If I transfer files over to an external hard drive, does that free up space in my computer's memory?

Your external hard drive is just another place to put data. If you do not delete the files on your main computer after you move them over to the external hard drive, it does not free up space. You need to delete the files for that strategy to be effective.

And yes, you can take your external hard drive and hook it up to different computers. That is the beauty of an external hard drive.

If you mean memory, as in RAM, then no. That will not help speed up your computer. Memory and hard drive space are two different things.

- Bruno

No not really, the game often defaults to the same location as the program is held on. You may have problems installing a game on the default directory of the ext hard drive as some programs insist it is on the same drive as the registry is held. HOWEVER some games will allow you to specify which folder to store saved games on, in that case you install on the c: drive and save to your external. In that case an external drive will help. Why not buy a new bigger drive. Have a techie install it and copy all the stuff from the main (old) drive to your new one. Then you can use the old drive as a second drive. You wont lose any data nor need to reformat of anything. No more money and a quick job for a techie. RAM will make things run faster - this is different from Virtual Memory - so some answerers are putting you wrong. With virtual memory, the computer can look for areas of RAM that have not been used recently and copy them onto the hard disk. This frees up space in RAM to load a new application for example. Because it does this automatically, you don't even know it is happening, and it makes your computer feel like is has unlimited RAM space. In your case, you are low on RAM so your PC is going to use the hard drive (your game will go sllloooooooow when it does this) as drive space is very slow compared to RAM. When the hard drive space is also looking low Windows reminds you and warns you like it has done. I bet you have seen your drive light flashing away and making lots of noise recently? SO, if you want bigger and better performance on your games then you need to : 1. Increase your RAM - not too expensive 2. Fit a bigger HDD as above A new graphics card is also a good idea, but not as essential as people think. The top 2 are the best way to get better performance and more efficiency. Hope this helps. If you start spending to much it may be better to buy a new PC though...

Well, if you move files over to the external hard drive and then you remember to delete the originals off of your computer, then, yes, you will gain hard drive space by doing that.

However, bear in mind that there are two kinds of "memory" on a computer: storage space, like on your hard drive, and working memory, called RAM, which is separate and different, so, if you got the external hard drive and hoped that moving files over to it would increase the amount of RAM on your computer, no, it won't, they're different.

Good luck!... ☺

If you transfer files over to an external hard drive, it *will* free up hard drive space on your computer.

You can use an external hard drive, when you want certain things to be kept in archive - or, in other words, you want to keep these files, but you do not want them taking up space on your computer.

It's quite efficient to use! (if you have the money of course =S)

Understanding data on hard drive:

Files on your PC will occupy space unless deleted. If copied from one location (hard drive) to another location (external hard drive)...without deleting the original, you will have have same data at 2 different locations.

External hard drives are used for backing up (safety), and as you rightly mentioned, portability of data.

So decide...

Robert's got it. You'll need to delete the files on your computer after you copy them, and then you don't have a backup unless you copy the external drive to another external drive.

If you mean hard drive space, then yes. Move the files to the external, then empty your recycle bin.

If you mean computer memory (RAM) then no.

Only if you delete the originals.

But then they would still need to be backed up.