Swap hard drives to improve performance?

Question

I'm wondering if just swapping hard drives between my laptop and my son's will solve a performance problem he's having. Here's the situation:

We both have Inspiron 5100's. World of Warcraft runs very well on my laptop, but is laggy and freezes on his. Frame rates are significantly different. I've tried everything I can think of to improve the performance on his--adding memory (we both now have 768MB), upgrading video drivers, swapping video cards, adjusting screen resolution, minimizing software that loads automatically, etc.

Our laptops are pretty much identical. The main differences are:

1. His has the SXGA+ display, while mine just has the XGA. This seems to be the biggest difference, so I suspect the performance problem lies with it. Maybe the SXGA+ takes more resources or something, although running the same resolution would seem to sidestep any issues there. I've downloaded and installed updated ATI drivers, which seemed to help some.

2. Different wi-fi cards. This shouldn't make any difference, but might complicate swapping HDD's. Maybe I should swap these too?

3. Differences in installed software are significant, which is why I don't want to just trade PCs with him.

I think that the problem is somewhere in the hardware and that swapping HDD's would solve the problem. If it doesn't, then I guess that narrows things. Would making the swap be as easy as I think it should be, or are there major pitfalls that I'm overlooking? Any significant differences in hardware (wi-fi cards, for example) should be detected and adjusted for on boot-up, right?

Any other ideas on why there's be such a performance difference between the two PCs, or things to check or try, would also be appreciated.

Bay Wolf · Answer

I wouldn't suggest swapping hard drives for these reasons:

The operating system is setup specific to the hardware of each system. When Windows starts, it will expect to see the same hardware that was setup up with in the begining. Windows can adjust for this but it can be tricky.
You say the difference in installed software is significant. If you trade hard drives, you trade installed software.
The higher resolution does put a bigger drain on your system which can account for some of the difference and swapping the hard drive will not change this.

You didn't mention if the hard drives specifications are identical. Do you have a 7200 RPM hard drive and your son has a slower one?

Freond · Answer

Thanks for the fast reply!

I have a 60GB HDD vs. my son's is a 40GB, but they are both 4200 RPM.

The idea is to give my son "my" PC with his HDD, and I'd use his chassis with my HDD installed. That way we'd keep the same software, but he should then have a well-functioning game.

My hope is that the hardware configurations are close enough that the Windows setup would go smoothly. I could also swap the wi-fi card, which I think is the only other significant difference in hardware between the two. Then I think I'd only have to worry about the difference in the displays, but since they are using the same video drivers, I'd expect that to go smoothly.

I just remembered that we probably also have different CD/DVD drives--his went bad and I had to replace it. I could swap those too.

An alternative is to just swap displays, but that requires almost complete disassembly; just swapping HDD, wi-fi and CD/DVD looks easier and like things I've done before.

By the way, his PC seems to run a lot hotter than mine. I ran the diagnostics for the fan and thermal sensor, and it passed everything, but the difference is noticable. Just thought I'd mention that.

Bay Wolf · Answer

Running Hotter?  That is a HUGE clue with that notebook.  They are known for overheating.  It just didn't dawn on me until you said that.    The design on those system build up dust on the heat sinks and this causes the system to run warmer.  In turn, the system tries to protect itself by slowing the processor down to reduce the heat output thus reducing performance.   Use a can of compressed air and blow out the dust through the fan exhaust ports.  If you really feel like cleaning the heat sink, you can take the system apart and clean the heat sink even better.   Here is a thread that talks about this very issue. http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_general&message.id=139712

Freond · Answer

I didn't think that the system was smart enough to slow itself down in an attempt to lower the temperature! I think my son's PC has shut down once or twice, but shutdowns are rare. The fan running on high is quite common, however. I read the posts in the link you sent, and downloaded the fanGUI program. My PC fan is keeping my CPU between 50 and 55 degrees. It'll be interesting to see what my son's PC's temp is.

Thanks again for the fast reply and the huge help.

Freond · Answer

Overheating does seem to have been the problem. Compressed air didn't seem to be enough--he cleaned out a big wad of dust from the heat sink, and now the PC seems to running properly. Thanks for all your help!

Bay Wolf · Answer

All Right!!!  I'm glad that it was an easy fix.  Keep that can of compressed air handy and use it every week so the dust doesn't build up.

Freond · Answer

The cleaned laptop still seems to be working fine now. Good thing I didn't swap hard drives, because mine crashed last night! Looks like it's fried. I can't even run chkdsk on it--although I can get to the "recovery console" (c: prompt) and run chkdsk, it only gets up to about 10%, and then freezes. The drive runs constantly. The built-in diagnostic program tells me that I have several uncorrectable data errors before it too freezes with "timeout waiting for drive not busy." Something's making the drive run constantly and prevent further diagnostics.

The basic diagnostic error is the dreaded error code 1000-0146.

I had hoped to just detect and isolate bad blocks on the disk and then get back to business, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

Storage, Drives & Media

Swap hard drives to improve performance?

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