So my wife has gone out of control over the last year or so and now her sony laptop computer is almost full. it's only a couple of years old. 69 GB used, just under 0.5GB free. this has caused the computer to slow down a fair bit. the computer has 1.0 GB of RAM and a 1.73 GHz processor. I'm no computer expert, but my guess is that for the most part, the computer is fine, just need to expand some memory, which is something I can't do personally. My questions: 1. Will expanding hard-drive help? 2. Will expanding RAM help? 3. Is there anything else I should do? 4. With what I should do, how is the best way to find someone to do it? Is there a computer store out there? Geek Squad? Where would be cheapest place to get the parts? EDIT: I do have backup storage, and she could probably delete a bit of stuff she doesn't used, but probably getting to the point of need for extra memory anyway.
It seems you are not out of memory you are out of hard disk space. Memory will help some, but not so much......1 gig should be enough, IMO, unless you are running Vista. You can get a bigger HDD but why not just get a back up disk and drop the stuff you don't need on it? DD
Agree w/ DaDakota. It's probably good to have around 2 gb free so that the hd doesn't become a bottleneck. I just pulled that number out of the air so take it w/ a grain of salt. I'm just guessing even w/ 1gb of ram on xp your computer might still do a decent amount writing to the page file which further reduces the .5 gbs you have left.
thanks. not running Vista. I'm definitely doing some backup, but do you have backup of your backup, or have you created discs? Right now, the stuff on her computer is in 2 spots....her computer, or backup. If I put on backup, then delete from computer, it would only be in the one spot...the backup location, which doesn't seem as smart. I could, I guess, make discs of the backup, but since stuff is added all the time, that would seem like a lot of disc-making...I don't know...how do people typically do back-up. What's normal amount of hard-drive space on a laptop these days? Since a lot of this work will unfortunately fall on my shoulders, I think adding hard-disk space might be a necessity, even if I can get her to delete much of the less -used stuff.
i personally think 70gb is enough for a laptop. your wife should just delete everything she doesn't need from the hard drive and transfer a lot of the things she doesn't use very often to an external/backup drive. but if she wants to continue filling up hard drive space and you are willing to upgrade, you can get a 250gb notebook drive here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&N=2010150380+130971534+1309729183&name=250GB i've never worked with a sony so you'll have to double check compatibility. you will also have to copy everything from the 70gb hard drive anyways, remove it from the laptop, install the new drive, install operating system and then transfer everything back to the new drive. also, adding another 1gb of ram should speed up your computer but you need to make sure there is an open slot for it and that the mobo can support 2gb.
try emptying your recycle bin and see how much space that frees up. You can also delete saved windows patches.
I upgraded ram into my Sony Laptop - 3 years ago. went from 128 to 384. I had to take it to best buy though, because I didn't want to jack anything up after I opened it. This improved the total operability. But if your hard drive is near capacity, your computer will be slowed and subject to system crashes. You should do one of 2 things (1) upgrade memory and try to remove unnecessary files thus reducing HD space (2) upgrade memory and buy external HD (200gb or so) and move some of the files from the LapTop to the external HD.
This should free up some space.... Go to "My Computer", right click your C drive, click properties, and run a disk cleanup. Make sure "Compress old files" and "delete temporary files" are checked. If you've never done it before, it will take a while. Also empty your recycle bin, delete unwanted files, and if possible try to burn any videos(if you have) onto a data DVD. 1GB of RAM(memory) is great for XP, no serious need to upgrade. Having an external hard drive would also be a plus.
