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HELP PLEASE R.A.M? & External Hardrive

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by krazyasif, Dec 25, 2007.

  1. krazyasif

    krazyasif Guest

    Hi

    This is my System Spec:

    Acer Travelmate 250
    Intel Pentium 4 2.6GHz
    2 * 256MB DDR SDRAM
    40 GB Ultra ATA/100 HDD (currently has only 10GB left)
    DVD/CD-RW

    I have an External Samsung SH-S182M DVD Rewriter

    QUESTION 1: WHICH EXTERNAL HD?

    What I want to do is get more memory but I want to get it external. I've seen three ... Does anyone have experience with these or can recommend any good ones. In order of preference:

    1. Freecom Hard Drive 500GB External USB-2, silver (About £72)
    2. 500GB Seagate External Hard Drive (£68)
    3. Western Digital My Book 500GB Essential USB2.0 External Hard Drive

    QUESTIONS 2: RAM?

    I use Nero a lot to convert avi to Mpeg .... 700MB avi file takes about 3 hours to convert to mpeg and then about 1-2 hours to burn.

    My laptop has 2 RAM slots/sockets. Max I can have is 2GB RAM.
    ATM it has 2 256MB RAM Card things in. I'm thinking of taking one of them out and getting myself a 1GB RAM Card. Will that be best? Will I see significant improvements in performance? or will it make my computer less reliable?

    Most importantly how much would you say I would have to pay for a 1GB RAM upgrade? Should I get it installed? Seems simple enough to install - a case of poping the hood unclipping and replacing then clipping back ... dont want to break anything

    Please help as I am unsure what to do to get best performance
     
  2. krazyasif

    krazyasif Guest

    Oh and also does it matter which Make the RAM is?

    Mine takes PC2100/2700 DDR SDRAM SODIMMs ....
    Not sure what that means but is there like a "best" make out there to buy or does it not matter?

    Thanks for your time in reading and Merry Xmas
     
  3. krazyasif

    krazyasif Guest

    still no reply:(

    got one more question

    My Laptop takes

    DDR266 PC2100 memory which runs at 133MHz OR
    DDR333 PC2700 memory which runs at 166MHz

    Which one is better? the one with the more MHz?
     
  4. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Hi Krazyasif, please be patient when waiting for a response to your queries. It is christmas time, and not everybody's got time to spend on the forums checking for new posts.

    1. Seagate and WD are the better brands to go for. I like WD internal drives, but as for externals, I expect the Seagate's probably the better one to go for.
    2. I'd recommend using a stick of 1GB RAM. If it's not compatible with the existing stuff, you will have to remove both and use the single 1GB stick on its own. If it does work, the more the merrier, you get 1280MB instead.
    As for the RAM, go with the fastest you can (with DDR1 anyway). It'll downscale it to the lower speed if there are any problems anyway, so grab a 1GB module of PC2700. At the current prices that shouldn't set you back more than about £40.
    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=117458
     
  5. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    stay away from the wd my book drive as there are issues going on with it including a lawsuit. read the news section above about it. sodimms are dimms(ram) for laptops. they are smaller then regular ram for desktop pc's.
     
  6. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Surely that only applies to the optional software included with the drives though? That's only an extra feature crippled, not the actual operation of the drive for normal use. The reason I don't recommend MyBooks is that they're still pre-formatted with FAT32, and so are useless for large files.
     

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