optimizing after effects?

Anyone here use after effects? I'm new and After ffects renders really slow on my laptop, and it doesn't even finish because mostly my disk space runs out lol. I'll be cleaning my hard disk soon, but aside from that, do you have any suggestions as to how I can improve performance?

Also, If I get a lower version of this (like CS2) or something, supposedly my laptop should be faster than the hardware of that time right? I'm also wondering if running an older version would be faster. Very Happy

I used aftereffect before and now but not as a professional instead as a hobby for fun.

However, I have typical suggestion here in the following:

1.) More ram, This made almost all computation occurs at once without go through virtual memory.
Which slow down render performance. (10000 rpm hard disk or even disk array are better for working with affect effect and video editing software)

2.) Fastest hard disk, for providing the most fastest write access of rendered data,

3.) Don't use notebook as media station except that it run with 7200 rpm hard disk, otherwise, you will experience slow in performance,

4.) Put operating system virtual memory page file, affect effect storage volume disks and rendering disks separately for the best performance.

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