Replacing HDD but keeping it as external storage.

ColinLaybourn · 29 Aug 2018 at 11:44

Hi guys.
I've been doing quite a lot of gameplay capture and video editing for my son's YouTube channel but I'm using a very basic 2 year old hp notebook and its not really designed for this. It struggles to accept the capture footage unless the quality is set really low and it's not a gaming laptop so the graphics card is obviously under stress but I'm actually impressed at how is coped so far. Opening software can take forever and it takes a long long time for my video editing software to render a 20 minute YouTube video. I can't afford to replace the laptop so had considered looking at upgrading the processor and/or ram but then someone told me to consider trying replacing my HDD with SDD because that could speed it up enough. So a couple of questions....
Firstly.... Is this a good bit of advice?
Secondly, I have a 1tb HDD but could only afford maybe a 240gb SDD, soooooo... Is there any way of using the HDD as external storage afterwards?

As you can probably tell from my limited terminology, I'm far from a computer expert. I'm more of a dad trying to do the best i can for my kid on a limited budget. So any advice and help would be hugely appreciated.
The details of my laptop are....

HP NOTEBOOK
Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU N3710@ 1.6GHz
4gb RAM
64bit
Running Windows 10 Home

Thanks very much.

bremen1874 · 29 Aug 2018 at 11:47

SSDs are much faster and a good upgrade for any machine.

Buy an external USB enclosure and stick the mechanical drive into it.

andy_mk3 · 29 Aug 2018 at 11:48

You can buy a USB drive caddy which you can put your old drive into and use as an external drive. Ssd will help a huge amount, but video encoding is limited by cpu power

ColinLaybourn · 29 Aug 2018 at 12:33

Thanks for the quick reply guys. I'll definitely look into the caddy/enclosure. Andy, I figured as much about the video rendering but to be honest, I can live with that as long as I can make the programs quicker and more responsive overall. I'll worry about a full upgrade when he's a famous YouTuber and pays me a decent wage

EsaT · 29 Aug 2018 at 18:40

4GB RAM would have been good in Windows XP time.
Now there's no real space left free for software and especially video data with Win10 hogging most of it.

Also that CPU has about as much horse power as hamster with anemia and COPD...
So it won't ever be really snappy in anything.

Next time for low budget consider some second hand sold laptop, which has been in corporate rental use.

andy_mk3 · 29 Aug 2018 at 20:07

A budget desktop would probably give much better performance for the cost, as the desktop CPU's are generally far more powerful and can be picked up pretty cheap.

ColinLaybourn · 29 Aug 2018 at 20:09

I appreciate the advice. The laptop was a gift from my brother so I didn't really get a say in where it came from. At the time I only needed it for my writing.
Like I said, I can live with it taking ages to render video, I just leave it alone until it's done. Being able to access files quicker than the 4 minutes it currently takes to open my video folder, would be a massive help.
I take your comments on board though. Does anyone happen to know whether I could add any ram to this machine until I can consider any kind of new computer?

andy_mk3 · 29 Aug 2018 at 20:20

What model is it? They're usually upgradeable but they are getting increasingly difficult to take apart, with some motherboards having RAM soldered directly onto the board. Not like old laptops that gave you a nice access flap with half a dozen screws.

t31os · 30 Aug 2018 at 16:31

Overclockers sell various hard drive enclosures, a 2.5" USB3 enclosure would do the trick nicely in turning your old HDD into an external.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/pc-components/storage/accessories/external-enclosures

SSD makes for a nice(relatively affordable) upgrade to any aging laptop.