[Mary Poppins]

I have a Dell Dimension desktop computer. It is getting old, but works great and I am happy with it, but I am almost out of memory. It has a Seagate 20 GB hard drive. Do I need to replace it or add an external hard drive?

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I think you are talking about two different things here. The memory is the physical memory and usually comes in 64,128,256,512 or 1 gig
The hard drive is probably most likely what you are describing as the 20 gig. Can we take a look and see if we can clear it out some for you?

[rshaffer61]

I think you are talking about two different things here. The memory is the physical memory and usually comes in 64,128,256,512 or 1 gig
The hard drive is probably most likely what you are describing as the 20 gig. Can we take a look and see if we can clear it out some for you?

[Mary Poppins]

Sorry, I meant to say space. My hard drive only has 3.9 GB of space left on it. And, I deleted everything I wasn't using to gain some. I already upgraded the RAM a while back.

THANK YOU FOR ANY ADVICE YOU CAN GIVE ME.

[rshaffer61]

Try these two steps first and let's see what we can find.

Download TFC by OldTimer to your desktop

• Please double-click TFC.exe to run it. (Note: If you are running on Vista, right-click on the file and choose Run As Administrator).
• It will close all programs when run, so make sure you have saved all your work before you begin.
• Click the Start button to begin the process. Depending on how often you clean temp files, execution time should be anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or two. Let it run uninterrupted to completion.
• Once it's finished it should reboot your machine. If it does not, please manually reboot the machine yourself to ensure a complete clean.

Download Auslogics Defrag from the link in my signature below. Auslogics Defrag in my opinion is better because:
It does a more comprehensive job at Defragging
It will actually show you what it is doing
At the end of working it will show you how much speed you picked up
You can view a online log of the files that Auslogics defragged

[Mary Poppins]

I used both of the programs you suggested.

[rshaffer61]

Did it open some room on your drive now?
Auslogics should have told you how much room it cleared up and what % your drive was fragmented.

[Mary Poppins]

I have been using these programs for a while now. After defragmenting, this is the report:

Disk Size 18.65 GB
Free Space Size 3.71 GB
Clusters 39102146
Sectors per cluster 1
Bytes per sector 512
Started defragmentation at 12/4/2009 2:13:27 PM
Completed defragmentation at 12/4/2009 3:05:17 PM
Elapsed time 00:51:50
Total Files 70071
Total Directories 7445
Fragmented Files 383
Defragmented Files 381
Skipped Files 2
Fragmentation Before 4.51%
Fragmentation After 3.46%

[rshaffer61]

It is 20% free which is acceptable. The only way to clean it off anymore is to uninstall programs or purchase a larger hd or secondary drive.

[Mary Poppins]

Thank you. We are back to my original question. Should I replace the hard drive or purchase an external one? Does the external need to be the same name brand (Seagate) as the hard drive I now have? What are important factors to know regarding each choice?

[rshaffer61]

If you are comfortable with having multiple HD's in the system then a second HD would be the answer. If you are not comfortable with having a C, D, E and maybe a F drive then I would say replace it with a larger drive.
You can use clone software of which there are several free ones out there to get everything to the new drive.
As far as the make of the drive it does not really matter. The drives DO NOT have to be the same manufacturer to work together.
The only thing you have to watch is if your existing drive is IDE or SATA then you would want to replace it with the same type of drive. This is the connection type on the back of the drive to the motherboard.

[123Runner]

The upper part of the picture is the ide drive and the lower part is a SATA drive if you were wondering.

I would just put another drive in. You can then use it for all your data and if the main one crashes for any reason, your data would be safe.
They are not hard to install and the price is quite low these days.
You can buy a 500gb for around $80. Usually less.

Some IDE drives at Tiger Direct

[Mary Poppins]

From the photos I have an IDE drive. I don't think that I have room on the mother board to add another drive. If I replace my current drive how do I get all the information & OS from the old drive to the new one? Also, I only have 512 RAM. I used the computer mainly for online classes.

Edited by Mary Poppins, 06 December 2009 - 06:44 PM.

[rshaffer61]

Can I ask what model of Dell Dimension you have? This could help us determine your Motherboard layout and further suggest the correct drive for you.

[Mary Poppins]

Dell Dimension L1000R

THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME!

[rshaffer61]

According to the replacement Motherboard for that series of system HERE your system has two IDE controllers which means it can support up to 3 hard drives and a dvd\cd drive.