Righto. So a few years ago I bought FRAPS for recording GTA SA gameplay on my desktop. Pretty much anyone with experience with FRAPS can tell you it's been known to cause noticeable downs in framerate when recording but despite this.

Desktop Specs:

AMD Athlon II X2 240 Processor 2.80GHz
ATI Radeon HD 4200
3 GB RAM
W7 Home Premium SP1 64 bit.

Now, I don't really use that PC for gaming much anymore due to its condition and speed and I've opted to use my laptop. It's specs are:

i7 3632QM 2.20 GHz
Geforce GT 650M
8 GB RAM
W8.1 64 bit

[I play/record only when I'm plugged in and the power MANAGEMENT mode is on performance]
[I have both the game and fraps running as admin + I set them to high priority when I load them up]
[I only have one HDD, like I did for the desktop, I can get the information regarding it if you need it]

Yet, it feels like when I try to record in fraps on my laptop, it runs worse than it ever did on my desktop. Now, the game I'm trying to record on hasn't changed. It's still Grand Theft Auto San Andreas for PC so I know its not a matter of running a more high END game and trying to record. But I've been having a lot more framerate issues as of LATELY with games on this laptop that I've only been able to partially resolve so I'm sure that has something to do with it. On my desktop, I didn't have this kind of trouble and I did full size 60 fps recordings. This is my better laptop and half size on 30 fps and I can't get the same kind of performance while recording.

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone has any tips or something that might be able to help my recording with fraps out. (Or if you got any other recording programs that won't want me to spend $30 on them or limit my recording ability (time limits, watermarks) feel free to share them. As long as it can record in something that I can lazily slap into WMM or Vegas I'm fine but I prefer to improve FRAPS considering I bought the program and want a fair use out of it and I know it works)

Many people suggest to use another HDD, but the only one I got is an external USB one bought for backup. Does anyone still think it'd be worth trying to have that in to record to?