Will I need a hardrive to go with this laptop?

[Jssy]

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5086311/Trail/searchtext%3ETOSHIBA+LAPTOP.htm
My mum has already bought me this laptop for christmas and I'm a bit confused about the memory. It says 1gb Ram but 320gb harddrive so is that a fair amount? I'll be using it to store music on and djing and using facebook etc. Will this be enough or will I need to buy a hard drive? If so can someone suggest places that sell hard drives for a good deal please, thanks.




(http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5086311/Trail/searchtext%3ETOSHIBA+LAPTOP.htm)

[triston220]

A 320GB harddrive should be plentiful unless you want to store a lot of music. Because of this, I wouldn't bother buying one now. If, in the event you do need to buy one, consider a 1TB drive which you can back up to while having plenty of space free. Check out eBuyer (http://www.ebuyer.com). I would consider getting a RAM upgrade though. Check this (http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/listparts.aspx?model=Satellite%20C660-2EL&Cat=RAM) Crucial page for some cheap RAM. Although it's not an exact model match, the RAM should be compatible.

[Jssy]

I have around 500 songs at the moment :)

[:Markster:]

If music is the only thing you plan on storing on it then that should be enough... if you get up to 1000 songs and considering a good music quality file is about 10 MB that's 10000 MB or 10 GB of music, leaving plenty of space for everything else.

[beth]

thats a pretty big hard drive, i think i have a tiny one about 160gb and i have at least 6000 songs so :)

[Robbie]

The hard drive size is fine - you're probably going to want to upgrade the RAM though.

[Casio]

As said by everyone else, for your requirements 320gb is fine, I have 750gb and 6gb ram, and I use mine for only webdesign etc but yours will be fine, but consider upgrading your ram to 2GB, any more then that and youll have to change your OS to 64-bit, and that is so long.

[-Pants!]

If you want to buy an External Hard drive i recommend you buy it from www.ebuyer.com reason is because they have really good things for sale there and it really cheap!

I personally brought an 1TB External Hard drive about 3 months ago for £43.00 and im currently using it right now, i store movies and all sorts of stuff in it.

[Shox]

You should be fine if your not a power user, seems the laptop would be more classified as a, "netbook."

[Recursion]

As said by everyone else, for your requirements 320gb is fine, I have 750gb and 6gb ram, and I use mine for only webdesign etc but yours will be fine, but consider upgrading your ram to 2GB, any more then that and youll have to change your OS to 64-bit, and that is so long.

4GB or over, just sayin'

[Casio]

4GB or over, just sayin'

With 3GB of RAM 32-BIT will only recognise/use 2GB so 3GB is pointless so yea, 4GB or over :P

[triston220]

Just for clarification, I've got around 40 albums in iTunes which only just takes up more than 2GB of storage space.

[Recursion]

With 3GB of RAM 32-BIT will only recognise/use 2GB so 3GB is pointless so yea, 4GB or over :P

32-bit can support 4GB RAM including all other system and video memory. Assuming you don't have a graphics card, 32bit will use 4GB. This is why if you have a 512MB graphics card you only see 3.5GB under a 32bit OS.

[Shox]

32-bit can support 4GB RAM including all other system and video memory. Assuming you don't have a graphics card, 32bit will use 4GB. This is why if you have a 512MB graphics card you only see 3.5GB under a 32bit OS.

You can survive on 1gig of RAM, it's entirely possible, obviously you wouldn't be able to play video games, just basic surfing, but Windows 7 isn't the memory hog that is Windows Vista. Also, 32bit can support up to 4gigs, but you won't see all of that because of video card limitations, unless of course, your video card has a dedicated graphics memory.

Anyway, on topic, you'll be fine with 320gigs unless you download a hell of a lot of movies, then I'd consider a external HD.

[Recursion]

You can survive on 1gig of RAM, it's entirely possible, obviously you wouldn't be able to play video games, just basic surfing, but Windows 7 isn't the memory hog that is Windows Vista. Also, 32bit can support up to 4gigs, but you won't see all of that because of video card limitations, unless of course, your video card has a dedicated graphics memory.

Anyway, on topic, you'll be fine with 320gigs unless you download a hell of a lot of movies, then I'd consider a external HD.

Wrong again.

Also, the difference between 1GB and 2GB RAM in Windows 7 is most definitely noticeable.

[Shox]

Wrong again.

Also, the difference between 1GB and 2GB RAM in Windows 7 is most definitely noticeable.

Obviously more RAM would have a affect on performance, no one is doubting that, but your statement, "4gigs+," is a very broad statement. From what was stated in this thread, the user here does not need 4+ gigs memory! I'd love to see some type of article or proof from a legitimate source that says I'm, "wrong again."

[Recursion]

Obviously more RAM would have a affect on performance, no one is doubting that, but your statement, "4gigs+," is a very broad statement. From what was stated in this thread, the user here does not need 4+ gigs memory! I'd love to see some type of article or proof from a legitimate source that says I'm, "wrong again."

The point is, in your last post you said:

Also, 32bit can support up to 4gigs, but you won't see all of that because of video card limitations, unless of course, your video card has a dedicated graphics memory.

32bit can support up to, and, 4GB of RAM, you will see all of that. You don't see all of that because your video card has dedicated GPU memory, so really, you were wrong twice in that one post.

On topic, OP should definitely upgrade to 1GB RAM, 2GB would do just fine, but remember 4GB is pretty much standard nowadays.

[Shox]

The point is, in your last post you said:


[/B]32bit can support up to, and, 4GB of RAM, you will see all of that. You don't see all of that because your video card has dedicated GPU memory, so really, you were wrong twice in that one post.

On topic, OP should definitely upgrade to 1GB RAM, 2GB would do just fine, but remember 4GB is pretty much standard nowadays.
If you have a dedicated graphics memory card, it has it's own memory built in...

[Recursion]

If you have a dedicated graphics memory card, it has it's own memory built in...

Yes, and the system takes that into account. Graphics memory takes precedence over system RAM, hence if you have 4GB RAM and a 512MB GPU, the system will be using 4GB RAM (512MB from the GPU and 3.5GB from the RAM).

Similarly, if you have a 1GB Graphics card and 4GB RAM you'll only see 3GB usable RAM (system will take the 1GB Gfx memory before system RAM, so it'll use 1GB of gfx memory and 3GB of system RAM to make 4GB)

[Shox]

Yes, and the system takes that into account. Graphics memory takes precedence over system RAM, hence if you have 4GB RAM and a 512MB GPU, the system will be using 4GB RAM (512MB from the GPU and 3.5GB from the RAM).

Similarly, if you have a 1GB Graphics card and 4GB RAM you'll only see 3GB usable RAM (system will take the 1GB Gfx memory before system RAM, so it'll use 1GB of gfx memory and 3GB of system RAM to make 4GB)

That's for integrated cards hun

[Recursion]

That's for integrated cards hun

... no, simply.

[xxMATTGxx]

That's for integrated cards hun

Recursion is correct.