Hello, I had it out with a guy at work. One of our computers runs a little slow. It's a work comp. It's old. He looked at the hard drive. 6gb free. About 20% of the drive. He claims the reason that it runs slow, is because the hard drive is getting full. I responded that the computer still has ram and a dedicated page file to use. Independent of what is available of the space on the hard drive. His response was that he used to be an IT professional and that I should not argue with him. So, A computer will run slower if the hard drive is almost full. Fact or Fiction?
Fiction. Back then there might have been that argument as most things were loaded onto the page file meaning that theoretically a full hard drive meant no page file. But nowadays? 6GB shouldn't really do anything. It's just old probably. Of course If I'm wrong fire away.
If 6gb is 20% of the drive, then the computer is old enough that CPU and ram are going to be more likely to be the cause of the speed issues. For what it's worth, several servers I look after have roughly the same percentage of free space on the boot array, and they're fine. Dual quad core xeons, 12gb ram per CPU.
Yeah I'm pretty sure that it's just an old pc. I mean, lets say the computer had NO page file set but filled on one demand. There is still 6GB for windows XP running facebook or youtube at the most. Not hard drive related.
Sort of. It's actually fragmentation that causes a HD to become slow, and drives tend to get fragmented when nearing capacity. EDIT: just found a simple explanation here - http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/how-to-tech/how-to-defrag-hard-drive2.htm
Just punch him. No dont, only joking. However id take that "im an IT technician " with a pinch of salt, as it seems everyone calls themselves this nowadays. IT only stands for Information Technology, dont mean he knows how to fix pcs (prob never seen an osciilscope or multimeter in his life (only guessing of course). I just go by the information on here,as i know theres many people on here that do know what they are on about. best not to upset people you work with though, as you may have to work with them for another 50 years to come or so
Yup, IT is not Computing. As an example - IT GCSE: so stupidly easy that even our government have replaced it with... Computing GCSE: programming! How to actually build computers! Why couldn't I be one year younger, and get the Computing GCSE!
I think this thread should extend, due to its heading "Fact or Fiction" Maybe other things, Is it fact or fiction that im brilliant?, Abomniable snowman etc.
He He, i think i will take that as a no then. Wasnt really thinking of it as a game though, more of an interesting facts type thread.
Could be fragmented. Could have a load of memory hogging crap running. Could just be horrifically out of date. "he used to be an IT professional and that I should not argue with him. " Two things A/ He used to be? What is he now? B/ If anyone said anything along those lines to me, i'd really argue. Just to wind them up.
Fact and fiction. REASON FOR FACT the amount of slow down would be minimal i would of thought hardly noticeable in respect Deffo agree about the msconfig mine runs slow but opn dstart up when i have too much running at startup
I assume he's thinking that as data is written from the outside of the disk to the centre, more data can pass under the head in less time than at the outside edge of the disk (i.e. when the disk is emptyish). As the disk gets more and more full this would degrade. That said the noted poor performance is likely due to something else. Also anyone who asks you to believe them purely because of some arbitrary title....pfff
it's just old. It does what I need it to do, spreadsheets and email. Someone else wanted to use it as some kind of entertainment which I will be addressing at our next supervisor meeting. Nothing pisses me off more than knowing that I bust my ass at my job and someone else is complaining that the office computer is too slow to you tube...
