External Hard drives

[novahifi]

Do these things which plug into a computer's USB port and give it more memory cause the machine to run more efficiently?

I'm having alot of trouble with my laptop which I believe is partly to do with it being very cluttered. What are the best steps to take? Should I immediately try defragmenting and then deleting expendable files and then seeing if I can add an external hard drive or memory chip?

I have also received an offer from a technician at the store I bought the McAfee disc from to have a look at my laptop to check what is wrong with it. Would it be a good idea to show it to him? The laptop has had alot of my passwords entered onto it, not to mention credit card details and more.

Thank you

 

[Raffaz]

Ive got one that i use for storage. I use it to keep my main drive clutter free, it makes it easier to defrag if it aint full. If your gonna get one, i would transer stuff to the new drive and then defrag it if ya current drive is full. Also an external hard drive wont give you extra memory, it will give you more storage space. Its the RAM thats referred to as "memory"

 

[novahifi]

Thankyou.

Is it possible to put necessary programs into the external hard drive or are they strictly only for clutter or extraneous programs etc?

 

[Raffaz]

i wouldnt recommend it, coz it means ya will need the external drive connected all the time, or ya might get problems loading certain things.

 

[novahifi]

hmmm, that is problematic since I was hoping to use eclipse on am external harddrive. Is that sensible? Can external hard drives be reattached to different computers and have their contents used by those machines?

 

[Raffaz]

whats eclipse? ya can run a program from the external HDD on another pc if its a .exe file. But ya cant install software on ya external drive, and then run that on another computer, because it will be looking for installation files and links from the other computer, if that makes sense to ya.

 

[novahifi]

Eclipse is a free java compiler that takes up alot of memory. So the external hard drive can only be used with one machine?

 

[Raffaz]

Its used more for storing stuff than running software, like storing music or videos to run on another program. Ya know like having a film and then taking it to someone elses to watch on their pc, that kind of thing.