Breaking: PC bits here there and everywhere - advice from the computer gods plz [Archive] - SV650.org

Paul the 6th

07-01-09, 04:30 PM

My works pc has finally died after nearly 4 years of service, but I'm not that upset because I was planning on upgrading within the next few months anyway. I did have a bash at reviving it but I've lost interest after 4 hours.

I thought the psu had gone but upon further inspection by a friend, it's working fine (although when we put it back in, it started acting funny)...

I've got 2 x sata hard drives (1 x 200gb and 1 x 160gb both in perfect working order), a HP dvd-rw (model dvd630 which claims to do dual layer but I've never tried it) and a bog standard dvd drive "designed by toshiba samsung storage technology"...

It's got an intel pentium 4 processor IIRC which was about 2.8ghz - though I'll have to check.........

The machine was running 3gb's of ram in the form of 2 x 512mb sticks which came with the unit and then 2 x 1gb sticks which I bought from crucial about a year ago (feck knows why I got it from those guys - properly expensive)

There's also various other bits such as the integral multi media card reader, basic graphics card and the case (which is atx with lots of lovely HP plastic cladding)...

Is it worth sticking any of this stuff on ebay or is technology so cheap these days that I'd have to pay someone a fiver just to take one of the SATA drives away? If it's worth breaking up and selling on ebay to try and recoup some money, or if anyone is interested, please give me a shout :)

the_lone_wolf

07-01-09, 04:39 PM

you could build a decent basic PC with those parts but propably not worth selling them, even the sata drives will be starting to show their age, and although they may work now they probably won't in a couple of years

save the parts and build a home server / media pc / laughably overpowered router + firewall

Paul the 6th

07-01-09, 04:48 PM

if I had the time and the knowledge or even the time to learn said knowledge, I would most definitely build some kind of freaky project computer...

But my brain is overloaded with measuring, welding, chopping, cutting and trying to get that fecking rabbit back in it's cage....

Would you be interested in the parts to build your own home server / media pc / laughably overpowered router + firewall? :)

the_lone_wolf

07-01-09, 04:50 PM

Would you be interested in the parts to build your own home server / media pc / laughably overpowered router + firewall? :)

you mean to unburden you of them free of charge? sure...

i'll add them to the three spare computers i have in the house at the moment:rolleyes::mrgreen:

Grinch

07-01-09, 04:51 PM

I'm sure someone on here would buy them... I mean I'm still using IDE drives.

SoulKiss

07-01-09, 04:53 PM

I'm sure someone on here would buy them... I mean I'm still using IDE drives.

I have 4x200GB, 3x300GB and a bunch of smaller drives sitting round - oh, dont forget the 2x400GB's that are somewhere

Current active drives are 2 x linux systems with 500Gb drives in and my vista box with a 1TB drive.

Attached to one of those linux boxes is 3x1TB USB disks.

so 5TB in active use with a further 1.5 on shelves.....

Paul the 6th

07-01-09, 04:57 PM

so you fancy adding 360gb to that system the soulkiss? :P

i'll add them to the three spare computers i have in the house at the moment:rolleyes::mrgreen:

nail on the head :) I remember looking at terrabyte drives around 3 years ago wondering when they'd be within reach of the average home user.

jimmy__riddle

07-01-09, 04:57 PM

when parts are a couple of generations below top stuff the resale value drops to near nothing unfortunately. i'd have to agree with the lone wolf, build a media PC, buy a blue ray drive and you dont have to buy a £300 blue ray player.

the_lone_wolf

07-01-09, 05:02 PM

so you fancy adding 360gb to that system the soulkiss? :P

nail on the head :) I remember looking at terrabyte drives around 3 years ago wondering when they'd be within reach of the average home user.
i have two, plus a 750GB and a raptor system drive, all about 80-90% full

need to build a file server next i think...

SoulKiss

07-01-09, 05:06 PM

i have two, plus a 750GB and a raptor system drive, all about 80-90% full

need to build a file server next i think...

I went down the file-server route before - RAID etc

Then after having the Array fail (2 drives withing 2 days) and losing everything.....

Now I just use off the shelf USB drives formatted to NTFS and share them using SAMBA from a linux box, the NTFS-3G drivers are plenty stable and having the drives NTFS means I can unplug them and just connect them to any Windows XP/Vista or linux Box - so I can take my Movie collection on holiday with me for example.

the_lone_wolf

07-01-09, 05:10 PM

...I can take my Movie collection on holiday with me...

http://www.mid.muohio.edu/computer/images/geek2.jpg

;)

RAID6 with spare drive on standby FTW

SoulKiss

07-01-09, 05:13 PM

RAID6 with spare drive on standby FTW

Overkill FTL you mean.

After all, as its mostly Music/Video/TV Series, just use my 14Mbps ADSL and ThePirateBay as off-site backup :)

the_lone_wolf

07-01-09, 05:20 PM

Overkill FTL you mean.

depends on what you have to lose, most of what i have stored is replacable, but i have thousands of pictures and video of family, some of whom are no longer alive, that is irreplaceable, for me spending £80 on top of £400 for another drive is a no-brainer, especially given the time it would take to re-download everything (if it were still available that is)

Grinch

07-01-09, 05:21 PM

I need to get a new pc sorted at some point, I'm so out of touch with the tech at the moment.

SoulKiss

07-01-09, 05:23 PM

depends on what you have to lose, most of what i have stored is replacable, but i have thousands of pictures and video of family, some of whom are no longer alive, that is irreplaceable, for me spending £80 on top of £400 for another drive is a no-brainer, especially given the time it would take to re-download everything (if it were still available that is)

DVD backups of important stuff is the way forwards - or have a separate USB drive that is not always connected to the PC

the_lone_wolf

07-01-09, 05:27 PM

DVD backups of important stuff is the way forwards - or have a separate USB drive that is not always connected to the PC

or use a properly redundant array, RAID6 or RAID1 if you're paranoid, and store anything absolutely vital on several different computers off site:smt019

hate DVD backups, too time consuming and i've had more hassles with DVDs than failing hard drives

SoulKiss

07-01-09, 05:31 PM

or use a properly redundant array, RAID6 or RAID1 if you're paranoid, and store anything absolutely vital on several different computers off site:smt019

hate DVD backups, too time consuming and i've had more hassles with DVDs than failing hard drives

Fair enough - but you are still running one system that is liable to fail - a PSU spike can happily fry all of your HD's

Hence the Backup to a separate HD every now and then.

Or as you mentioned, get some space somewhere off site and do incremental nightly backups.

Paul the 6th

07-01-09, 05:43 PM

what exactly is it that you guys have so much of, to require millions of terrabytes and weekly back ups... well actually the back ups make sense regardless to be honest. If I lost all my music (10 years worth of napster, swapoo, audiogalaxy, morpheus, kazaa and then finally bit torrent, all down the drain in a single spike.... there would be blood if that happened...)

the_lone_wolf

07-01-09, 05:51 PM

what exactly is it that you guys have so much of, to require millions of terrabytes and weekly back ups...

why what else does a man with an internet connection fill his hard drives with?:p

Paul the 6th

07-01-09, 05:55 PM

lots and lots and lots of music from www.what.cd

the_lone_wolf

07-01-09, 05:59 PM

lots and lots and lots of music from www.what.cd

fooling nobody mate:p

most of mine is TV shows and films, recently went through my mp3 collection to trim the stuff i don't want and managed to get it from 15000 down to 12900 files:rolleyes:

ThEGr33k

07-01-09, 06:30 PM

DVD backups of important stuff is the way forwards - or have a separate USB drive that is not always connected to the PC

HDD I agree with, but after losing all the Faith no more music because a DVD corrupted (couldnt DL again, couldnt find it :() id not use them again.

hate DVD backups, too time consuming and i've had more hassles with DVDs than failing hard drives

Indeed

Im going to have to start again with my main gaming PC, ive filled the main 80GB drive now, Ive got a pair of 250GBstorage drives, what the hell has filled my C drive I dont know... They seem to just lose space? LOL

Might buy myself a £40 500GB HDD as the C drive next :) Not much chance of filling that with what I do.

Needs a reinstall of windows anyway, its running a little slow atm :(

Oh and if you want any advice or help (dont think you would?) buying or building a new comp let me know, im happy to help... and wont talk you into buying things you wont need :)

Baph

07-01-09, 09:11 PM

hate DVD backups, too time consuming and i've had more hassles with DVDs than failing hard drives

I have to pick up on this... :D

In my situation, all my code is backed up nightly, to DVD. The machine that processes the backup runs linux, and has the ability to detect when the drive is open or closed.

When the drive is closed, the backup script runs immediately. If that script fails (dirty disc, drive failure etc) then the script emails me, then re-runs with a target of a remote FTP site. If there's no connection to the FTP site, the backup is done to a local disc, and I'm emailled. If that backup fails, I write it off as a bad job & the script sends yet another email.

If the script works OK, it doesn't send an email, and just spits the tray out.

I have 7 DVD's, one for each day of the week. It took me about 10mins to write the script, and maybe 20 mins to test it. It takes roughly 30 seconds to get a DVD out, put in in the tray, close the tray, and put the DVD away that I just took out of the tray.

DVD backup takes too long? Fails? Nope, not once in the last 3 years has it had to email me about anything going wrong.

Anyway, back on subject, Paul, resurrect it (when you have the time) and use it as a media server for your TV - it's all the rage. :D

the_lone_wolf

07-01-09, 10:28 PM

I have to pick up on this... :D

i have over 30GB of **just** photos i've taken, even with a laughably expensive blu-ray burner it'll involve swapping discs, with a normal DVD drive it'll take multiple discs to back up just my photos and videos that aren't replaceable

i've burnt DVDs on different machines, with different drives, at different speeds and using all manner of top shelf media, and the number of discs that don't work properly later down the line or fail to burn massively outweigh the number of hard drives i've lost over the years, i must have the touch of death with the things

perhaps if you only backup a few GBs of data and you've found a combination of burner and media that proves reliable they work better, but i'll stick to a redundant HDD array...

Baph

07-01-09, 10:36 PM

i have over 30GB of **just** photos i've taken

I could probably squeeze that down with tar by a ratio of 30:1 (I'm assuming they're all .jpg/.bmp/.png files BTW using LZMA compression to output in TAR format). Granted, that increases the time to backup, but I backup overnight most of the time anyway, using a machine that acts solely as a fileserver/backup agent.

perhaps if you only backup a few GBs of data and you've found a combination of burner and media that proves reliable they work better
Your 30GB could be compressed to 1GB as above. I use a standard DVD+/-RW drive that I've had for years (can't remember the brand/model as I've had it so long), with standard cheepy DVD+RW discs I picked up from Maplin, again, years ago. I think the discs cost me something like £20 for a pack of 10 (employee discount applied).

It works for me. :D

the_lone_wolf

07-01-09, 10:43 PM

I could probably squeeze that down with tar by a ratio of 30:1 (I'm assuming they're all .jpg/.bmp/.png files BTW using LZMA compression to output in TAR format). Granted, that increases the time to backup, but I backup overnight most of the time anyway, using a machine that acts solely as a fileserver/backup agent.

that's just pictures, they're not all jpegs as there's a lot of raw files and corresponding photoshop files mixed in but the point is moot as there's another 2TB of information that would be nice to protect as well, RAID can do it, DVDs can't, simple as that

Paul the 6th

08-01-09, 10:56 AM

not once in the last 3 years has it had to email me about anything going wrong.

Anyway, back on subject, Paul, resurrect it (when you have the time) and use it as a media server for your TV - it's all the rage. :D

Maybe it's not working properly then :razz::smt019 jokin

hmm not convinced with all this media server for telly stuff - I used to be a full on addict at uknova.com (bittorrent site for uk telly rips = top gear, fifth gear, channel 4 documentaries and anything else I'd missed...) Now we've got virgin media, I can watch anything from the last 7 days without even having to turn a computer on or mess around with vga cables into the telly or putting sound from a computer into the stereo... just find it in the menu system (about 15 seconds) and press play. Don't think I've been on uknova for about 8 months now funnily enough...

If I don't attempt to flog the bits for a bit of money towards the kitcar fund, feel free to help me rebuild the mofo :)

Ceri JC

08-01-09, 11:08 AM

SoulKiss

08-01-09, 11:18 AM

I know RAID is often seen as some sort of data protection holy grail, but without other backups (be they to tape/dvd/other pc/whatever) you're sort of putting all your eggs in one basket. Although it's rare, I did once experience a RAID controller going AWOL and trashing all drives in the array, to the extent that none were recoverable short of sending them away to a professional media recovery company (a bit outside the budget of most home users!)

Pretty much what I was trying to say, having learned from experience.

Other thing to consider is that the firmware can differ on the same model of RAID hardware, meaning that 2 identical cards will not be able to understand the same RAID, so that if the RAID card goes and the manufacturer has changed the code, replacing the card with an "identical" one may still leave you without your data, even though your drives are all fine.

This is why I would only use Linux Software RAID if I was going to use RAID.

Why go to RAID6 and have £££ tied up in "what-ifs".

Also you should not be backing up 30GB at a time - thats what incremental backups are for.

Or spend about £200 on a 40GB tape drive - available from Amazon in internal or external flavours - http://www.ciao.co.uk/Quantum_GoVault_Data_Protector_800__6705114

the_lone_wolf

08-01-09, 11:37 AM

I know RAID is often seen as some sort of data protection holy grail, but without other backups (be they to tape/dvd/other pc/whatever)

where did i say that you should rely only on a RAID array and not an offsite backup?:p

i said if i was going to be needing more space, which i will, it makes more sense to build a file server and use RAID as a way of protecting data that would be time consuming but not impossible to replace, AND provide the first layer of redundancy against hardware failure, and THEN backup what can't possibly be replaced off-site:mrgreen:

Paul the 6th

08-01-09, 11:40 AM

so nobody is interested in buying some of my bits then? :razz:

the_lone_wolf

08-01-09, 11:42 AM

so nobody is interested in buying some of my bits then? :razz:

nope, sorry, geeks are usually far more interested in arguing the toss over non-issues:D

Paul the 6th

08-01-09, 12:12 PM

the_lone_wolf

08-01-09, 12:15 PM

lol... just seen on google news - "windows 7 beta to be released on friday 9th jan" they've sorted a vista replacement already?! A testament to how badly MS handled the launch of vista really is. xp pro till I die thank yer very much :razz:

corrected for you, vista is now fine, no driver issues, much more stable than XP and generally better in every way, so long as you don't espect to be running it your pocket calculator, it needs RAM*

*this is a tenuous link to say i just bought another 4GB for mine because it's so cheap:rolleyes:

Baph

08-01-09, 12:18 PM

lol... just seen on google news - "windows 7 beta to be released on friday 9th jan" they've sorted a vista replacement already?! A testament to how **** vista really is. xp pro till I die thank yer very much :razz:

I've had Windows 7 M1, M2 and beta 1 for a while now. :D Beta1 was officially released the day before yesterday IIRC.

I haven't formed an opinion yet though, despite having M1 for a few months, I haven't had the time to sit down with it.

Oh, and your comment about helping rebuild, just stick a post up somewhere on the .Org, I'm sure us geeks will come flocking. :)

ThEGr33k

08-01-09, 12:22 PM

Oh, and your comment about helping rebuild, just stick a post up somewhere on the .Org, I'm sure us geeks will come flocking. :)

Indeed... Give a budget and well sort you out.

Then we'll get the Nvidia/ATi fanboi's fighting it out lmao. :p

yorkie_chris

08-01-09, 12:49 PM

Just like one of your falco flame-threads then?

Paul the 6th

08-01-09, 12:59 PM

lol cake! cake! cake! cake! cake! cake!
biscuits?

Anywho, think I might be sending the spares off to halifax so they can be fitted to a naked. Not really got time to fart around trying to make a super media server... afraid the kitcar will take presedence.

Meeting adjourned :)

(vista is still ****)

the_lone_wolf

08-01-09, 01:07 PM

(vista is still ****)
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PEBKAC:rolleyes::p

SoulKiss

08-01-09, 01:57 PM

PEBKAC:rolleyes::p

+1

Error Code: One-D Ten-T

Paul the 6th

08-01-09, 03:03 PM

am i being lampooned? whats pebkac?

vixis

08-01-09, 03:35 PM

I have 4x200GB, 3x300GB and a bunch of smaller drives sitting round - oh, dont forget the 2x400GB's that are somewhere

Current active drives are 2 x linux systems with 500Gb drives in and my vista box with a 1TB drive.

Attached to one of those linux boxes is 3x1TB USB disks.

so 5TB in active use with a further 1.5 on shelves.....

But you are getting rid of them before I bury you with them, aintcha babe!:smt040