Increase performance

Newer large hard drives are MUCH faster than older smaller hard drives. While this sounds backwards you likely have your OS on the slow drive and are using the larger faster drive for storage. You might want to reverse them although that would of course involve reinstalling Windows.

The newest hard drives like the WD Black, Seagate 7200.12 and Samsung Spinpoint F3 all have 500GB platter designs ( 500GB, 1TB, 1.5TB ect.) that are extremely fast compared to designs from even a few years ago. The denser the platter the faster the drive.

Are you using SATA ( hopefully ) or older PATA drives? As long as you have SATA drives you might even want to get a new HD for your C: drive from one of the ones I listed. The Spinpoint F3 is the best "bang for your buck" drive right now in either 500GB ( 1 platter ) or 1 TB ( 2 platters)....either are very fast.

Either way the 120GB drive you have is an older design than the 500GB for sure and will be slower.

both drives are sata-II @ 7200rpm, both are western digital 16 mb (i dont know what that means, i'm a newbie)

the 500gig one is a caviar blue bought 3 day ago, the othe im not sure

Areal Density is what makes a new drive faster than an old one....the newer 500 GB per platter drives like the Spinpoint F3 and Seagate 7200.12 put data past a hard drive read head at least 4 times faster than your old 120 GB drive.

The Cavier Blue is a single 500GB platter. You want to improve speed you need to use it as your C: drive.

so now its clear that i need to install my OS in the 500gb drive, but what about my software and media???

Here are some additional things to consider.

1. Clean up temporary files and browsing history. Clearing some of this information can speed up the browser.

2. Clean up extensions. These are little programs that add functionality and also take up processing power. As a rule, only uninstall extensions you personally installed. Some extensions install automatically with the program. Those are usually good to leave alone.

3. Clean up (delete) old emails. These accumulate over time and can slow down the email program.

4. Uninstall old, obsolete programs that you no longer use.

5. Use WPA2 (aka WPA-PSK) for wireless security. This will prevent outsiders from stealing band width, and more importantly, using your computer for shady transactions including fraud.

6. Regular defrag has already been mentioned by anort3.

Best answer selected by winnovi.

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey