Hard Drives: A Boring Thread Title

[Mando Knight]

Are you disagreeing with Obrysii? Cause that would be important.

Yes, after a fashion.

Hold on, Mando, what do mean by "loading"?

I mean exactly what it says. If the program needs to frequently read large amounts of data off of the hard drive (that is, to load it onto the RAM), you'll notice the difference in speeds fairly regularly. If not, then you'll only really ever notice it as a somewhat extended delay in the program starting to run, which will be proportional to the size of the program. If it's an USB 3.0 link, you might get a ~3Gbit/s data rate comparable to SATA interfaces.

If the computer needs to read the disk frequently, you might also look into upgrading your RAM. If at all possible, an x86 system purchased within the last four-five years should be upgraded to 4GB RAM, while an x64 system can use more (though it may not need to). A Dell laptop's RAM is easy to replace: there should be a removable panel on the back. The RAM is identified easily enough: it's your standard thin little computer chip looking thing, and should have a catch or release lever or something. Pop out the old chips and slide in the new ones. The first time you do it might take you a while if you haven't fiddled with the computer before, but if you're familiar with the system the only things that are easier to replace are the battery and anything that just plugs in (USB attachments, power cables, etc.).