5 yr old Dell - is it time for a new hard disc?

TakeThis

MimiJane wrote: »

Thanks closed. I'll have difficulty in trying to work out how to do some of what you suggest above, but will have a go :eek:

The commit charge figures you asked for are : 732M/247

Commit Charge should be listed:

Total:
Limit:
Peak:

closed

not in ie, in windows explorer

732/247?

MimiJane

closed wrote: »

not in ie, in windows explorer

732/247?

Sorry, I did mean Windows Explorer

MimiJane

TakeThis wrote: »

Commit Charge should be listed:

Total:
Limit:
Peak:

Sorry, I was looking at the bottom line. This should be it :-

Total : 366132
Limit : 2530528
Peak : 513184

macman

Your existing hard drive could last another 5 years. Or it could fail tomorrow. It's impossible to know, so you have to assume the latter. But if you back up regularly then this is not an issue.
Given your type of usage, all you probably need (assuming you are not running out of disk space) is a clean up and another 512MB of RAM. XP should run far better on 1GB.
Not really worth upgrading to W7 on a 5 yr old machine, even if it will actually run it, because the hardware will then be the bottleneck-and you'll need more RAM than 1GB.

closed

in explorer, if there are no scheduled google update tasks, just skip that step.

is that commit before or after following the suggestions?

tightman

One way is to get a RAID USB drive that constantly mirrors between the two drives. Hardly likely that they will both fail at the same time and if your Dell fails then you can plug the external drive into your new PC

TakeThis

Run CPU-Z and click on 'Memory' to see how much RAM you have installed and 'SPD' to see which slots are occupied and the specification of the RAM installed. Report back if you please.

pineapple

My desktop is about 7 years old - with Windows XP. It's not a specific make - being assembled and sold from an independent computer shop. The motherboard is ASUS. The hard drive failed recently and was replaced by that same shop which retrieved all my info and put it on a new hard drive. Total cost 60+. I don't think that's bad.
Like the OP my needs are not much. Email, searching and a bit of youtube/tvcatch up. That said I do use it 24/7
I've only used a fraction of the space. I used Spybot to untick every single process not needed at start up and ccleaner keeps it clean.
Technology keeps on updating and we are constantly exorted to buy into the latest bells and whistles when in fact a lot of time, it's not necessary. Computers are a bit like cars. Do you actually need that all singing, all dancing machine or is it just to impress the neighbours? Don't forget, like a car it will have devalued by the time you get it home. And like cars, it's a judgement call as to when to call it a day.

closed

If they retrieved your info, it probably didn't fail.