Question : Problem: Slow computer--how to speed up??

We have an NT4.0SP5 Server machine which is running extremely slow. The machine has 4 SCSI hard drives + 1SCSI CDROM +1 Tape Drive arranged in RAID configuration. It has 384MB of DRAM. There's a 10/100Mbps ethernet card. The hard disks are not full by any means, yet the machine is extremely slow. Even when trying to access things on it locally. Granted there's a lot of data being run through it(around 2Gb every week) I doubt that it is normal for it to lag this much. I'm strongly suspecting the RAID card or the RAID setup, but I don't know where to start checking. Any suggestions.

Answer : Problem: Slow computer--how to speed up??

Hello,

defragmentation might help - use OOdefrag if Diskkeeper lite does not help. The latter definitely has problems with heavily fragmented drives.

But do not over emphasise disk fragmentation on NT systems: It might speed up things, but not by so much. If yo have very much disk activity I think it is paging, i.e. the computer putting memory pages from RAM to disk and vice versa.

My private rule of thumb: Re-install Win95/98 at least once every 6 months and WinNT once a year.

So: Backup all data. Get all program CD-ROMs. Backup configuration data as far a possible. Write down all IP numbers, passwords and so on. Do an image backup of every partition (Powerquest Drive Image works for me). And start FDISK to wipe the disk drive.

Then create at least three partitions: One for the operating system by itself (a litte less than 1 GB is fine), one for your important data (1-2 GB works for me)  and the E: drive "for the rest" (programs, CD-ROM images, temorary files...).

Install WinNT from scratch. As soon as the machine is operational again, but before you install your appications, do an image backup of your operation system partition. Burn the image file to a CD-ROM. Put this CD-ROM together with a bootable MS-DOS floppy and the image restore program to a safe place. You will understand what I mean when you have reached this point in time :-))

....finally install all your applications and restore your data files.


Bye,
Alexander