HDD Make my PC run faster?

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that, been using reg cleaners like ccleaner for years. I just seems I need to press the internet page twice for things to happen, which never did before, i am affriad I did some messing about that I shouldnt have.

I really need this guy to finish with my NAS, he says he is having troubles getting into the engineer reset and installing something called XMC or something through linux... Its all french. But he has been sick for a while, but he has had my samsung 1tb F3 and my NAS for a month, and I am getting a bit annoyed, I told him not to worry about, but he is a computer geek and he needs it to be done.

I just wish there was a proper media streamer that could bit stream HD audio like the AC ryan, but with proper gigabit support, and not just say gigabit just to sell it, like the popcorn hour.

I know the PCH says it has gigabit, but no way on earth the chip would handle it.

Oh well, I did try build a HTPC as I have a case and my brother in law has a spare AMD 4400+ chip that he gave me, and all I needed was to install everything, and buy a HD 5450 card and a drive. But I hate powering up the PC as it takes ages, and also using over 400w is not that great, as my bills are high enough.

 

[manicm]

If your PC has a 7200rpm HDD and still seems slow then I think you need to be looking upgrading your CPU if possible (usually only on desktops). A faster HDD most likely won't help.

If you have a laptop it's upgrade time.

 

[Anonymous]

I have a 9350e phenom quad core, so dont think thats it.

I just think the amout of use this 6 year old HDD had had, I was thinking of renewing.

But if its not advisable to have your media and windows 7 startup on the same hdd, I might not bother.

I might wait for the SDD to come down to about 50.00 and then buy a 1tb hdd for my media or maybe a 2tb by that time would be cheap, The new intels are coming out anyday, and I should imagine the corsair ones will drop like a lead balloon

 

[cwalduck]

You could consider hybrid disk drives which use adaptive memory to store the most commonly accessed blocks, this gives SSD speed of access with capacities of normal disk drives. The speed of most PC is usually held back by disk drive access/latency disk drive access times have remained constant for many years as this is affected mainly by rotational speed of the platter and the number if heads in the disk drives which has not changed much in the last 5 years.

Internal transfer rates can be quite high most rates are measured with sequential reads which gives flattering performance figures, all systems have to deal with random I/O in the main so look for the random figures when choosing disk drives for system disks.

High RPM or intelligent/smart caching disk drives will improve performance of any system.

Different data types should reside on different types of disk drives, I would recommend that video/audio should be stored on SATA 1TB + disk drives 5200 rpm as access is mainly sequential, while system/game files should reside 7200 rpm disks with intelligent/smart caching as this is generally random I/O's.

Seagate Momentus disk drives have adaptive caching and are quite cheap for the type of drive (£65-£80).

 

[Anonymous]

Any stuttering with video u are seeing is almost certainly a player/codec releated problem.

These 2 links should enable u to play anything. Ur PC is way more powerful than the minimum required.

http://www.free-codecs.com/ffdshow_download.htm

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vlc/files/1.1.5/win32/vlc-1.1.5-win32.exe/download

Howver there a couple of things to speed up you pc general performance seeing as its quadcore. Dont keep that rubbish drive whatever u do - a 5year old drive is going to be slow compared to a modern one.

1 - Make sure u are running the latest firmware for your motherboard.

2 - Replace that HD. Thet F3 would be fine.

3 - 4GB (min) Total memory

4 - windows 7 has much butter support for multi-cpu, and is generally much more efficient.

5- an SSD will decrease ur boot time from around 1min30 to around 10secs,
and apps will start instantly, (make sure its a decent one - something
from OCZ for example). To get the most benefit from SSD steps 1-4 first.

The point about putting media files and swap file on different drives is valid (in an ideal world)- but would never be the cause of the problem. The make/model of new HD u buy is also largely irrelevant - they are all closely matched.

 

[Anonymous]

Been looking and I can get a OCZ 60gb for 90.00 and then buy a F3 for my media?

Still quite a lot just to boot my o/s a bit faster.

Would I have a problem, just buying a F3 for now, booting windows from that and having media on it as well, or would that suffer more than a vebatim 7200rpm external HDD.

I am just thinking that because the drive is USB 2.0 the AC RYAN has to drag the files through the USB into my PC and down the CAT 5E cable, or again does it not work like that?

Thanks again

My motherboard is garbage, I dont know how to flash the board to see if its the new one.
Board: ECS GeForce6100PM-M2 7.0
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 080015 10/09/2009

 

[Anonymous]

Your bios is up to date. An SSD wont help play your media files any better.

So u are just using the pc (with usb drive attached) to hold the mediafiles so ur Playon can see them? This doesnt sound like a pc issue. I assumed u were trying to play the files on ur pc.

What type of files are giving u problems?

 

[Anonymous]

Sometimes I dont get problems, but some 1080p hd audio files cant stutter a bit.

I am just wondering if its the external hdd that might be the weak link.

Thanks for looking at the bios for me.

Would I get better performance if I say partition 100gb for my OS and the rest for my media for the ac ryan to read off? samsung f3 seems the best bet, without going way overboard on a ssd for the os and f3 for the media.

 

[Anonymous]

No, your problem wont be the external drive.

I used to have a similar problem playing BD-ISO's over network on my BD-1. Some files would work, but some would stutter. A firmware update eventually solved the problem (and i do mean eventually ! ).

This is a playon related problem, which may be fixed in a firmware update. Your pc is not the problem - its more than capable - upgrade the lan card and it becomes s a decent pc. I think you should post on the playon forums for help.

A workaround might be to use software like Total Video Converter to convert the problem files to MP4 or similar format.

 

[Anonymous]

Ok

At the end of all that..LOL and really appreciate everyones help and based on your last comment.

I am going to buy a Samsung F3 for the O/S as my seagate is really old and came with my vista acer machine years ago, and it has had so much install and re-installs.

So would this be advisable:

100gb for the o/s and the reat for my media, would it be ok to run both at the same time?

And yes having stutter with BS ISO files, and have to convert all the time, and its annoying .but some are hitting 45mbps which I dont think 10/100 lan can handle

Overall bit rate :
16.2 Mbps

Maximum Overall bit rate :
48.0 Mbps

 

[Anonymous]

yes and yes.

The old drive would still be fine for holding media as well, or maybe holding a system image (windows backup).

 

[Anonymous]

Is it true that you can instal the o/s towrds the centre or end of the platters to make the o/s boot faster as it would spin faster in a certain area?

How would you know were the middle was and then keep the rest of the drive for media?

 

[Anonymous]

By default harddrives start filling from the outside edge (fastest) first and move gradually inwards.

So when u install OS on the 1st partition it is already on fastest part of the hd.

 

[Anonymous]

Ah cool, thanks, the Samsung has 2x500gb platters, so should work well

 

[carter]

i put an ssd on my pc for os and programs and it runs very fast once in windows and is quicker to start up windows 7

i also have a gigabit network but i am limited when streaming to apple tv but to be honist its been ok.

all music and movies are kept on 7200rpm drives

as far as starting up windows i think there are new motherboards coming this year with a new type of bios that will work simaler to a mac so this with ssd and windows 7 should be very snappy.

as far as the spindle drives go i no there are green drives that have less performance and things like the raptore that are very fast drives(but you will pay a premium)check out the read write speeds on the specs.this i think is the guide.

your cpu should be more than enouth.

 

[Anonymous]

I read that the new BIOS boards will be instant start-up so not sure were that will leave the SSD market.

Mate of mine that has my NAS said its going to be amazing, but could not understand why it took 25 years to do this.

I might bue a new i5 2500k when this bios thing sorts out, and get 4 or 6gb ddr3 ram, as I think my PC is getting a bit outdated right now.

 

[carter]

canada16:

I read that the new BIOS boards will be instant start-up so not sure were that will leave the SSD market.

Mate of mine that has my NAS said its going to be amazing, but could not understand why it took 25 years to do this.

I might bue a new i5 2500k when this bios thing sorts out, and get 4 or 6gb ddr3 ram, as I think my PC is getting a bit outdated right now.

ive nearly finished my curent build that will act as a server for movie,s music, photos.

so i to will probably start a new one this year with the new type board an ssd, I5 or I7 chip might even go down the water cooling root

 

[carter]

canada16:

I read that the new BIOS boards will be instant start-up so not sure were that will leave the SSD market.

Mate of mine that has my NAS said its going to be amazing, but could not understand why it took 25 years to do this.

I might bue a new i5 2500k when this bios thing sorts out, and get 4 or 6gb ddr3 ram, as I think my PC is getting a bit outdated right now.

i dont no if you listen to podcasts, but if you do give B.Y.O.B. guys a try(build your own box)thay have loads of knoledge of new products and are always building media pc ,home servers.

gives you loads of ideas.if only i had the money to do them all at once

 

[Anonymous]

Just had a look at the site, looks very good, just bookmarked it, thanks