what is going on with my eMac

[icesac26]

Everything on my mac is running slower and slower, I have the last ver. of the eMac, and still running the 256 Ram, and 12 GB of storage with an exturnal of 250 GB. I dont know why, if you need a list of apps or anything just ask. I also dont have the 100 I need right now to upgrade the ram.

Plus if anyone could tell me if and how I can use my external as my main drive, but it is a usb, that sometimes hikups being on my mac for access, it will access it sometimes 5 min after I boot, so I may not want to, or is it a glitch of my mac.

Thanks in advance,

Donny

Moderator note: two threads merged

 

[dpaanlka]

Well, 256mb of RAM for starters. You can go to Activity Monitor and see what is using the most of your RAM and CPU.

And what eMac came with only 12gb of hard drive space?

 

[WildCowboy]

Your RAM is probably a big bottleneck on your system. I'd suggest you think about upping it significantly. I'm not that familiar with the eMac RAM setup, but I'd guess you have a pair of 128 MB sticks. At a bare minimum, I'd suggest swapping one of those for a 512 MB stick to give you a total of 640 MB. But if you have the budget, it's probably best to go all the way to a 1 GB stick and get yourself 1.25 GB of total RAM. (My understanding is that it will accept 1 GB sticks, even though Apple doesn't explicitly say that it will.)

 

[icesac26]

opps

I should have said 12GB left on hard drive, and what can I do to speed things back up

 

[dpaanlka]

I should have said 12GB left on hard drive, and what can I do to speed things back up

1) You can buy more memory.
2) You can use Activity Monitor to identify problem processes.
3) You can run fewer programs at a time (256mb of memory is really lousy).
4) You can disable Airport, Bluetooth, File Sharing, Internet Sharing, and Printer Sharing if you are not using them.
5) You can back-up your important documents to your enormous external hard drive, then re-format and reinstall Mac OS X and essential applications.