Expert: Mike Dacre - 10/27/2009

Question
My Dell computer has Windows XP professional sp3, a Pentium 4 chip 1.5 GB and 256 MB ram.

I am finding that downloading hour long video files from the Internet onto my master drive is slowing down my computer. And defragmenting my master drive every time I download one of these videos is too time consuming.

Can you suggest ways to avoid this happening please ?

e.g. will downloading the hour long videos on to a slave drive make a difference ?
Will I still have to defragment my master drive after I download a video onto my slave drive ?

If I buy an external hard dirve with a USB plug, will this help ?

Thank you.  

Answer
Hello,

The slowness you may be noticing is more likely due to the hard drive becoming full as you download these large videos. Of course defragging is always good but the fact that an hour long video shouldn't change defragging since it is all one file. Defragging typically is needed more when you are saving and then deleting files a lot. In any case there are a number of things I suggest as in optimizing and routine cleaning of your system.

Visit my website at http://tpsconsulting.com and read the TIPS page on OPTIMIZING your computer. Then go to the SOFTWARE/SUPPORT page and install all the programs from the PINK section as they will help with the ongoing cleaning/removal and maintenance from the malware/spyware issues that cause most of these problems.

As for getting an external drive.. sure, they are always good.. having more space and especially if you are going to dedicate the external drive to such things as videos. This will allow your main "system' drive to stay large enough to allow the system to function normally. Note 1gb of available space on the system drive, I have found to be best.. once you start dropping below that, your system will start to slow down a lot.

Hope this helps,

Sincerely

Mike Dacre
http://tpsconsulting.com
follow me on twitter @tpsconsulting