If i have too many games or software on my PC will it slow it down?

[Joseph Locicero]

Ok so I have a pretty stacked up library of software mostly games but will is it slowing my pc down? Also would Defraging my HDD make it a bit faster? And also what else could i do to make my pc faster while keeping some games?..Maybe uninstall some and such.

 

[Justin Millard]

Store big games you don't think you will play on a backup hard drive. Loading times increase dramatically once you have used more than two thirds of the hard drive. Files stored deep within the hard drive take more time to be retrieved. The outside tracks of the hard drive are always faster.

 

[andy_Man]

ccleaner is your friend. Great free program. Will help delete temp files and go through your registry. (make sure you save a backup when it prompts you to)

 

[Aldoni]

Have a lot of games on the hard drive will not really slow down you system. There are hard drives that have gaming specs. Like the velocir raptor and the caviar black from WD; those ones will help you keep up on storage and speed. My recommedation would be an SSD drive. Their response time is way faster than mechanical drives

 

[Justin Millard]

I wouldn't even worry about de-fragging more than once every three months. Its just shifting files around if they got placed on different slower spots of the hard drive. If you use less than two thirds of your hard drive you don't have to worry about files being placed on those slower tracks.

 

[Justin Millard]

I've tested this for myself. I let my hard drive get to 90% full and then uninstalled files, got it back to only 60% full and then de-fragged it. The difference in loading times was huge. Made me feel like I had a brand new computer.

 

[Eximo]

A lot of variables here to consider.

A full drive is not necessarily a bad thing if you have a lot of system memory. You can always disable the swap file (virtual memory) to avoid using your drive for low-priority OS tasks.

A fragmented drive is not a good thing. If the data the system wants to retrieve is all over the platter it will take much longer to read all of the bits it needs. On multi-platter drivers this can get quite messy.

OS Like Windows 7 and up will automatically defrag when the system is idle. Not quite as good as a full system defrag, but it should considerably lengthen the time between manual defrags.

All programs more or less add extensions and add-ins to Windows. Games tend to include the latest C++ Redistributables, .NET Frameworks, and other extensions to the OS. The more programs you install the slower things like system boots will be. You should also see a slight increase in the amount of memory that the system uses when idle.

Fast systems are simple systems, but if you use one computer for everything, just try and keep less used data on slower media types.

ReadyBoost is another interesting option if you want to increase the system speed a little. Basically just uses a fast USB drive (Flash drive) in place of the normal swap space. Not particularly useful since it came out after the introduction of SSDs which is the best way to improve system performance.