Upgrading My Hard drive

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Right now I have an Intel Celeron ~700MHz HP Pavillon. 256MB RAM 20 GB hard drive. I'm running windows XP right now.
I've been looking into getting a new computer. But we're also looking into getting a new car. So putting another big purchase on a credit card is not a good idea right now. When we do get a new computer, its going to be a major upgrade, not some computer thats just a little better.
So, in the meantime, I was thinking of upgrading the hard drive. Best Buy and Circuit City have some nice rebates right now. I was thinking going up to 80 GB. I do have a lot on there. And increasing the RAM to 512MB. I can probably get away with under $150 after rebates and if I shop around on the RAM.
So, my question, is it worth it?
Most of you will ask what I use the computer for.
Mostly surfing the web, email, word processing, and games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale. Nothing that uses a lot of resources.
It will most likely be another year before we buy a new computer, and like I said, we'll definitely sink money into it and get something nice.

 

Sams Club has an external maxtor 120 Gig harddrive for $128 dollars. Runs off USB. Saw it there Saturday.

 

I would keep the money to spend more on the new computer when you'll be buying it. If you don't store lots of data, 20 GB should suffice for a year, and there's no point buying RAM chips that you won't be able to use with the new computer.

That's because the old motherboards that support Celeron 700 processors support the old SDRAM type of memory chips up to 133 Mhz frequency and the new ones that run with 2+ Ghz processors use memory chips with up to 400 Mhz frequency (or even more). Your old RAM won't work with your new motherboard and so buying a RAM chip for just one year is a bad bargain.

Also, you will need a modern hard disk with a new computer - the type with 8 MB cache or even SATA controller. They aren't cheap right now and buying one in advance, a year before buying the whole computer, could force you to stick to a worse hard disk than you could buy together with a new computer when you'll be getting the whole thing.

An old hard drive to work with your current motherboard could cause problems in your new system or refuse to work at all. At best, it would slow it all down.

Don't do it. Save the bucks for your new machine. Unless you're going to buy that external USB drive DHB saw in Sams Club, but only do that if you desperately need more space. If I were in your shoes, I would keep all the money for the next year and buy the whole thing in one go. If I may suggest something, go for reliable manufacturers, well tested and supported solutions rather than high parameters. Intel processor, original Intel chipset on a good motherboard (ABIT or ASUS for example), Kingston RAM chips and good harddrive (get Western Digital or Seagate; never buy Samsung, avoid Maxtor, don't trust Quantum) will save you a lot of stress with crappy parts that don't work for no apparent reasons. If your new motherboard doesn't have onboard sound, an original SoundBlaster card from Creative, even if an older model that doesn't have all the trendy features, will save you driver problems and same for reliable graphics card. It's better to save on parameters than on quality. Those cards that offer skyhigh parameters for "accessible" prices tend to stop working for no apparent reason, underachieve in half your programs and so on.

 

I agree with chev. Unles you're having problems with HD space or running out of memory now, save your money and buy a new system later. Frankly, with a Celeron 700, I doubt increasing RAM will make much of a difference for what you use your computer for (256 should be plenty), and you can always delete programs you're not using to free up hard drive space. Just remember to defrag your HD periodically; it will speed things up a bit.

 

Buy a new computer mate. It'll only be a few months of pain till you save up enough for it. Then...its computing bliss.

 

Well, depending on the hard drive you get, you could just move it from the old computer to the new one when it comes time. Just a thought.

Edit: Look into the caviar edition hard drives by Western Digital, they would probably be compatible with your motherboard.

[ September 01, 2004, 02:13: Message edited by: Rednik ]

 

You live in America yes? Have you tried pricewatch.com?

 

Well, I will also recommend you to wait and buy whole thing later, but if you really don't need to play anything newer (and you don't intend to), buying more RAM will increase even that wordprocessing performance: I have one 256 MB Corsair "stick" and I didn't want to pair it with "no name" samsung , but when i put 256 (2*128MB) Samsung, I have noticed significant improvement with multi tasking (like 20 programs multi tasking... so it depends on that too)

Also, I dont know wich HDD you have now, but, you can say that I have felt some improvement with passing from old Caviar with 2 MB of cache memory to new 8MB cache... But that could be subjective or incorect, since I NEVER do defragmenting! Why? I have never experienced any improvement in my younger days when I was naive and did that. Still, if you want to do it, do it, I wont say you do anything wrong, I will say: "Yes, it is good thing to do..."