Expert: Bobbert - 11/21/2006

Question
Hi there, I hope you are the right person to speak to so I will make my question as easy to answer as possible.

I am buying an external hard drive...is there any chance this is a good and cheap way to help my PC run faster, because all my folders will be on the external hard drive...so...is it beneficial to buy one for that reason. (And while your here, if RAM is memory, why do I have 512MB RAM yet I have used over 40GB of space ??)

Thanks

Answer
You've got some things confused it would seem, so I'll work backwards through your question and see if it helps it make sense.

RAM is system memory, hard drives are system storage, if you can think of RAM as a bucket or tanker truck, and the hard drive as a large lake or storage tank. So you need both in order to utilize the water.

The 40GB of space you've used is the hard-drive, not your RAM.

An external hard drive is usually slower than an internal hard drive, as latency is higher, and you usually will pay more per GB for an external drive, so it likely won't improve system performance.

-bob