Need help with computer...again... This means you!!

Yeah you know who you are

Anyways, I need another hard drive for my sexy computer. I want something that won't give me a blue screen whenever I multi task with my PC. The screen goes "dumping physical memory" almost every time I close fire fox while Aion is running.

Questions:

1. What should I be looking for in terms of Specs on a hard drive?
I know I want something with a bigger memory preferably 720gb or more. I'll be installing quite a number of programs that are needed for school.

2. Paging. What is it and will it help with multi-tasking if paging is moved to the newer HDD?



I have a tower from Alienware. It's the Area 51 model. I don't feel like sending it to them and waiting for it for 2 weeks or more just to get a new harddrive installed. Please help, and thank you

Looks like you already have a handle on this =P

You didn't answer my questions! XD

What is your budget, and what kind of information will be stored? Important information should be backed up, and to have 750gb available AND backed up can get pricey.

I would suggest using the drive only for temp files (like fraps in the recording process), programs, and the paging file. In this case you could use two 500gb in a RAID 0 configuration. A raid 0 shows the two drives as one drive(1TB), and distributes data evenly across both drives. So if you had a file that was 128kb it records 32kb chunks back and forth on each drive. There are performance bonuses with this because of the flip flopping.

To spec this sort of setup I would need to know if you have enough room to hold two 3.5" harddrives (two empty 3.5"bays) and if you have open hardware slots (the slots that show on the back/bottom of your PC). If you have open slots, what kind of slots are they? Your rig is fairly new, so I would guess PCIe, but I need you to confirm it.

There is also the backup alternative. Buying two 750GB HDDs and putting them in RAID 1. RAID 1 shows both hard drives as one, but the difference is the two hdds mirror each other. So if you have a hard drive failure, you can replace the dead drive and nothing is lost.

As a side note, the read speeds on the new drive will not closely compare to your SSD drive. SSD are new technology and the read speeds are a lot faster than the old disk hard drives, so install programs that you do not use often on the disk harddrives.

Or you could be real basic and get. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152099

The answer to the second question is yes, it can help with multitasking to move the paging file.

Yup was hoping for Chris to save the day. I uhh can take pictures of my tower and such and inside it and the back slots for you if you are willing to help me.

Budget can be around 200 or 300 depends on what I really need
by back up do you mean have it saved elsewhere? I have an external where I can save all project files if that's what you think. I'm not trying to get rid of my ssd. I just need an extra storage device and paiging target.

your knowledge is godly thanks for help

let me know what you think about emailing you pictures of my computer and what parts you want me to take shots of

This is what I intend to do:

Get an extra storage drive and put all programs there like Aion , microsoft office, internet explorer, firefox... so on and so forth.

I want it to be able to run the programs from there.

Next, I might want to have 2 operating systems on my pc. I would like to keep the OS in the SSD. windows and linux.

SSD keeps any OS data with updates and whatnot.. The rest of programs are inside the other hdd.

Project files such as word documents, 3d renders, C++ code, images, music, screenshots, other such and such files that can be opened using external drive will all be saved on my external drive.

Is this possible? if so how is this achieved? thanks. I'll be looking it up on google but it's hard to ask such a specific question on a search engine.

ok here's what i got.

I got a WD Caviar Black D: it's huge, but it's the one with the 32mb cache.

1tb , 7200 rpm

i got a SATAII cable for it. it's working now. it's labeled as Drive E: in my computer.


I also bought a set of 6gb ram 2gb x 3 sticks. I replaced my old ones since I could not find a matching frequency/mhz. The ones I got are 1600mhz ddr3.


I looked up microsoft guide for paging file and I created a paging file on the Drive E:

i followed this set of instructions except for when they told me to set the recommended amount. I kept it at "system managed."

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314105


does that sound well? I spent $270 so I hope I did it right. ; ;

need to install the linux os on my pc.... need help with how to do this... im almost to the point where im desperate to just toss out my ssd and just stick with one hard drive if i can't figure out how to save most programs on the hdd.
please help. been looking for instructions on how to do this but i have not found any one that does step by step instructions. Need it for school as early as possible. thank you for help. if you find links on where to download the os as well please let me know. thank you. you guys also talked about running linux straight from a usb drive, so im guessing all files can be stored on hdd instead to run from there.