How to make a computer really fast?

So I'm contemplating adding a solid state drive to the laptop. My plan is to install all my programs on it and have the HDD as soley storage. My laptop has a second sata drive bay. What size would I need to run vista 64, and a few other programs? Would I be better off using the PCI slot? Will I see an apreciable gain in performance? What are your guys opinions.

The only fail proof way I have of making a comupter fast is to drop it off a tall building.

ha ha.

I was going to suggest an air cannon or trebuchet.

Seriously, solid state drives are really fast. I was under the impression that they were really expensive though. And I don't know about their longevity and reliability as compared to typical hard drives.

A pair of SATA drives running RAID-0 is still pretty darn quick, especially when paired with big RAM to handle all of the programs you have loaded.

Or just get XP instead of Vista. Vista is a gratuitous resource hog.

Yeah I hate Vista, I've thought about "downgrading" to XP but don't know how to do it, and what's this RAID-0 you speak of? I've got a Core 2 duo, 2.53ghz 4gb ram, with a 512mb Nvidia video card and a 320gb 5400rpm HDD. it's currently running 64bit vista, and for the life of me I don't know what the difference between the 64bit version and the 32bit version.

It's by no means slow at this point, but I know that after a while it'll get slow, and I'll be annoyed.

I'm not sure of the reason behind this but..

When I bought my Acer Aspire One, I bought the one with a normal HDD. All the reviews claimed that the model with the solid state drive was actually slower.

The main reason I went with the conventional drive was capacity but speed was the nail in the coffin.

Shawn

I have a ~3 year old laptop for my "daily" hehe. I just upgraded RAM today from the 512MB that came in it to 2GB. MAN what a difference. Best $25 I've ever spent. SO much faster now, this thing was just dragging along.

Memory is super cheap right now. Upgrade!

http://www.pricewatch.com/system_memory/

I bought from bzboyz.com and was very happy. They fixed an error I made on my order with no hassles (before it shipped) and I got the mem after just one business day.

I can only upgrade from 4gb to 8gb and it's not cheap.

Shotgun ~ Miata ~ Bacon

If that doesn't help, the dropping off of a tall building sounds like it might work.

Dropping it off a building isn't very good, really... it will only accelerate at 9.8m/s.sq. and will hit terminal velocity or the ground before it really gets "fast".

I would suggest that my laptop is at its fastest when I bring it on a cross-country flight (600mph or so) so in that same vein either find a military jet or top fuel dragster to go even faster.

I hate you people sometimes

wherethefmi wrote: Yeah I hate Vista, I've thought about "downgrading" to XP but don't know how to do it, and what's this RAID-0 you speak of?

Going to XP would just require the discs and a re-install of the OS. If you got to a RAID array, you would need to reinstall the OS.

The different RAID configurations are ways that the computer splits information across different drives, using them as one drive. RAID-0 is striping. It takes two or more hard drives and virtually makes them a single hard-drive with full memory and speed of all the drives. When it writes information it splits it evenly across all of the drives in the array. With two drives, it's twice as fast. Three drives; three times as fast. Etc.

The downside is, if something happens to one drive, that information is lost on all drives. So it can be less stable than a normal system. But given how dependable modern hard drives are, I wouldn't be too worried if you have a smaller array of 2-4 drives. I'd stick to just 2.

Also, to set one up, it is best to do with two completely identical hard drives (same model and size). You also need a proper RAID controller. Usually that function is incorporated into the firmware of higher-end motherboards. You can also go to Fry's or Newegg and buy a stand-alone RAID controller that will fit into a PCI slot.

You will then need to reinstall everything. For RAID to work, you need to start with a clean slate. The OS will be installed in RAID. That's cool with RAID-0, because it will cut your load times for your OS, too.Wiki Article on RAID

Yeah that's not going to happen as I have a laptop. That's why I was interested in SSDs. So where can I get a disc of XP, can I use the product key that is on my laptop? I know the answer is no, just being hopeful.

I am not sure the SSD drives are faster than the "normal" ones. I seem to remember reading a review in which they were about the same speed (they might have been comparing them to fast drives though). Search on tomshardware.com, I am pretty sure that is where I read the review.

One consideration is one of those 10,000 rpm raptor drives. Very fast, expensive, and not that large. With a laptop, you are definitely at a disadvantage. With a desktop, a RAID would be the way to go.

Good SSD drives are fast but very pricey. Your current HDD is sloooow at 5400rpm. A faster HDD would be better in my opinion than an SSD, but it's your money and computer.

walterj wrote: Dropping it off a building isn't very good, really... it will only accelerate at 9.8m/s.sq. and will hit terminal velocity or the ground before it really gets "fast".

I would suggest some aero so that it falls on edge... that should raise it's terminal velocity

wherethefmi wrote: Yeah that's not going to happen as I have a laptop. That's why I was interested in SSDs. So where can I get a disc of XP, can I use the product key that is on my laptop? I know the answer is no, just being hopeful.

I'd get a copy of XP from Newegg. You might be able to find one on EBay. You will need a product key specifically for the version of XP that you're using. For example: an XP Home key will not work with XP Pro, but any XP Pro key will work with any XP Pro disk.

See if you can find a 7200RPM drive for your laptop.

The speed gains of a solid state drive would not be worth the extra cost and reliability issues. Especially not on a Laptop, since the performance of a solid state drive will be significantly effected by heat.

Faster drives really only give faster initial load times. After that, it's all RAM. Switching to XP will have the same effect, because Vista eats a ton of RAM just to idle. A faster drive won't make your programs run faster, just bring them up quicker.

Ok that's the info I needed, so I guess it's back up time. There's WIN7 RC1 out there for download I'm researching that, I wonder if it's the memory hog vista is?!?

Keep in mind that SSDs lose speed rapidly with age. I thought about getting some for my gaming PC but I got two high-speed hard drives in RAID0 instead.

What are some other things I can do to improve speed, I know indexing makes things slower, Defragging is something I do once a week. what else, I've got it on best performance visually, what are some other things I can tweak within vista.

Well... what you can do to make the computer faster depends on when and why it's slowing down. It's kind of like asking "how do I make my car faster". If you've got a Miata with a good suspension, you'll get more gains from adding power than doing suspension work. If you have a Fox Body that makes good power, you want to shore up the handling.

What are you trying to do with the machine that it's just not up to your expectations on performance? What do you use the computer for most frequently.

I can't tell you about Widows 7. I would just use XP. Microsoft tends to take a bit of time to iron out all the kinks the first time they introduce a new OS. I don't want to use my DD computer as a Beta Tester. XP is inexpensive and a known commodity.

Oh, another really cheap way to get XP is Craigslist. Buy a copy for $30 off of someone who has "upgraded".

Ok, I Guess since I'm taking this computer to afghanistan I just want it to run as reliably and quickly as possible. I mostly run movies off the HDD and some games. I'm pretty good at maintaining XP, and am new to the vista thing, I don't HATE it anymore, but I want to make it better. What about running my paging file off a flash drive?

I think switching to XP will do it.

Thanks, I'm pretty much decided on that, gotta wait till pay day to buy a copy. I could DL one but ehhhh, that doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies.

damn I just tried readyboost, and well it made a difference, noticable right from the start. I'm using a 1gb kingston flash drive and it made things pretty durn quick.