ram. Increase ram to 16 gb.
SonyA580
Loc: FL in the winter & MN in the summer
I have the HP dv6-3123cl and had the same problem when the hard drive got near full. I moved everything to a 3 TB external drive and the computer now runs like new.
Gene51
Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)
Sounds like you need a new computer - use an SSD drive for booting, you'll think your computer is running on jet fuel. A 5400 rpm drive is just awful for a disk intensive application. using 16 gb or more ram will make it less disk intensive (more memory = less scratch disk use).
As a temporary fix you can go the startup utility (msconfig on a windows platform) and disable all the startup programs that run in the background. Over time, with each new program that gets installed, more and more RAM gets used by these programs leaving you less to work with for programs YOU want to run. Most of these RAM resident startups are not necessary for your computer to function properly. Those that are will be re-activated when you re-boot. This will NOT be as effective as adding more RAM but it does not cost you anything.
As a few others have mentioned, underlying programs have most likely slowed your machine down. It seems once you buy you machine, all those others decided they want a piece of it. Your antivirus, spell checker, even the weather stations are on part of your ram.
Like the more you have, the more they want. Nightsky gave you the best solution. But you can also just press your "Control - Alt - Delete" Then select "Processes" then click on "Task Manager" then "Processes" and see how much or Ram Restate you don't own and have given away.
Read the manufacturers specifications the laptop has two usb 3 ports.
hello, hankwt
I have been on uhh a long time now, but rarely express my opinions. I do not use my laptop to store any of my photos.
I use an external drive for that. keep my editing programs on my laptop and my desktop. I upload all of my photos to my external drive. I have found that my laptop and my desktop do not suffer a slow down due to too many programs or accelerators running in the background. I enjoy the speed of my editing programs. This works for me, i dont know if it will work for you or others. Just my 2 cents :)
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