Unrarring: Faster HD, RAM upgrade, or something else?

[MirroRobin]

I have a stock Macbook alu 2.4GHz with 250GB (5400rpm) HD and 2GB RAM. I have absolutely no problem with the machine whatsoever, except for when the machine is busy unpacking large/many (say 1GB or more) files with UnrarX. While UnrarX is performing its job, if I try to use any other applications they usually run quite slow which annoys me slightly.

My knowledge of computers in general is quite limited, so my question to macrumors forums is: is there any way to fix this? Adding more RAM, putting in a faster HD, allocating less resources to UnrarX, or something else?

Help please!

 

[SilentPanda]

You could see if The Unarchiver alleviates the issue. Might just be the app.

 

[sosaysiburke]

i use unrarx and even with a file that size i doesn't seem to really use that much resources. It is pretty damn slow maybe its just not the best program??

 

[ppc750fx]

It really depends on the type of RAR archive -- some aren't really compressed, they're just used as a container format for segmentation purposes -- but my bet is that you're being bottlenecked by the drive.

Check in Activity Monitor -- you can easily see both your CPU usage and disk activity. I'd be willing to bet that the disk is the bottleneck.

 

[psxguru]

I haven't used unrarx for quite a while as I started using MacPar Deluxe instead as it seemed faster although I've not done any objective speed comparisons. Suck it and see