PC Upgrade Question.

[Rodger Buckley]

I wish to increase the memory of my present system,by adding another 512 Mb of RAM.

Present System.

AMD 1800

512 Mb RAM

60 Gb HD (37 Mb free space)

XP Home

Would it be beneficial to add another HD and use it only for PS 7, PTExe. and all digital photo files?

(I am waiting for the delivery of a D70)

Would I be able to access 1Gb of memory on the new HD or would it only have 512Mb?

Rodger.

[alrobin]

Rodger,

If you have only 37 Mb free space, by all means add another HD. I presume you mean 37 Gb free? Even so, you will probably benefit from another HD. I just received my D70, not long after I upgraded to a P4 with 120 Gb HD and 1 Gb RAM, and I already have 1/3 of the HD filled up.

Depends on whether you have been using a digital camera already or not. If not, then you will see a marked increase in storage required. I would recommend a second HD just for backup purposes. With only one HD you are pretty vulnerable, unless you have other backup facilities, but tape backup is pretty slow and cumbersome.

I presume you also mean "1Gb of memory of RAM", not HD. With the 1800 you should have no problem accessing 1 Gb of RAM.

[Merlin]

Hi Rodger,

I'd like to contribute a thought or two.

I would certainly encourage you to add another drive (or two).

As you add files and delete them, a disk drive gets mixed up (fragmented). Keeping all of your pictures on one drive would make defragging easier,

and thus the drives would respond faster.

I use one drive for the system and programs (they don't change much) and another just for data (pictures and such). That way everything is together for defragging & for backups. This would mean pictures on one drive, P2E and PS7 programs on another drive.

The P2Es that you create would go on you picture drive because that would actually be like data.

I use another (3rd) drive just to copy my data onto (a backup drive). Drives are faster than tapes or other media. Backups are important because drives eventually fail

If disk speed is important, always use SCSI drives. They are a bit more expensive, but they get the latest technology before the IDE drives (or EIDE).

smaller seek time=faster

higher RPM=faster

More RAM never hurts. Sometimes it helps, but it never hurts.

Merlin

[Rodger Buckley]

Hi Al and Merlin,

Thanks to both of you for replying.

I will keep PTExe and PS7 programs on the original 60 Gb HD and pictures,PTExe shows, on a new 160 Mb HD.

Al, I eventually worked out how to open Adjustor with Excel 97 and XP home, using the manual method.Now all I have to do is learn how to use it!!!!

Rodger.

[ContaxMan]

Adjustor's well-worth the learning curve!