I've added an external hard drive, do I now need more memory?

Hello,
Ever since I added the external harddrive, I've encountered some problems: one is that my internet access has slowed down tremendously, behaving like a dial up instead of broadband cable.
The other is in iDVD, I get an error message when burning a 1.5 hr dvd. Then iDVD freezes and I must force quit.
I was wondering if the 1 GB ram was enough for the additional harddrive -
I have about 60GB left on my internal hard drive.
I have also run tests on my memory and all have come out ok.
Thank you!
Lisette

"Question: if I were to clone everything over to the external drive, would I need to completely reinstall Mac OSX and all the applications that came with the computer?"
No, when you clone using SuperDuper, everything would be duplicated and then you'd be duplicating it all back. The purpose is to defragment the HDD space. With possible very large files, the unused spaces themselves could get large and your Mac could perceive your HDD as being more full than it actually is. This despite the fact that Tiger automatically defrags. It's just that you may be using very large files, sort of exclusively, so there's no chance for Tiger to fill in.
First check out this current memory problem and the compatibility of your MyBook and its software, if you're using that. Otherwise, you could spend a terrific amount of time and end up only freeing up maybe an extra 10GB on your HDD.
Your page outs are very unfavorable, and indicate a very high demand for additional memory. I'm surprised since you have 1GB, but then I don't know what all you're doing. If this just happened in the last day or two, is it possible that you put a large amount of stuff on the external HD, and that Spotlight is in the process of indexing it? If that is happening at the same time that you're trying to use your entire 1GB of memory for iDVD, then that would be a likely explanation. Or anything like that in the way of multiple app use could be causing it. If that is what's going on, and your RAM is OK, then you'll be deciding about adding memory sooner than I thought!
Edit-
Sorry, also reread your posts, not seeing a reference to the external being firewire. Hope so, and that you're using that and not USB, being much slower. I definitely would not proceed with any cloning without firewire, or without additional RAM, unless you have a lot of spare time. Keep in mind, please, that too slow puts your iMac at some risk. What if there's a storm came up and power went out or worse in the middle of a day's worth of cloning? If you have valuable stuff on your HDD or external, don't be too quick to put it all at risk.
Message was edited by: myhighway

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