I know there are some computer experts here so i thought I'd ask....would replacing the hard drive in my three year old Dell make it perform like new again?...Does replacing a hard drive wipe out everything in your computer like photo albums and things like that?

A new hard drive will give you more space, but it will have little effect on actual performance. I'd suggest maxing out your RAM first, if you haven't already. (My notebook runs much better with 512mb than with 256; I'd put in 1gb if it would fit, but it won't.)

If you were to upgrade from an ATA drive to a faster SATA drive you may see some improvement in faster load times for programs and games. But with most applications, after it's loaded into memory, HD speed has little impact on how fast the computer "feels". As state above, if you're looking for speed, a memory upgrade is the best upgrade for the least cost, and a good place to start if you don't already have enough.

If you replace your hard drive, you will be starting from scratch with nothing on the disk, so make a backup of your data before you do it. You could also reuse your old drive as a secondary drive, thereby preserving everything that's currently on it. Once you have the new drive installed and have reinstalled Windows, you can transfer your pics, music, etc to the new drive and format the old one, using it for extra space (or you can take it back out and use it for some other PC).

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Thanks both of you for the advice...one reason I am considering this is my computer makes alot of noise and does not perform as good as it used to...so thats why I was thinking hard drive problems.

What kind of noises Replacing that hard drive may change from being an option to a requirement depending on what the noise sounds like

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Mad Monk and WindowPhobe are correct. Maxing out your ram, a good pc cleanup, and honestly a fresh install on a new drive will always help a slow running pc.

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As MadMonk said, be sure and back up your data. That is very important. Then you can swap your hard disk. As Windowphobe pointed out, it really won't improve your performance. Your RAM and CPU would have a more significant impact.

Now, as far as a Parallel ATA drive compared to a Serial ATA drive, on a Maxtor PATA drive, the average seek time is 10 milliseconds with 100Mbps transfer rate, and a Maxtor SATA drive has an average seek time of 9.3 milliseconds and a data transfer rate of 300Mbps.

Another important consideration of you are swapping hard drives. Have your OS installation disc in hand. Without it, your SOL. Be sure you are familiar with partitioning your hard drive.

Since your best bet in performance is a memory upgrade, leep in mind that there are certain types of RAM modules you have to buy that fit your specific motherboard. If it is older than five years, you will most likely have to buy RAM witha 168-pin configuration (THE MODULE WILL HAVE TWO NOTCHES ON THE BOTTOM). If it is older than a year but not older than four years, your best bet is a module that has a 184-pin configuration (THE MODULE WILL HAVE ONE NOTCH). Today's RAM modules are DDR2, 200-pin modules and I doubt your computer is brand new.

Also when buying RAM, be sure your PC supports these configurations....

PC100/PC133 168-pin in 128MB, 256MB or 512MB modules
PC2100 (DDR266), PC2700 (DDR333), PC3200 (DDR400) 184-pin in 256MB, 512MB or 1GB modules.

Best brands I recommend are Kingston and Corsair.

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Well kind of like a bad muffler bearing or something...No but really kind of like a buzzing noise...I cant really describe it too well but it doesnt sound like it belongs there.

Thanks okcpulse...Yah my computer was new in February of 2003..not so new anymore but I am going to consider everyones advice and decide if it is worth it or just buy a new laptop...after weighing my options.

It could be a loose fan. To eliminate your hard drive as the culprit, unhook your hard drive's power source, it's a four-wire cable with a white connector. Be sure and disconnect your PC's power cable before crawling in there. After you have disconnected your hard drive, reconnect your PC's power cable and do a test boot. If you do not hear the noise, it is your hard drive.

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My first thought was a loose fan as well. If you play around in there, be careful of static electricity.. "To avoid zapping your components with static electricity, take precautions to ground the static electricity before touching any of the internal components of the computer. Wearing an ESD wrist strap or working on an anti-static mat will prevent any static electricity from damaging your computer. Another way to ground the static electricity is to touch the internal metal frame of the computer's case while the computer is plugged into an electrical socket. The static electricity will be discharged and grounded as the electrical circuit is grounded via the AC outlet."

Curt, just in case you have an impending hard drive crash, upload your Photos now to a server like Snapfish.com.. it's free and you will have them there and can access them from any computer.

Back up or copy any files onto a cd or floppy.. or whatever you use to save .. I've lost a few hard drives.. when they're gone, they are gone and I've lost a few photos and documents in the process.. yuk.

Secondly, have you tried spyware programs such as AdAware? Also, delete your internet temp files frequently and run your defrag.. that sometimes help speed things up.

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Also another consideration, if you are running a PC and not a notebook PC, it is a good idea to keep two hard drives running instead of one. I do that and when one fails, I can rely on the other until I have cash to replace the failed hard drive. Back up often, because hard drive failures are unpredictable at best.

Keep in mind, Seagate hard drives are sometimes prone to mechanical failures. Same with Maxtor. I have yet to experience HDD failures with a Western Digital. FYI, most engineers place the average hard drive life at two to five years. If you are a hard core gamer or do a lot of video editing and 3D modeling, expect to go through a hard drive sooner.

Before long, hard disk storage will slowly migrate from spinning platters to flash memory. Flash memory operates at unbelievable speeds and seek times. DTR is also extremely high.

VERY good input, Karried.

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Pulse, I've been waiting for solid state drives for years. I heard recently of Samsung (I think?) coming out with 32GB flash memory so maybe it will be here soon. After all the amazing innovations that the PC has gone through over the last ten years, it just floors me that we still have spinning disks for hard drives.

Anyway sorry for the thread derailment.

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I'm going to derail too for a minute.. what sort of back up program do you recommend for a Business software/accounting program? I want something I can do daily/weekly and is very user friendly. ?

Also, if I install a copy for a PC just to try to learn the program and then want to network in the near future.. how hard would that be to do?

In other words, there are two distinct install instructions for one PC compared to multiple computers for Network..

I don't have the server yet but I want to play with the software and check it out.. if I install on my main PC, get a server next week and network it then, will I have to uninstall it and reinstall it to set it up the way the instructions are calling for?

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I use a software called Cobian Backup. Cobian's site - The home of Cobian Backup It's not difficult at all to use. You install it, tell it what folders to backup. Then you tell it where you want it to store the backup, and how often you want it to happen.

Now there are a ton of extra features. Such as encrypting the Files, Compressing the files, backing up only changes files, etc... You can also backup to a network, another hard drive, or my personal favorite an FTP Site.
I actually install this on my business clients machines, then set them up to backup nightly only changes files to A secure FTP server I run.

There could be easier software, but this one is the most complete for the business's I help.

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You can use the built-in backup feature in XP for a basic backup.
Click Start...All Programs...Accessories...System Tools...Backup to get to it. It's pretty basic, but try it out. It may be all that you need.

Currently I don't have anything except a batch file I use to copy the data I want to save to a network drive on another PC, but in the past I've used Novastor ($49.99 but has a free 30-day trial). It worked flawlessly.

They do have a separate version for use on a server operating system that's more expensive (of course).
NovaBACKUP Backup Software for CD, DVD, Tape, Removable and Disk Backups

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I have not tried unpluging the hard drive but thats a good idea that I never thought of...it could be the fan I guess I'll give that a try making sure things are properly grounded to prevent static...I work with alot of electronics at work so I have some general knowledge..just not when it comes to computer repair.

My friend was mentioning a program RAID.. heard of it? Apparently, you just install a second hard drive in your current pc and run the software and it automatically duplicates everything onto the 2nd hard drive.. what do you think?

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i'm only going to add one little thing... while sata drives are faster, if curt's current drive is pata he can't simply plug in an sata drive... he'll have to stick with the same type of drive he currently has. maybe that's a 'captain obvious' remark, but i just wanted to make sure that nobody runs out and buys something that may not necessarily work with their setup. -M

Thats something I'd have never known...Thanks

Yes, since his PC was bought in February 2003, it won't have SATA ports. He can always add a SATA card, but I'm not sure how that would effect performance.

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A software Raid, is helpful with backups. Of course Raid 1-5 can get complicated, and great for servers, sometimes it's overkill for a home pc.

On the other hand, I had a Raid Striped Drive fail on me (the backup), and I never recieved notice that it was failing. Eventually my primary drive failed, and I went to load my second drive, and lets just say it was not happy times.

So in reality there's a level of failure that can occur with a lot of backup options. Even Raid 7 is Raid 7 because drives fail

I'm seconding that comment about solid state drives. Where are the flying cars, and solid state drives?

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Check your system board. I have a three year old Dell sitting in the corner that came with PATA drives, but has two unused SATA ports available. I'm sure it's only 1.5GBit/second SATA, not the current standard of 3GBit/second though.

As for RAID, drive mirroring (RAID 1) is nice to have and with SATA drives it's pretty easy to do. Keep in mind that when you mirror your drives, you only have 1/2 of the total drive space that you buy. So, if you buy two 200GB drives and configure them for drive mirroring, you only see 200GB of space vs the 400GB that you bought, but that's a price you pay for some peace of mind.

Whatever you do, don't do drive striping (RAID 0). It's slightly faster, but it has no redundancy at all and you double your chances of losing data through drive failure because if you lose one drive, you lose everything.

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I am taking in all the information everyone is giving me here and considering my options..very helpfull information here...I'll probably end up just getting that new laptop I have been wanting and using this computer for offline activities...just a thought right now still weighing my options.