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My wife's computer is a Dell Optiplex 360 Intel Core 2 Duo cpu E7500 @2.93GHz 2.93 GHz 2.0 GB RAM. Her hard disk capacity is 232 GB with 229 GB used. She is not pleased with her computer. I assume it is slow because hard drive is so full.? I don't think it is a malware issue.
That's pretty much the general consensus with Dells. I've owned a couple of them and I certainly wasn't pleased with either of them as well.
Having a full hard disk isn't necessarily going to mean your computer will be slow. There's a huge number of factors that can accumulate in a slow computer. Your Windows system registry may have errors, your hard drive may be dying, the motherboard and CPU could be going, it could be your GPU - any number of things.
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I understand there is some room on my hard drive. I could move some of her data to my computer and delete it from hers but I think we will still need more soon given the flash HD camcorder we are using. Also I have many mini DV HDV tapes that are just sitting on the shelf unviewed and unedited.
What you could do here is instead of buying tons of hard drives (you'll have to wait until we get news from WD and Seagate about the conditions of their factories), is to buy a BD-R burner (something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... ) and start backing up and offloading some of your larger files, then reload those when you get a new HD or two. If one of your systems has a 1.5TB hard drive - a BD-R disc holds about 25GB on a single-layer disc, 50GB on a dual-layer disc. You could backup most of your files onto disc and reformat your hard drive and reinstall the operating system - that could clear up a lot of issues.
If you really want to upgrade - you could probably reuse your case and buy new parts. The bad thing about Dells is that they use a lot of proprietary components made just for their cases - which don't use the standard ATX form factor, and upgrading these is near impossible. If you build a new system or two you might as well start from scratch.
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When I said upgrading computers I actually meant new systems rather than upgrading our current computers unless you think that is feasible.
Well that depends on what you want to spend. You can put together some really killer systems for like less than $900 with everything - including monitor, OS, and keyboard/mouse.
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Ok on the server idea and HD prices. I do have significant backup storage needs. The pictures and videos are almost exclusively of our two kids. Right now we're just backing up with a collection of WD external drives which I have little confidence in.
I see where that makes sense but you would still be wise to wait a bit. A 3TB+ hard drive right now will run you close to $400 because of the flood prices, where a 2TB hard drive will run you anywhere from $200 - $350 right now. It won't take anything at all to power a file server - you can run one for super cheap (maybe use something like a Pentium G620 with 2GB of RAM and onboard video).