Couple of Questions

E

erick15

New Member
I have a couple of questions.

My computer right now:

motherboard - asrock 4Core1333-eSATA2
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=4Core1333-Esata2

ram - Super Talent 1GB 240-pin PC2-5300 DDR2 667 S-Rigid Desktop Memory (T6UB1GC5)
http://www.outletpc.com/c2885.html

I have just ordered logitech z-5500 speakers.

edit: OS = windows xp professional

1. Will buying a sound card be worth it? My motherboard says that it supports 7.1 audio. The sound card I was planning on getting would be the asus xonar d2x. Would I notice a difference between this sound card and my motherboards built in audio.

2. How easy would it be to upgrade my ram? Could I just buy the same kind of ram that I already have and just fill my other 2 slots with it, so that I would then have a total of 4gb of ram (currently have 2gb). Would I notice any difference if I was to do this?

3. When I turn on my computer on the screen it says, raid 1 is degraded but bootable. Also when I turn it on one of the hardrives says it is fine while the other one says "error". Is there anything I can do to fix these things?
 
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I can answer number 2...yes Upgrading ram is probably the easiest thing you can do. If you can find the exact same stick to add in that would be best. Sometimes certain ram sicks don't like to work with each other very well. As far as noticing a difference it all depends on what you do with your computer. If you have alot of programs running at the same time or play high end games then yes. Or have programs running while your playing games.
 
1. There is a lot of debate about sound cards. many contend that the onboard sound has come a long way in quality and thus little need for a third party dedicated sound card. However, with those speakers I personally believe a sound card is the way to go. Asus has fine offerings but I also direct your attention to HT Omega sound cards: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...rder=BESTMATCH&Description=+HT+Omega&x=5&y=33

2. XP Professional is a 32-bit operating system and can only recognize/utilize 3.25 gigs of RAM. Two gigs is plenty under XP. Spend your money elsewhere.

3. Back up all your important information ASAP. Then go to your harddrive manufacture's website, find their free harddrive diagnostic utility and run the tests. Sometimes bad sectors can be repaired. If not, time for a new drive.
 
Slacker7 said:
1. There is a lot of debate about sound cards. many contend that the onboard sound has come a long way in quality and thus little need for a third party dedicated sound card. However, with those speakers I personally believe a sound card is the way to go. Asus has fine offerings but I also direct your attention to HT Omega sound cards: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...rder=BESTMATCH&Description=+HT+Omega&x=5&y=33

2. XP Professional is a 32-bit operating system and can only recognize/utilize 3.25 gigs of RAM. Two gigs is plenty under XP. Spend your money elsewhere.

3. Back up all your important information ASAP. Then go to your harddrive manufacture's website, find their free harddrive diagnostic utility and run the tests. Sometimes bad sectors can be repaired. If not, time for a new drive.
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Thank you for your reply. How can I find out which hard drive is damaged. During start up it says one of the hd is fine and the other says error. Also for raid 1 it says degraded but bootable. I do not understand the difference between raid and harddrives.

Also for the ram, I experience a lot of lag when I run two large programs at the same time, like photoshop and itunes. Would adding more ram make this run smoother?
 
erick15 said:
Thank you for your reply. How can I find out which hard drive is damaged. During start up it says one of the hd is fine and the other says error. Also for raid 1 it says degraded but bootable. I do not understand the difference between raid and harddrives.

Also for the ram, I experience a lot of lag when I run two large programs at the same time, like photoshop and itunes. Would adding more ram make this run smoother?
Click to expand...

RAID1 is where you have 2 hard drives, with the exact same data on each. It backs up data as you use your computer, so effectively you have 2 identical hard drives, so if one has failed, it isn't a biggy, you have the second one there still with the data on. So when it says degraded but bootable, it will no longer have 2 hard drives and it may not be able to backup as you use, but because you still have 1 working hard drive with all the information on, it can boot up and work

The one which says error will obviously be the dead one. You can either back up everything you need and continue with 1 hard drive and manually back up whatever you need, or you could get a replacement hard drive and put it back in RAID1 as it was before, but remember, the original hard drive will be older, so probably won't last as long. It should still work fine though :)

For the memory, yes it would, but 3GB is the maximum recomended for a 32 bit operating system. If you want more, you will have to get a 64 bit OS, but I would not recomend XP as the driver support is terrible. You would be better off going up to vista, or better yet because of future support, 7
 
Aastii said:
RAID1 is where you have 2 hard drives, with the exact same data on each. It backs up data as you use your computer, so effectively you have 2 identical hard drives, so if one has failed, it isn't a biggy, you have the second one there still with the data on. So when it says degraded but bootable, it will no longer have 2 hard drives and it may not be able to backup as you use, but because you still have 1 working hard drive with all the information on, it can boot up and work

The one which says error will obviously be the dead one. You can either back up everything you need and continue with 1 hard drive and manually back up whatever you need, or you could get a replacement hard drive and put it back in RAID1 as it was before, but remember, the original hard drive will be older, so probably won't last as long. It should still work fine though :)

For the memory, yes it would, but 3GB is the maximum recomended for a 32 bit operating system. If you want more, you will have to get a 64 bit OS, but I would not recomend XP as the driver support is terrible. You would be better off going up to vista, or better yet because of future support, 7
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Thank you for the reply. I understand what raid is now. I think I am just going to manually back up my harddrive. Also I think I will upgrade to 3gb of ram since 32bit can only support 3.25. If I was to upgrade to vista 64 or win 7 64 would everything I have on my computer be compatible or would I have to get new programs and hardware?
 
erick15 said:
Thank you for the reply. I understand what raid is now. I think I am just going to manually back up my harddrive. Also I think I will upgrade to 3gb of ram since 32bit can only support 3.25. If I was to upgrade to vista 64 or win 7 64 would everything I have on my computer be compatible or would I have to get new programs and hardware?
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Do you know the specs of your current computer, or if it is prebuilt the manufacturer and model number?

For software no, you will be fine. I'm on 64 bit now and haven't ran into a single problem with any program, be it a utility, game, word processor, benchmarking software, whatever, they are all fine :)

=EDIT=

oh, and I know it isn't completely relevant, but if you are interested, there are other types of RAID.

The 2 most common are RAID1, which I explained, RAID0 and RAID10

RAID1 I explained gives only half of the total storage. You have 2x500GB drives, you will have only 500GB storage, not 1TB, and performance will be the same as only a single drive.

RAID 0 2 hard drives work simultaneously. It doesn't work perfectly like this, but simplified, half a program comes off one hard drive, half from the other, so it would, in theory, double the hard drive speed. In practice it doesn't double the speed, but it does improve it very much. Storage capacity is the total of the drives. you have 2x500GB drives, you have 1TB storage. However, if 1 hard drive fails, all of the data is lost, the drives can't work independantly.

RAID10 is a combination. Imagine you have 2 sets of RAID0, you could put those in RAID1, so you have 2 sets of paired drives, each pair doing the same thing. This is more expensive, more power consuming and takes up more space (physically), but gives better reliability as you have a backup, and gives the performance boost of RAID0. It has the storage capacity of a single set of drives. If you have 4x500GB drives, you would have 1TB of storage

There are others, but they aren't used as much as those 3 :)
 
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Aastii said:
Do you know the specs of your current computer, or if it is prebuilt the manufacturer and model number?

For software no, you will be fine. I'm on 64 bit now and haven't ran into a single problem with any program, be it a utility, game, word processor, benchmarking software, whatever, they are all fine :)
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When you say "computer" do you mean the motherboard? If so, then yes i do and for os it says; "- Microsoft® Windows® 2000 / XP / XP 64-bit / Vista™ / Vista™ 64-bit compliant". Is that all that has to be compliant to run 64 bit? Or does other hardware have to also be compliant?
 
erick15 said:
When you say "computer" do you mean the motherboard? If so, then yes i do and for os it says; "- Microsoft® Windows® 2000 / XP / XP 64-bit / Vista™ / Vista™ 64-bit compliant". Is that all that has to be compliant to run 64 bit? Or does other hardware have to also be compliant?
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It is the CPU that governs whether you can or not. Do you have full system specs or model/manufacturer?

Or, you could download CPUz from here and it will tell you what processor you have
 
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