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ADD?Replace 12Gig Drive. Dell 450MH
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ADD?Replace 12Gig Drive. Dell 450MH
Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 4:37 pm
Posted by Limey (11 messages posted)

My computer is a Dell 450 MH Dimension, running Win 98. Generally, I am still happy enough with the Dell that I don't want to buy a new machine. However, the 12 Gig HD is constantly bumping the low storage alarm, and I am getting tired of removing and deleting files. A bigger HD seems inevitable. I have two CD ROM drives and a ZIP, in addition to my A drive. There are no more bus cables to use. I have a USB expander with spare ports. My printer is on parallel bus. How should I proceed; how big a drive should I go for and of what manufacturer? Can I keep what I have (I am terrified of starting with a fresh driveand being down for days struggling), while adding another? Lastly, for a future upgrade, ME was recommended by a friend, but he cautioned that it takes a ton of memory and storage. Also, the 2nd ME edition is due out. Any comments? Thanks.

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re: ADD?Replace 12Gig Drive. Dell 450MH
Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 5:45 pm
Posted by MrCharlie (4141 messages posted)

Why don't you just buy a 20gb hard drive then copy the contents of your old hard drive to the new one. It's very easy to do, then your back in business. I like Western Digital, you can download the program to copy your hard drive from their website or the drive should come with the disk. I would stick with 98se.


On Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 4:37 pm, Limey wrote:
>My computer is a Dell 450 MH Dimension, running Win 98. Generally, I am still happy
>enough with the Dell that I don't want to buy a new machine. However, the 12 Gig
>HD is constantly bumping the low storage alarm, and I am getting tired of removing
>and deleting files. A bigger HD seems inevitable. I have two CD ROM drives and a
>ZIP, in addition to my A drive. There are no more bus cables to use. I have a USB
>expander with spare ports. My printer is on parallel bus.
>How should I proceed; how big a drive should I go for and of what manufacturer? Can
>I keep what I have (I am terrified of starting with a fresh driveand being down for
>days struggling), while adding another? Lastly, for a future upgrade, ME was recommended
>by a friend, but he cautioned that it takes a ton of memory and storage. Also, the
>2nd ME edition is due out. Any comments? Thanks.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

re: ADD?Replace 12Gig Drive. Dell 450MH
Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 6:16 pm
Posted by Gerry Kroll (1986 messages posted)

Don't go for a drive larger than 32 Gb. Your system BIOS probably won't handle anything larger.

You can get some immediate relief by cleaning out your temporary folder, and by deleting all files named with the .chk suffix. You'll find these in c:\.

Reduce the amount of space allowed for temporary Internet files. I have mine set to 10 Mb, and find that that's plenty.


On Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 4:37 pm, Limey wrote:
>My computer is a Dell 450 MH Dimension, running Win 98. Generally, I am still happy
>enough with the Dell that I don't want to buy a new machine. However, the 12 Gig
>HD is constantly bumping the low storage alarm, and I am getting tired of removing
>and deleting files. A bigger HD seems inevitable. I have two CD ROM drives and a
>ZIP, in addition to my A drive. There are no more bus cables to use. I have a USB
>expander with spare ports. My printer is on parallel bus.
>How should I proceed; how big a drive should I go for and of what manufacturer? Can
>I keep what I have (I am terrified of starting with a fresh driveand being down for
>days struggling), while adding another? Lastly, for a future upgrade, ME was recommended
>by a friend, but he cautioned that it takes a ton of memory and storage. Also, the
>2nd ME edition is due out. Any comments? Thanks.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

re: ADD?Replace 12Gig Drive. Dell 450MH
Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 7:24 pm
Posted by Limey (11 messages posted)

Thank you. Well, it's like this: I have a complete backup (Nero) of my 12 Gigs on CDROM. (I cannot boot from those drives, even though the Dell setup appears to allow me to prioritize them. ) Such nightmares as disrupting the ridiculously fragile NAV 2003, which Symantec no longer supports, come to mind - I have been down that road 4 times now. I do not have SE, by the way, it is the original 98. Should I? What is special about SE? Speaking of disrupting Norton with Defrag: given that it takes 4 hours to defrag 12 Gigs, I would hope that it would not take 21 hours to do an 80! How is this handled on bigger drives? Thanks for the followup.


On Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 5:45 pm, MrCharlie wrote:
>
>Why don't you just buy a 20gb hard drive then copy the contents of your old hard
>drive to the new one. It's very easy to do, then your back in business. I like Western
>Digital, you can download the program to copy your hard drive from their website
>or the drive should come with the disk. I would stick with 98se.
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

re: ADD?Replace 12Gig Drive. Dell 450MH
Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 7:36 pm
Posted by Limey (11 messages posted)

Thanks! Good info on the max size: I had no idea. I have previously done a great deal of axe work on all such files and folders. Taking off all image files was helpful, but I still have only a Gig to play with, and since I had started to do some audio CD recording, that doesn't go very far. Speaking of max size: my macine takes 4 hours to defrag. A 30 +gig would, presumably, take a day. (Not only that but it has disrupted Norton NAV files on 4 occasions, even though NAV is not running). How is it possible to defrag a drive in a reasonable time - a 30 Gig, for example? Thanks for the followup!


On Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 6:16 pm, Gerry Kroll wrote:
>Don't go for a drive larger than 32 Gb. Your system BIOS probably won't handle anything
>larger.
>


>You can get some immediate relief by cleaning out your temporary folder, and by deleting
>all files named with the .chk suffix. You'll find these in c:\.
>


>Reduce the amount of space allowed for temporary Internet files. I have mine set
>to 10 Mb, and find that that's plenty.
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

re: ADD?Replace 12Gig Drive. Dell 450MH
Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 9:58 pm
Posted by Steve (21645 messages posted)

I would just add a 2nd hard drive, Then you can move your Data to it. A 12 gig drive is all most people need for the OS, and programs, then install the WinME Defrag utility. It defrags about 20 time faster then 98.


On Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 4:37 pm, Limey wrote:
>My computer is a Dell 450 MH Dimension, running Win 98. Generally, I am still happy
>enough with the Dell that I don't want to buy a new machine. However, the 12 Gig
>HD is constantly bumping the low storage alarm, and I am getting tired of removing
>and deleting files. A bigger HD seems inevitable. I have two CD ROM drives and a
>ZIP, in addition to my A drive. There are no more bus cables to use. I have a USB
>expander with spare ports. My printer is on parallel bus.
>How should I proceed; how big a drive should I go for and of what manufacturer? Can
>I keep what I have (I am terrified of starting with a fresh driveand being down for
>days struggling), while adding another? Lastly, for a future upgrade, ME was recommended
>by a friend, but he cautioned that it takes a ton of memory and storage. Also, the
>2nd ME edition is due out. Any comments? Thanks.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

re: ADD?Replace 12Gig Drive. Dell 450MH
Friday, January 16, 2004 at 4:34 am
Posted by Limey (11 messages posted)

Steve: Part of my question concerned not being able to add a second drive because there aren't any cable ends left to add things to. And, unless it is an external, there is nowhere to mount it. Where can I get this WinME Defrag (unless it is part of the ME OS)? Thanks


On Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 9:58 pm, sTeve wrote:
>I would just add a 2nd hard drive, Then you can move your Data to it. A 12 gig drive
>is all most people need
>for the OS, and programs, then install the WinME Defrag utility. It defrags about
>20 time faster then 98.
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

re: ADD?Replace 12Gig Drive. Dell 450MH
Friday, January 16, 2004 at 1:02 pm
Posted by MrCharlie (4141 messages posted)

My suggestion was to copy your current drive to the new drive (check with Dell to see how big you can go), then pull the old drive out, put the new drive in and you are set to go. Everything will be the same except you have a bigger drive. If you want to upgrade to 98se, you can get a disk on E-Bay, you can research the benifits of 98se. So far as Norton, I would get rid of it. You also should replace 98se defrag with ME-Defrag or Diskeeper-Lite, which will work much better, minutes not hours to defrag. Here's what I use on my systems: Diskeeper-Lite, AVG virus, Spybot, AdAware, SpywareBuster, ZoneAlarm firewall, Popup-Stopper Free, CW Shredder, RegCleaner. AVG*free *** AD-Aware *** SpyBot *** SpywareBlaster *** PopUpStopper-free *** CW-Shredder *** RegCleaner 4.3 *** ME-DEFRAG or DiskKeeperLite *** ZoneAlarm if needed. MrC


On Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 7:24 pm, Limey wrote:
>Thank you. Well, it's like this: I have a complete backup (Nero) of my 12 Gigs on
>CDROM. (I cannot boot from those drives, even though the Dell setup appears to allow
>me to prioritize them. )
>Such nightmares as disrupting the ridiculously fragile NAV 2003, which Symantec no
>longer supports, come to mind - I have been down that road 4 times now.
>I do not have SE, by the way, it is the original 98. Should I? What is special about
>SE?
>Speaking of disrupting Norton with Defrag: given that it takes 4 hours to defrag
>12 Gigs, I would hope that it would not take 21 hours to do an 80! How is this handled
>on bigger drives?
>Thanks for the followup.
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

re: ADD?Replace 12Gig Drive. Dell 450MH
Friday, January 16, 2004 at 3:13 pm
Posted by Limey (11 messages posted)

Thanks for your help: Also, I am looking at those other programs you mentioned. I have the ME Defrag now: wow! what a difference in speed.


On Friday, January 16, 2004 at 1:02 pm, MrCharlie wrote:
>
>
>My suggestion was to copy your current drive to the new drive (check with Dell to
>see how big you can go), then pull the old drive out, put the new drive in and you
>are set to go. Everything will be the same except you have a bigger drive. If you
>want to upgrade to 98se, you can get a disk on E-Bay,
>you can research the benifits of 98se. So far as Norton, I would get rid of it. You
>also should replace 98se defrag with ME-Defrag or Diskeeper-Lite, which will work
>much better, minutes not hours to defrag. Here's what I use on my systems: Diskeeper-Lite,
>AVG virus, Spybot, AdAware, SpywareBuster, ZoneAlarm firewall, Popup-Stopper Free,
>CW Shredder, RegCleaner.
>AVG*free ***
>
>AD-Aware ***
>
>SpyBot ***
>
>SpywareBlaster
>***
>
>PopUpStopper-free ***
> CW-Shredder
>***
>RegCleaner 4.3 ***
>ME-DEFRAG or
>DiskKeeperLite ***
>ZoneAlarm
>if needed.
>MrC
>

>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

re: ADD?Replace 12Gig Drive. Dell 450MH
Friday, January 16, 2004 at 6:36 pm
Posted by Gerry Kroll (1986 messages posted)

The key to cutting down Defrag time is to do it often. You need to defrag immediately after the system has been set up for the first time. Depending on how much activity there is, you might need to run defrag every two weeks. I usually tell my clients to do it monthly.

When you defrag, do not select the option to rearrange program files. This is where most of the time is lost.


On Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 7:36 pm, Limey wrote:
>Thanks! Good info on the max size: I had no idea. I have previously done a great
>deal of axe work on all such files and folders. Taking off all image files was helpful,
>but I still have only a Gig to play with, and since I had started to do some audio
>CD recording, that doesn't go very far. Speaking of max size: my macine takes 4 hours
>to defrag. A 30 +gig would, presumably, take a day. (Not only that but it has disrupted
>Norton NAV files on 4 occasions, even though NAV is not running).
>How is it possible to defrag a drive in a reasonable time - a 30 Gig, for example?
>Thanks for the followup!
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

re: ADD?Replace 12Gig Drive. Dell 450MH
Saturday, January 17, 2004 at 5:13 am
Posted by Limey (11 messages posted)

And Gerry, the anwer is to get a copy of DefragME as I have now done! Wonderful: it takes minutes rather than hours. So I assume that the folks with the monster drives running DefragME still have to wait a long time. Anyway, I am very pleased. Thanks for your input - very helpful.


On Friday, January 16, 2004 at 6:36 pm, Gerry Kroll wrote:
>The key to cutting down Defrag time is to do it often. You need to defrag immediately
>after the system has been set up for the first time. Depending on how much activity
>there is, you might need to run defrag every two weeks. I usually tell my clients
>to do it monthly.
>


>When you defrag, do not select the option to rearrange program files. This
>is where most of the time is lost.
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

re: ADD?Replace 12Gig Drive. Dell 450MH
Saturday, January 17, 2004 at 9:23 am
Posted by Gerry Kroll (1986 messages posted)

I just downloaded it too. Like you, I'm impressed.


On Saturday, January 17, 2004 at 5:13 am, Limey wrote:
>
>And Gerry, the anwer is to get a copy of DefragME as I have now done! Wonderful:
>it takes minutes rather than hours. So I assume that the folks with the monster drives
>running DefragME still have to wait a long time. Anyway, I am very pleased. Thanks
>for your input - very helpful.
>

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