External Harddrive or more ram?

My 2 year old computer has been freezing up and crashing lately so I'm going to be wiping the hard drive and starting over. I'm trying to back up all of my music and important files but I'm going to lose a lot. I would like to avoid this situation in the future but I'm not sure what is causing the problem.

I'm thinking of buying an external harddrive for files that I will want to keep for a long time (like music and school stuff) so that I can wipe the drive when it gets messed up and not lose everything. The guy at Bestbuy explained it in a way that made it sound like they were essentially uncorruptable but I'm assuming they have some major drawbacks or people would use them for everything.

Alternately, is there some kind of upgrade I can do on my computer (its a desktop) so that it will run better and I won't have to deal with wiping it at all? I'm not sure if I'd need RAM or memory or what.


If it helps, here's what I know about the machine:
it runs Windows Vista
HP Pavilion a6110n PC
64 X2 Dual-core processor
2048 MB system memory
320GB hard drive
i'm currently using up 115 GB

Thank you!

 

well, an external hard drive is nice to keep your stuff on like you said. theyre pretty reliable for the most part if you get a good one. you could add another GB of RAM if you want, but the 2GB you have now is pretty standard for older computers. you have a 2 year old computer which more than likely has a lot of crud on it that is slowing it down.

you should try to clean your computer first, and use operating system reinstalls as kind of a last resort if youre not able to clean your PC, or if there is just too much junk on it to make the time worth it.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=106650 - Try this. It's a link to a basic computer maintenance thread. give this a try before you decide to wipe out your hard drive.