External hard drive question/advice needed

[Harvestman]

Hi all,

I know there are a few computer-knowledgeable people on here. I'm not one of them, so please try to keep replies in English, rather than Geek.

basically, I'm after an external hard drive for my PC, as it has been getting slower and slower, and the penny has finally dropped that it is probably all the pictures I am uploading onto the hard drive with my new found love of photography.

I quick consultation at my local computer repair place (because he is local to me) had me being advised to ensure the drive is USB 3 compatible, and then I was told to go to PC World because their prices were probably best. I'm after 1TB of capacity, just for overkill. Prices seem to be £60-70.

So, two questions:

1. Any brands/makes/models that you recommend?
2. Can I do better on price than that? I've seen one online for £45 including delivery, but don't know if it is any good.

All help appreciated.

 

[Two Socks]

The 'my passport'-harddiscs by western digital are good and reasonably priced. I would recommend these.

 

[mountainm]

Samsung do the m3 on amazon, I've been impressed with all my Samsung tech so far.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008PABFX8/ref=cm_sw_em_r_am_it_ws_gb?ie=UTF8

 

[Outdoorlifeofbrian]

Go for a Seagate, that's what I have and it works a treat! Plug in and go no problem. £50 which isn't cheap but it's a good price for the quality!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-STB...F8&qid=1379454474&sr=8-2&keywords=seagate+1TB

Cheers Brian.

 

[ADz-1983]

Filling your hard drive will not slow your system down so whoever told you that is speaking rubbish.

What will slow system down (depending on activity) is drive fragmentation. In basic terms this is like putting allot of items in a cupboard but not organizing them well and then going back and trying to find somthing.

If you have enough space in your system for your photo's then you dont really need an extra drive except in case you want to make backups locally on additional drive.

To defragment/optimize your drive to see if this helps you can use inbuilt Windows defragment program however I would recommend a 3rd party app like TuneUp utilities or maybe a free program like defragler.

I would also install and run CCleaner. This will clear any crap from system and also has a registry scanner which can potentially fix some issues on system slowing it down. It would be best to run this before doing the defragment with defragler etc.


First see if the above helps before forking out external/extra storage.

 

[mountainm]

Filling your hard drive will not slow your system down so whoever told you that is speaking rubbish.

What will slow system down (de

Well..... technically It will slow down if your system has low memory and makes heavy use of a page file (writes memory to hd when it runs out of memory) which will in turn be even worse if it's defragmented.

However the best way to fix that is add more memory.

 

[Shewie]

It won't do you any harm to get them off your PC, I'd go for WD or Seagate if I was buying again.

I picked up a Iomega 1TB from Tescos online back in 2008 for £90, I've never had any trouble with it and it's fairly well travelled.

 

[Trunks]

I agree with both of the above, but will add that you do need an external drive for some sort of back up for your images.

If your hard drive fails, you'll loose the lot. Alternatively back up onto writable DVDs.

My question, when you say your PC is slow, what are you doing when it starts to slow down? Are you trying to edit/manipulate your images?

Using photoshop etc needs quite a bit of processing power, especially on high resolution images. If your pc is low on ram, or is old and has a low spec processor, this might account for things slowing down. In which case, an external drive won't help one bit.

Just out of interest what pc do you have & what ram?

 

[Trunks]

+1 Iomega

 

[ADz-1983]

Well..... technically It will slow down if your system has low memory and makes heavy use of a page file (writes memory to hd when it runs out of memory) which will in turn be even worse if it's defragmented.

However the best way to fix that is add more memory.

Dude, thats RAM, not storage. Two completely different aspects. What the user is asking about is adding more storage to speed up system, not RAM.

But yes, adding more RAM can make things faster.

There are many different reason why his system could be slowing down, like mentioned above CPU and RAM or fragmentation or the most obvious. Trying defrgamnetent and other optimizations are free and should be tried first before anything else. Then think about adding more ram or possible better CPU.

The main reason for adding a drive like I and others mentioned is for backup purposes. Although you can also do this freely via services like dropbox. I would also recommend flickr as you get 1TB of free storage for FREE

 

[Harvestman]

Ok, my pc is old, and was built for me by a friend, so I am totally unaware of its specs. I have no idea what its RAM is.

I just noticed that things like Iplayer, youtube etc really struggle now, and they didn't before, and the period of deterioration correlates with the sudden increase in the number of images I am uploading onto my machine. As has been said, I need to back up the images anyway, so an external drive is a good thing regardless,

Thanks for all the help so far.

 

[mountainm]

Dude, thats RAM, not storage. Two completely different aspects. What the user is asking about is adding more storage to speed up system, not RAM.

But yes, adding more RAM can make things faster.

No. It is not different. Please look up what a page file is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paging

Paging is an important part of virtual memory implementation in most contemporary general-purpose operating systems, allowing them to use disk storage for data that does not fit into physical random-access memory (RAM).


When a pc doesn't have enough ram to keep everything in memory it uses a page file and writes some of the information to the hard drive. This can be a huge file. The constant access and writing of which will effectively slow your pc down.

A fast hard drive will speed this up. Extra memory can eradicate the issue. If there isn't enough space for the page file it has to read and write more frequently and in smaller chunks slowing things down even further.

 

[ADz-1983]

Ok, my pc is old, and was built for me by a friend, so I am totally unaware of its specs. I have no idea what its RAM is.

I just noticed that things like Iplayer, youtube etc really struggle now, and they didn't before, and the period of deterioration correlates with the sudden increase in the number of images I am uploading onto my machine. As has been said, I need to back up the images anyway, so an external drive is a good thing regardless,

Thanks for all the help so far.

In that case it does sound more like fragmentation of drive storage rather then anything else. You should defrag data on drive aswell as make a whole backup copy to external for safety or use a service like I mentioned like flickr as this will be free.

 

[ADz-1983]

No. It is not different. Please look up what a page file is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paging

When a pc doesn't have enough ram to keep everything in memory it uses a page file and writes some of the information to the hard drive. This can be a huge file. The constant access and writing of which will effectively slow your pc down.

A fast hard drive will speed this up. Extra memory can eradicate the issue.

Look bud, you're missing the point.

Adding data to storage does NOT increase RAM usage, it increases storage usage. Yes you're correct that if RAM is all used up then virtual ram (pagefile) is used, however that is simply not the case here. Its his storage that is filling up NOT his RAM. Unless ofcourse he is running apps that are filling his RAM up but he hasnt made any indication of that.

 

[Trunks]

Dude, thats RAM, not storage. Two completely different aspects. What the user is asking about is adding more storage to speed up system, not RAM.

I think what mountainm is describing is virtual memory. When the ram in a system is insufficient or heavy under load, the system utilises any free storage capacity as "virtual memory".

If this system is old, and has insufficient ram & has very little free HD space due to loads of pictures, there will be no virtual memory.

 

[mountainm]

Unless ofcourse he is running apps that are filling his RAM up but he hasnt made any indication of that.

Not missing the point at all. If his hard drive no longer has room for his page file then his pc will slow down.

 

[ADz-1983]

Not missing the point at all. If his hard rive no longer has room for his page file then his pc will slow down.

But that is a big leap to make in that he has actually filled his HD up. He hasnt made any indication of that. Plus that doesnt make a difference anyway since the pagefile is usually reserved space so wouldn't be affected.

 

[mountainm]

But that is a big leap to make in that he has actually filled his HD up. He hasnt made any indication of that. Plus that doesnt make a difference anyway since the pagefile is usually reserved space so wouldn't be affected.

Dynamic page files resize according to available hard disk space as managed by windows.

I'm putting forward one reason why his PC may be slowing down. neither of us have many facts to go on.

Not sure what your issue is here.

 

[mountainm]

I have no idea what its RI just noticed that things like Iplayer, youtube etc really struggle now, and they didn't before, and the period of deterioration correlates with the sudden increase in the number of images I am uploading onto my machine.

The only thing we know for sure is he has less hard drive space than he did before...

Hence my (and the pc repair mans) rubbish diagnosis.

 

[ADz-1983]

Dynamic page files resize according to available hard disk space as managed by windows.

I'm putting forward one reason why his PC may be slowing down. neither of us have many facts to go on.

Not sure what your issue is here.

No issue at all. I'm just saying that its more likely that its simply his drive fragmentation that is slowing his system down then RAM/Virtual RAM. For one he would be getting notifications about his virtual ram if it was insufficient.

I'm just saying that before anything else he should optimize his system before adding more RAM or storage (for performance increase purposes).