New laptop or External HDD?

Liverbird1

Hi,

I have a 4 year old laptop which has recently begun to run slow, particularly on loading Windows but also opening programs etc. Last week when my sister was using it, the fan went mad, the screen went black and it rebooted, according to her. I suspect it overheated but not sure as I wasn't there?

My question is, is it worth buying a portable external HDD to back up photos to free some space (as I assume this is what's making it run slow, we have tons of them) or is the laptop reaching the end of it's life and should I just fork out for a new one with a higher spec?

Not sure of the brand or exact specs of my current machine, as at work at the mo and can't check, but I think it was fairly high spec to begin with as it runs XP and has Wi-Fi capability, although we don't use that.

So new ext. HDD or new laptop?

Thanks!:beer:

MBNewB

In the 4 years you have had the laptop have you ever opened the case and cleaned out the dust? Major cause of overheating with laptops.

Probably worth backing your work up onto DVD or external disk and then reinstalling the OS also if this hasn't been done in the 4 years since you've had it as Windows builds up a load of rubbish the more its used and generally slows down with time.

iviv

A portable external HDD is an option, though you should consider between a proper one, or just buying a 3.5" drive in a caddy (Which is probably what the proper ones are anyway). Essentially, they would act the same, the DIY one would be a little more expensive, but when you aren't using it as an external drive, you would easily be able to put it into a normal PC and use it as a regular hard drive.

a7man

Before deciding to buy a new one:

You need to check what RAM it has - upgrade if low, then I would dump everything onto an external HDD and format and reinstall windows onto the laptop.

After this though the problems might be expensive to fix and you might have to buy a new one anyway!

Leopard

A good external hard drive is a useful thing to have anyway and it gives you a lot more flexibility.

If you buy one, it may enable or assist you to solve your computer problem.

And if your computer problem cannot be fixed and you decide to purchase another, you will still have the external drive - which will be handy to use with your new computer.

So, buying an external hard drive is a good tactic.

Leopard

a7man wrote: »

Before deciding to buy a new one:

You need to check what RAM it has - upgrade if low, then I would dump everything onto an external HDD and format and reinstall windows onto the laptop.

After this though the problems might be expensive to fix and you might have to buy a new one anyway!

There's no point in buying it new or additional RAM unless and until it has been established whether it would be better to invest in a new computer.

If the latter is so, the new RAM (unless it could also be applied to the new computer) will be wasted.