Help Yourself Centre Hard Drive and Memory: How They Affect Your Computer's Speed

The Hard Drive

The hard drive is the main storage unit for the computer. It is not typically associated with computer speed, but speed of the hard drive does play a small role in the performance of your machine. Overall, you should not be too concerned with the hard drive. Rather, focus on the amount of space you need to store all of your applications and files. Another option is adding a second hard drive to a machine. This allows you to store backup files and “mirror” your applications. This option is beneficial if you have a hard drive crash on one of the disks. You can boot the machine to the second hard drive, and your downtime is minimized. You can purchase a new machine with two hard drives, or you can add a hard drive to an existing computer to increase the amount of storage space.

Random Access Memory (RAM)

RAM is the physical memory installed on the computer. When you load an application, open a file or even simply move the mouse, the information is stored in physical memory. Physical memory works closely with your computer’s central processing unit, so the more memory you have, the more information can be transferred back and forth from physical memory to the CPU. When physical memory is not available, the computer writes information to the hard drive, which is referred as virtual memory. Virtual memory is slower than physical memory. For this reason, having plenty of physical memory installed greatly affects the speed of your computer. Computers with a severe lack of physical memory can have random crashes and the “blue screen of death.”

Should You Purchase a New Hard Drive or More Memory?

If you are searching for an affordable way to upgrade your computer and speed it up, physical memory may improve your computer’s speed. If you are using only 1GB of memory, an upgrade to 2GB or more may speed up the computer, especially if you are running a newer operating system. If you are running 2GB or more already, upgrading RAM may not make much of a difference. Only purchase a new hard drive if you need more storage space or you think the drive is failing. The purchase of a new hard drive probably won’t make much difference in the speed of your computer, but it does add more storage space, so you can store backups and have a spare drive in case your current one fails.