How to speed up your computer

For most people, moving the paging file to a second harddrive will improve performance of their computer.

Now some/many of you may be unwilling to open your computer (you might let the evil out).

Ok, I can work with you too-no really.

Here is what you can do, buy a 2gig thumbdrive (Micro USB Drive) and plug it into a usb slot (while the computer is off!)

Now turn on your computer as you normally do.

When it is done booting, right click the "my computer icon" and choose properties

Pick the "advanced tab" and then the "performance tab" on the system properties box.

Under "performance options, choose advanced tab then virtual memory.

You will see the usbdrive as a removable drive. pick the usb drive-highlight it and then choose custom paging file.

Choose the smallest to equal the largest size "1.75 gig (1700 megs).

now go to your c drive and pick "no paging file".

Naturally, the os tells you you must reboot to complete this action.

Close all the box's and reboot.

Your 1st reboot will be a little slow-as the computer is moving the paging file.

After that, you should notice a faster boot time and faster performace whaen running your computer.

Just some performace tips from your friendly neighborhood Monsoon.

If your running XP, you should check out this page, it's called Optimize XP It has a section on stopping unnecessary processes at startup, freeing up some memory.

[edit on 7-3-2006 by Rasobasi420]

Thats really clever, using Flash memory for virtual RAM. So, just to be clear, using Flash memory for virtual RAM like this is faster than your HD doing it?


I should also mention you can buy RAM hard drives now. Really. They use a PCI slot and you plug your own RAM sticks into them. They work because they have their own power supplies. Imagine playing an entire game thats basically loaded into RAM. The whole thing, at no point would the game need to stop and load from the HD.

Originally posted by skippytjc
Thats really clever, using Flash memory for virtual RAM. So, just to be clear, using Flash memory for virtual RAM like this is faster than your HD doing it?

Flash memory drives are slower than hard drives, some 5 or 6 times slower when I tested it, but it depends of the type of drives.

If this is faster than your present system then I think that your problem is something else, may your paging file is fragmented or something like that.

One thing people never talk about is the fact that flash drives are not made to be writen many times, they are best for reading than for writing, and they do not stand more than some millions of writing cycles.

In a flash drive in normal use that would be enough for all the expected life of the drive, but if you use it for the paging file of Windows it will be constantly accessed.

Originally posted by skippytjc
Thats really clever, using Flash memory for virtual RAM. So, just to be clear, using Flash memory for virtual RAM like this is faster than your HD doing it?


I should also mention you can buy RAM hard drives now. Really. They use a PCI slot and you plug your own RAM sticks into them. They work because they have their own power supplies. Imagine playing an entire game thats basically loaded into RAM. The whole thing, at no point would the game need to stop and load from the HD.

Actually that the answer is two parts:

1)Yes, flash memory is faster than a harddrive(they are working on how to really drop the price of flash so they can start making 30-60 gig flash drives that will replace harddrives-this will lead to the "instant on" computers you may have heard rummors of.

2)The major performance gain is due to putting the paging file on a seperate drive and controller from your system/boot/programs harddrive(s).

Remember that the speed of a system is limited by the speed of the slowest component.

Flash memory is faster than a hard drive, but the USB interface is not faster than ATA, SATA, SCSI or Firewire.

So, when using a USB (preferably 2.0) interface the speed of that drive will be limited by the speed of the USB interface.

Also, flash memory does not have the same speed for reading and writing, reading is faster than writing.

I will post some benchmarks latter.

I know that this is not a flash drive, but a 128MB Transcend Compact Flash card had these results:

Random access time: 2.0 ms
Average read speed: 2.3 MB/s



An old 12GB Maxtor 91360U4:

Random access time: 15.5 ms
Average read speed: 16.0 MB/s



A Seagate ST3120022A:

Random access time: 16.4 ms
Average read speed: 46.7 MB/s



I can not benchmark now a real flash drive because my 1GB Transcend drive died last sunday, but I will try it tomorrow with one from one of my co-workers.

Originally posted by ArMaP
Remember that the speed of a system is limited by the speed of the slowest component.

Flash memory is faster than a hard drive, but the USB interface is not faster than ATA, SATA, SCSI or Firewire.

So, when using a USB (preferably 2.0) interface the speed of that drive will be limited by the speed of the USB interface.

Also, flash memory does not have the same speed for reading and writing, reading is faster than writing.

The idea was to help speed up computers for people who don't want to or are afraid to open their computer and add a harddrive to use as a paging file.

As I said before, the speed increase comes form moving the paging file off the main drive onto another.

On a celeron 1100 rig with 256 megs of ram and windows xp, it reduced a full norton antivirus scan from 120 min to 40 min-I call that a real performance upgrade. Not only that, but it can be done without opening the case.

I will post some benchmarks latter.

Originally posted by skippytjc
Thats really clever, using Flash memory for virtual RAM. So, just to be clear, using Flash memory for virtual RAM like this is faster than your HD doing it?


I should also mention you can buy RAM hard drives now. Really. They use a PCI slot and you plug your own RAM sticks into them. They work because they have their own power supplies. Imagine playing an entire game thats basically loaded into RAM. The whole thing, at no point would the game need to stop and load from the HD.

Ya playing that game until the power cord "accidently" gets unplugged and all that info loaded in the RAMDrive exists no more. One of the downfalls of RAM memory, that and buying all the sticks yourself could get pretty expensive! Untill they perfect this Tech I will stick with my Seagates drives.

Originally posted by DustintheWind
Ya playing that game until the power cord "accidently" gets unplugged and all that info loaded in the RAMDrive exists no more. One of the downfalls of RAM memory, that and buying all the sticks yourself could get pretty expensive! Untill they perfect this Tech I will stick with my Seagates drives.

You dont use battery backup? Shame on you!! I could power a small city with my backups! I have a closet on the other side of the wall behind my PC's, I run all my power cables through the wall to two masive back up's, no cable kicking in there. I cant imagine a RAM drive requires that much power to retain data. I bet a decent sized battery backup could keep power in the drive for days and days assuming nothing else used it.

And why would you put valuable data on a RAM drive to start with? Lets face it, the real value is games and media, no reason you couldnt just load the apps back on if you lost it, keep files on a regualr HD.



[edit on 10-3-2006 by skippytjc]

originally posted by skippytgc

You dont use battery backup? Shame on you!! I could power a small city with my backups!

LMAO!!

Ya skippy but everyone is looking for SPEED, I gotta be faster than the other guy type ya know? I do not use UPS's, never really had a prob with power outages to necessitate the need for them.

As far as the RAM drives power usage, I am sure it does not use much, the problem is if the power goes out and you have no battery backup you will lose all the data that was on that drive, no prob reloading games and what not, just a pain if you have to.

Originally posted by DustintheWind

Originally posted by skippytjc
Thats really clever, using Flash memory for virtual RAM. So, just to be clear, using Flash memory for virtual RAM like this is faster than your HD doing it?


I should also mention you can buy RAM hard drives now. Really. They use a PCI slot and you plug your own RAM sticks into them. They work because they have their own power supplies. Imagine playing an entire game thats basically loaded into RAM. The whole thing, at no point would the game need to stop and load from the HD.

Ya playing that game until the power cord "accidently" gets unplugged and all that info loaded in the RAMDrive exists no more. One of the downfalls of RAM memory, that and buying all the sticks yourself could get pretty expensive! Untill they perfect this Tech I will stick with my Seagates drives.

Dust, You misunderstood what was presented. A Thumbdrive/USB Drive is NOT a ramdrive!!!! I have seen then, an interesting idea, thoug

Also this drive was being used for a "PAGINGFILE" not a data/program drive.
The fact is that the USB drive will maintain it's info even when the power has been shutoff.

Also one of the main points of the post was performance improvments W/O opening up your case!

mrmonsoon, I didn't misunderstand what the Thread was about, I was just replying to skippy's post on the ramdrives.

About the USB/Thumbdrive as the source for the page file that is a great idea, think I will give it a try, since I am always looking to speed up my RIG.

Originally posted by mrmonsoon
The idea was to help speed up computers for people who don't want to or are afraid to open their computer and add a harddrive to use as a paging file.

As I said before, the speed increase comes form moving the paging file off the main drive onto another.

On a celeron 1100 rig with 256 megs of ram and windows xp, it reduced a full norton antivirus scan from 120 min to 40 min-I call that a real performance upgrade. Not only that, but it can be done without opening the case.

The fact that you got a speed increase from 120min to 40 min in the scanning process was probably because Norton did not have the paging file to process, so less Mega Bytes to scan = less time.

If you want to see the difference then you need to do a comparison with a program that uses lots of memory, a good one is Photoshop or another image processing program.
You can create a big image, like 10000X10000 pixels and do some processing in that image. With an image of that size (286 MB) your computer will always use the virtual memory file, so you can see the difference.

Shuks! I knew there was a catch somewhere.
So I've gotta first go buy me a thumb drive! Isn't there anything free in this world?

Reminds me of a joke.....
Preface to instructions on how to make a mink coat:
First buy 52 minks!! :bnghd:

[edit on 16-3-2006 by mikesingh]

Originally posted by mikesingh
Shuks! I knew there was a catch somewhere.
So I've gotta first go buy me a thumb drive!....

check this thread:

free ms thumb drive

That would be a nifty trick with the thumbdrive; but I'm guessing you would definitely want USB 2.0.

My advice for speeding up a Windows pc? Be ruthless about clearing temp directories...Set a restore point and start turning off services...turn a couple off, reboot, and see what happens. If it crashes, restore and try again. Its amazing how few services and processes you really need. I run this XP box with 19 processes and it scoots right along.

NC

In addition to notclever's suggestion, A also suggest check and see whats in the 'startup' folder. If you absolutely don't need the apps that are located there to run at startup, delete the shortcut. Or better still, place the shortcut somewhere handy, in case you decide to restore it.

Also:

Try increasing your RAM to at least 512 MB.
Defrag at least once a fortnight.
Keep your registry uncluttered and clean it regularly. I use Easy Cleaner and its small, cute and EFFECTIVE! Here it is:
freeware4u.com...
Keep your refresh rates to about 72Hz.


[edit on 17-3-2006 by mikesingh]

Also make sure your computer is free from viruses, spyware, and other cyberjunk.
Also, if you are online while doing anything resource intensive, turn off automatic updates during the times that you want the most performance.
I used to hate having near crashes, and general system slowdowns, because microsoft wanted to 'help' me, by updating my windows files. shame on them!