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EDIT: Oops, I misread. Fixing:
No, the size doesn't, but other aspects of the HDD definitely do, such as seek time and cache size. The size CAN affect speed in an indirect way, but that depends more on the level of fragmentation than the actual size--it's just that when you have a larger drive, fragmentation will slow your system down more slowly, since fragments need to spread out more before they start chopping up all the good 'real estate' on the drive.
The three prime things that affect a computer's speed are:
CPU
RAM
HDD
The hard drive is by FAR the anchor that slows the rest of the system down to its level, being far and away the slowest component of the three. For example, if a program you're running is writing files to the hard drive, you've go the CPU giving the instructions to write the files from the RAM to the HDD. Now, while the writing occurs, the way-faster-by-comparison CPU and RAM are literally sitting there waiting for the writes to occur before moving on to the next instruction.
While getting more RAM is probably the cheapest way to speed up a PC a bit, getting a faster hard drive (as in seek time) and/or one with a larger cache will definitely make a difference.
Source(s):
Personal experience
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For all practical purposes the answer is no. If your PC doesn't have enough free space on the HD that can slow things down but that doesn't have to do with the size of the HD as much as the percentage of free space.
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Hard drives though, have little or nothing to do with speed. Unless you have a particularly full and fragmented hard drive. In which case you ought to delete some files and defragment your hard drive.
Good luck.
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kenford
But if you want to know if bigger drives can slow down your PC because of the amount of data it needs to search through, I think there's not much proof to that. See the ZDNet article about this though.
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_drive#Capacity_and_access_speed
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=322
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Answered Question
December 21, 2008 07:36 AM
Does the size of the HDD effect the speed of the PC ?
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| December 21, 2008 07:45 AM |
No, the size doesn't, but other aspects of the HDD definitely do, such as seek time and cache size. The size CAN affect speed in an indirect way, but that depends more on the level of fragmentation than the actual size--it's just that when you have a larger drive, fragmentation will slow your system down more slowly, since fragments need to spread out more before they start chopping up all the good 'real estate' on the drive.
The three prime things that affect a computer's speed are:
CPU
RAM
HDD
The hard drive is by FAR the anchor that slows the rest of the system down to its level, being far and away the slowest component of the three. For example, if a program you're running is writing files to the hard drive, you've go the CPU giving the instructions to write the files from the RAM to the HDD. Now, while the writing occurs, the way-faster-by-comparison CPU and RAM are literally sitting there waiting for the writes to occur before moving on to the next instruction.
While getting more RAM is probably the cheapest way to speed up a PC a bit, getting a faster hard drive (as in seek time) and/or one with a larger cache will definitely make a difference.
Source(s):
Personal experience
| Asker's Rating: |
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Other Answers (4)
December 21, 2008 07:39 AM
The interface of the HD and the HD cache size have much more to do with its speed, but technically if all other specifications a larger capacity drive have faster seek times because its platters are more dense. For all practical purposes the answer is no. If your PC doesn't have enough free space on the HD that can slow things down but that doesn't have to do with the size of the HD as much as the percentage of free space.
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December 21, 2008 07:42 AM
Not at all. Three things affect the speed of a PC. The processor, RAM, and front side bus. You can always add more RAM, up to the manufacturer's allowed amount. You can choose the fastest processor too, but that will always be limited by the speed of the front side bus. When information is processed, it leaves the processor through the motherboard on the front side bus. If the bus is only capable of half the speed of your processor, then that limits the actual processing speed of your computer. Hard drives though, have little or nothing to do with speed. Unless you have a particularly full and fragmented hard drive. In which case you ought to delete some files and defragment your hard drive.
Good luck.
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kenford
December 21, 2008 09:40 AM
I HAVE A 3GB RAM , 3GHz PROCESSOR. BUT 80GB HDD
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December 21, 2008 10:19 AM
If you want to know what would speed up accessing the data on your hard drive, you should consider one with a higher RPM (revolutions per minute). Hard drives typically come in 5,400 to 10,000 rpm access speeds. The higher the faster the drive. But if you want to know if bigger drives can slow down your PC because of the amount of data it needs to search through, I think there's not much proof to that. See the ZDNet article about this though.
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_drive#Capacity_and_access_speed
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=322
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December 22, 2008 05:18 AM
As others have pointed out, it's the seek time and on-board cache that makes a fast HDD. I've noticed that newer, larger drives seem to not be great performers. Always check the manufacturers web site for specifics. Hardware enthusiast web sites such as http://www.hardocp.com/ will also dish up reviews to consider.
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