Will a higher hard drive size affect performance
My laptop came with a 500 GB hard drive. I use my laptop for storing my digital photographs, and only have about 14 GB of file storage left on the original hard drive. I have a 750 GB external hard drive, but am leery of relying on it for primary storage as I tend to knock things over and it has already crashed once and I lost a lot of the files. I am looking at a 1 TB internal hard drive, but am concerned if storing so much data will affect the computer's performance. Should I also increase RAM from 4 to 8 GB (the limit for my 64-bit, Windows 7, Asus A54C laptop)?
15 Answers
No, getting a larger hard drive will not impede performance. If anything, it can improve it!
Fifteen or so years ago - when FAT filesystems were being widely used (FAT16, FAT32 etc) - fragmentation was a really big problem (the idea that a block of data on a disk is not always kept in the same place - infact, it could be spread across several different areas on the disk). The fact that a 1GB file could have half of it's data at the start of the disk and half the data at the end of the disk meant that yes - I/O times could be slower as the bigger the disk, the bigger the gap between the blocks and the bigger the space the disk would have to 'seek' to get to it. We don't tend to use FAT filesystems anymore and instead use NTFS or exFAT on modern Windows operating systems, so fragmentation on drives with large amounts of data is not so much of an issue.
In response to whether you should upgrade your RAM from 4GB to 8GB, it definitely would not hurt - if you do any sort of photo editing the extra 'breathing room' would give you a definite speed and performance boost. I'm unsure if your laptop has an 8GB limit or if you're saying Windows 7 has an 8GB limit, but 8GB is not the maximum for Windows 7 and anything above the operating system recommended amount would be advisable.
Bigger hard drive will very likely have better performance than the smaller one. It's because of hard drive's inner mechanics.
HDD platters are always of the same physical size, no matter what's the drive's capacity. It means that bigger hard drives have bigger data density. So, if you take two HDDs, first one two times bigger than the other, and spin them at the same RPM, both heads will read paths of identical length, but for the bigger drive that path will contain two times more data!
That's purely theoretical, but that's actually what struck me after I have replaced my laptop's HDD. The old one was 500 GB 5400 rpm drive. I wanted better performance and more storage space, so I got new 750 GB 7200 rpm drive.
Because of higher rpm I have expected the drive to perform about 33% better (7200/5400=1,(3)), but it turned out it's almost twice as fast as the old one. Now, if you do the maths:
(7200 * 750) / (5400 * 500) = 2It explains everything.
Of course it's not only the rpm and capacity that make a difference. Some drive models are just better and some are worse. For a laptop you should also consider other factors, such as loudness and power consumption. 7200 rpm drives will be more noisy and will drain your battery faster. If you're fine with your current performance, go for a 5400 rpm drive (for example WD Green). Bigger one will improve your read/write times for big files, but generally won't affect small file operations/everyday tasks. Fast-spinning drives, on the other hand, will give you better seek times, thus making operations faster for smaller/heavily fragmented files.
About the RAM upgrade: it won't be necessary, but may be a good idea. Windows 7 should be just fine with 4 GB RAM (and Windows 8 would probably do even better), but if you like to have a lot of tabs (30+) open in your browser, more RAM will cause your OS to swap less data to the hard drive. Less swapping = better performance, but also more RAM = slower hibernating/restoring from hibernation.
A higher capacity hard drive won't make your computer slow down, but having a hard drive without much space, not enough space for paging, will reduce performance.
You can connect an external hard drive to a desktop computer and backup to that(over the network), you won't knock that drive over. That's better than an external drive connected to your laptop where you knock it over.
In the past I used to hear about people having smaller partitions so they could defrag quicker, and defragging would improve performance. But I don't tend to hear much nowadays about people defragging.
Generally it's worth increasing RAM e.g. from 4GB-8GB, many people nowadays have 16GB! RAM is not expensive. But if you don't have much hard drive space, like you have 14GB HDD left. Your paging file in a worst case scenario might be 2*your RAM. Might be 1.5* your RAM. So with such limited HDD space, upgrading to 8GB RAM might not be a good move. But, if you find you are concerned about 20GB space, then your problem isn't so much the pagefile. Your problem is limited HDD space. It'd be a good idea to address your HDD space issue, then upgrade your RAM to 8GB.
What's better than a lots of ram? MORE RAM.
No ram will go to waste as any modern OS just uses it up as a file cache.
So if you have enough (I have 32gb at work, 16 at home), everything will just pop up.
(Even with a HDD.)
As others already said, a bigger drive will be faster.
(Of course it depends which model you buy. Like there is a WD Green series. If you want a faster HDD, go with WD Black Scorpion. There is only a 750gb version, no 1TB model. Yet.)
But you should get to the core of this problem: Get a NAS, and use a LAN cable.
There are small box like NASs with 2disks in them. You can even carry those around.
(Sure they are a bit bigger but better than losing files because of knocking things down...
Oh and please, use an online backup solution like Crashplan or Carbonite. Or whatever unlimited solution you prefer. They all worth it.)
Will a higher hard drive size affect performance.
No, the higher capacity itself should have no influence at all.
Performance will increase it you can access the data faster, either by:
- Faster spinning platters.
- Higher density platters.
- More platters.
- Better design.
If you get a newer generation drive then you will often find a few of of these and that will result in a higher speed. And newer drives are often bigger, so this will coincide with both a faster and a larger drive.
The real issues here though are:
- Faster spinning platters means data passes quicker beneath the RW heads. Think of it as reading a book and keeping your finger near the letter which you are reading. A higher RPM means you can move your finger faster.
- Higher density: Write smaller. This means if your finger moves 2 cm per seconds and you have 10 letters per cm rather then 8 you suddenly go from (2x8) to (2x10) letter read per second. Thus coincides with more information per platter and thus higher capacities. (aka more can be written in a book / on a page).
- More platters. Switching the between RW heads is faster than moving the heads. A suboptimal but working comparison is reading from two pages in an open book (and using two hands, one to point to a place on each page) rather then reading a single sides book, turning pages more often and then repositioning your hand.
Now a newer drive will tend to come with higher density or more platters. That will increase the speed. Not how large it is.
I am looking at a 1 TB internal hard drive, but am concerned if storing so much data will affect the computer's performance.
No, that should not be a problem. Not unless you still run DOS. :)
Should I also increase RAM from 4 to 8 GB (the limit for my 64-bit, Windows 7, Asus A54C laptop)?
More memory helps with a lot of things. It will not increase drive throughput, but it will be used as buffers. The nett result is a faster laptop and RAM is relative cheap. It is probably worth it to upgrade the RAM.
