Breaking: PC bits here there and everywhere - advice from the computer gods plz

[Paul the 6th]

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]

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]

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]

Originally Posted by Paul the 6th

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

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

[SoulKiss]

Originally Posted by Grinch

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]

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

Originally Posted by the_lone_wolf

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

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.

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]

Originally Posted by Paul the 6th

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]

Originally Posted by the_lone_wolf

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.