Critical HARD DISK shall I upgrade and to what?

FlewDesigns · Jul 20, 2014

Hello I have an upgraded XPS 8300

Intel Core i7-2600.
16gb ram
7870 radeon 2gb graphics card.
1tb memory.

System
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Manufacturer Dell Inc.
Model XPS 8300
Total amount of system memory 16.0 GB RAM
System type 64-bit operating system
Number of processor cores 4

Storage
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Total size of hard disk(s) 1850 GB
Disk partition (C

320 GB Free (918 GB Total)
Media drive (D

CD/DVD
Media drive (I

CD/DVD
Disk partition (J

491 GB Free (932 GB Total)

My computer rating is 7.9 on everything apart from processor at 7.6 and
my Primary Hard Disk is 5.9.

I recently did a dell diagnostic and it said my optimal drives was criticaly overworked?

Also a good point to note is i only have 300gb of memory left. Is there something I can do to
make it run faster? and what shall I replace my hard disk with?

Thanks.

snowctrl · Jul 20, 2014

Replace your HD with a 1TB SSD... except that's quite expensive - a 1TB will cost you £360 or so.

So I would suggest reducing the amount of HD space you're using by offloading music, video, photos, etc onto an external storage drive - a WD MyBook or similar, then get a Crucial MX100 SSD, which is £150 for 512GB, or about half that for 256GB

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=wd+mybook
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=crucial+mx100&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Acrucial+mx100

The SSD will make your laptop seem far far faster in every day use - it''s a very worthwhile upgrade

FlewDesigns · Jul 20, 2014

Im an amateur at computers and have only replaced ram and graphics card/power supply before so dont no this process.

Also im a graphic designer so I must have thousands of images. the only other items i have on my system is games but then thats 100gb at the most.

And its not a laptop its a desktop same advice?

snowctrl · Jul 20, 2014

Oh, sorry... well if it's a desktop it's hopefully simpler still. You want to:

Check you have at least one spare SATA slot, and power cables to go with them
Install an additional hard disk, for example a 1GB Seagate Barracuda, or WD Caviar Blue (turn off the PC, fit the drive in the case, connect SATA cable and power cable to new drive, turn on, go to Computer Management by searching for it, format the drive)
Move as much data as possible to the new drive - ideally you want only programs left, and (significantly) less than 256GB of space used
Turn PC off and remove new data drive, if you need to use the same Sata slot for the SSD
Install SSD (eg Crucial MX100 256GB) the same way you installed the new HD, but don't format it
Install cloning software that came with the SSD, and run it to clone your old system drive onto the new SSD
Turn off the computer, remove the old system drive - computer will now boot from the SSD
Re-install the data drive (no need for Computer Management this time) if you had to remove it

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Critical HARD DISK shall I upgrade and to what?

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