will a slower hard drive severely impair webbrowsing?

[p0ntif]

I have recently assembled an older P2 450 machine with 256MB SDRAM and an older 5400rpm 30g drive. and find that webbrowsing is painfully slow. Is this due to the older hard drive primarily would you think? It's a fresh install BTW.

 

[Mogadon]

what OS you running?

Web browsing really doesn't require HDD access unless your RAM is being used up by other programs in which case the OS will use the page file on your HDD. You can tell if your HDD is being accessed as you will be able to see the HDD light flicker and hear the actual drive, if this happens while you're browsing the web then you know your HDD is being accessed.

 

[jdkick]

I notice a difference in general system performance when using a 5400RPM vs 7200RPM drives. But, a PII-450 is already slow, so I don't think it would make enough of a difference to really worry about it...

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: p0ntif
I have recently assembled an older P2 450 machine with 256MB SDRAM and an older 5400rpm 30g drive. and find that webbrowsing is painfully slow. Is this due to the older hard drive primarily would you think? It's a fresh install BTW.

That depends on what browser and operating system you are using.

 

[LiquidImpulse]

as the abovementioned, it will depend on your OS, if you have a fairly old computer, ie. Pentium 2, You should stick to older OS's that can cope with the speed of the Pentium 3. As for the actual HD, im pretty sure you wont see a giant performance jump if you do switch to a faster hard drive.