By Marty Rocha

Tech & Business Editor, SNSPost

As the owner of an IT Consulting firm that provides technical support to hundreds of computer users across the Chicago area, I seem to have amassed a large amount of technical know-how, tricks, shortcuts, and ways to make using your computer on a day-to-day basis easier and less repetitive.

This week, I’m going to start my series on common computer misconceptions.  We’re going to start with storage, and how it affects the performance of your computer.

When I’m at a client site, Users often give me reasons as to why they think their computer might be slow.  The absolute most common misconception is that their computer is slow because they have a lot of music or photos stored on it.  I’ve thought long and hard as to how this misconception came to being, and realized it’s because two distinctly different parts of the computer are being confused from each other, Due to the fact that they are both measured in Gigabytes.

Therefore, I’m going to discuss these two different parts, and how they work together to recreate the memory functions similar to the human brain.  We know from school that the brain’s memory functions are divided into 2 parts: Short Term and Long Term.  Short term memory is usually where our brain “works” – it’s where we’re thinking about things in front of us and piece things together.  It’s basically the desk of the brain.  Long term memory is where we store things when we’re done with them, to be retrieved later when needed, much like a filing cabinet or storage closet next to your desk, where you store your work, tools and other items when not in use.

So we’ll start with the “Short Term” memory of the computer – which is usually referred to as, well… Memory, or RAM (random access memory to get nerdy about it).  Memory is just a set of chips on a board that store data, and relies on constant power to be fed to it in order to retain data.  Once the computer is shut off or rebooted – everything in Memory is lost.  Memory is quick and nimble because it’s a small space dedicated to the tasks at hand and everything is laid out easy to see, like a clean workspace.  Word Processor files, pictures you are editing, open PowerPoint presentations are all stored here while you are working on them.  When your computer loses power, we lose what we were working on if we didn’t save it.  That is all because of Memory (RAM).

If your computer is low on RAM, this is where things will start to become very, very slow.  This isn’t because you have too many pictures or too much music.  This is because a computer doesn’t have enough room to work.  You can equate the amount of RAM that your computer has to the size of your desk.  If you have a small desk and a lot of work to do,  your productivity drops to its knees because you are spending all your time trying to work around everything, and things keep spilling over to the filing cabinet or storage closet.  We’ve all been there, seriously slows us down right?  If you just invest into a larger desk, then you have more room to spread out and work more effectively.  In the computer’s case if its desk is too small for all the tasks it has to do, then it has to use its long term memory for temporary storage, just like the mess spilling into your storage closet.  Investing into more RAM will give the computer a bigger desk to work at, and it’s one of the cheapest and easiest ways to get more performance out of an older computer.  Today’s computers typically have 6-12 Gigabytes of RAM, 8 Gigabytes being the optimal for running Windows 7 or MAC OSX.

To see how much RAM a Windows computer has, Click start, right-mouse click Computer, and select Properties.  A window will appear showing all sorts of computer specs, including RAM.

On a Mac, click the Apple Menu, then click About This Mac.  A window will appear showing this information.

A key note here is that older computers running Windows XP and most running Windows Vista will not support more than 4 Gigabytes of RAM.  This is due to the outdated architecture of these systems.  Modern PC’s and MACs can support 16-24 and even up to 32 Gigabytes of RAM.

That ties us directly into the computer’s Long Term memory equivalent, the Hard Drive, also aptly known as storage.  This is actually the slowest piece of the whole computer, even though it has a platter that spins at a seemingly fast 7500 RPM, but is hundreds of times slower than Memory (RAM).  Items placed here will not get lost should the power go out or the computer is rebooted.  This is where things go when you “save” them.

It’s the filing cabinet/storage closet of the computer.  It’s big, it’s got lots of shelves and drawers and dividers to keep everything neatly organized.  Like your long term memory, it takes a little longer to locate things because they aren’t right in front of you.  Like a storage room or filing cabinet, if it’s kept clean and organized, it doesn’t take that long to locate what you need.  When work spills over into it, or it isn’t kept organized, things will slow down.  This isn’t because you have too much stored on it, it’s just because things are out of order, and you have to dig through the mess to find what you are looking for.  When the storage closet is completely full, there is no room to do anything, because you can’t even get around things.  When the computer’s Hard Drive is full – the computer doesn’t necessarily become “slow” per se – although at first this is what it seems like, it becomes unpredictable because it just can’t move.

In today’s world this rarely happens anymore, as Hard Drives are now many times bigger than the data a person has collected – which is why this is rarely the reason someone’s computer is slow.  Your computer’s performance becomes affected when you have less than 500 Megabytes left on your hard drive.

Most hard drives these days are at least 1 Terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes or 1,000,000 Megabytes) – way bigger than a typical music collection and years of photos.  If a hard drive fills up, it’s usually easy to add an additional hard drive to the system for more data, but replacing the hard drive altogether for a bigger one involves reinstalling the operating system, or the risky and geeky method of imaging.  That is why most opt for the former in this situation.

 In Windows, to see the size of the Hard Drive, click on Start, then Computer.  In the window that appears, Look for Local Disk (C:), the size, and amount of space remaining are usually listed right below.

On a Mac, From the Desktop, Double Click Macintosh Hard Drive, and in the title bar of the window that pops up it will show how big the drive is, and

Now, when our storage closet becomes a mess because we were too busy to put things back correctly, we usually take a weekend to do a clean-up.  We re-organize and put everything back in it’s place, and suddenly we can work again, and quickly.  On a computer, we do this exact same procedure by performing a “Defrag”, or a Disk Defragmentation.  All this does is take all the messy files on the hard drive, and re-organizes them back in order so everything is easier to find.  Once this is complete, if you Hard Drive was heavily fragmented before the defrag, the you will notice a big increase in speed.

On a Windows PC, you would open My Computer, right-mouse click the C: drive, then select properties.  Then you would go to the Tools tab, and select Defragment.

As you can see, the RAM and Hard Drive working together in a computer really do mimic the memory functions of our brains and layout of a typical workspace, be it a desk, a workbench, a job site – anywhere we do work!  Do our computers slow down because we have too many photos or too much music?  Only if you completely fill up your hard drive, which is rare, or if it’s overly fragmented.  If your system seems slow, start with a defragmentation – That’s free and easy.  If that doesn’t take care of it, then consider a RAM upgrade.

Please feel free to email me with a topic you’d like discussed, or with any questions or comments at marty@snspost.com

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