Speeding Up Your Computer

Noticed your computer processing its tasks a little slower than usual lately? It happens to most of us at one time or another. You try to check your e-mail or open an important and suddenly there it goes, plodding along at a slow pace. You could go in the other room and change clothes or go outside and detail your car in the time it takes for your computer to process the task.

There are a number of ways you can speed up your computer's performance, but here is a quick and easy one: clean out your hard drive. In today's computer world, hard drives are bigger and bigger. But so are the various files we store on them, and these days, those hard drives can fill up quickly. Documents, photos, videos, podcasts, music files - all of these can pack a hard drive and slow down your computer's performance.

All computers rely on Random Access Memory, or RAM. RAM is found on your computer's hard drive. See the connection? To boost your RAM, clean up your hard drive. Remove the files you're not using. Microsoft recommends using the Disk Cleanup Tool in its Windows operating system to remove temporary Internet files, temporary files, optional components you don't use, and installed programs you no longer use.

For those of us who have large music collections - as this one of us does - it's worth your while to invest in an external hard drive that you can plug into your computer. Keeping your music and video files on an external hard drive can accomplish two purposes: you have another place to keep your favorite music and videos, as well as other important files (backing up files is a good idea anyway - why wouldn't you do this with the music collection you spent so much time and money building?), and you can speed up your computer's overall performance by freeing up space on its hard drive. It's a win-win deal for you.

External hard drives vary widely in cost, depending on the brand and the amount of space. Many fit in the palm of your hand and hold 40 to 100 gigabytes of data - that's a lot of songs and videos. Some hold as much as 500GB! Most are easy to use, plugging into your computer with a USB cable.

Freeing up space on your hard drive is only one of many things you can do to speed up the performance of your PC or Mac. An external hard drive can do this while putting you in a good habit of backing up your important files.