Storage

[MilesAhead]

I noticed on one of the Docking stations, don't remember if it's Sharkoon or another, even though it's open to the air, it still has a fan. It would use more power but I notice when I pull my WD Caviar Black out of the dock, it's pretty warm. Might be worth looking into.

[dr_ml422]

Lol. I know by innocent posting we start hijacking.

Hey you might of just started a very interesting thread here btw.

I wouldn't worry too much about the drive being warm. Also the Caviar Black is top of the WD Series in Performance right before shooting to the Velociraptor which is overkill unless doing some serious server work etc... so it will run fast all the time and prolly work harder etc...

A good storage drive that will always stay cool and fluctuate between 5400 RPM and 7200 is the WD Caviar Green Series. I have a 1 TB for storage. 32 MB. You won't even know it's on. It will also stay cool. It could be used as a OS but 1000 GB is bit overboard. I mean once we finish w/a couple of videos time to delete etc...

The Caviar Blue Series is midway. Performance and Cool. I have 2 320 GB in my 2 builds. 1 each. I just ordered a 3rd to backup my 1st build. 16 MB but like I said it gets weird w/HDDs and speed so cache you can't always go by for speed.

Oddly enough ZipZoomFly had/has a 250 GB Caviar 16 MB pretty cheap. I never saw a 250 gb WD anything so not sure if it's a throwback or possibly new. No 1st reviews so who knows. I was tempted but I think my West Coast ordering days are over. Too long and Free Shipping don't mean squat if banged up.

Miles if I want to request a different carrier for shipping would I be able to even though some sites don't take phone orders? How would that work? I might be changing over to FedEx etc... Things change if ykwim.

Otn isn't the Docking Station 1 of the best pieces of hw they came up with? Got me hooked that's for sure.

[MilesAhead]

Thanks for the tips on the drives. If you are buying from Egg there's options in the check out process to choose FedEx Ground. I think on my drive from Egg is cost about $12 but the discount I got made up for it. If you can get the same drive from SuperMediaStore on sale to kill off the price difference, the last one I got from them they used FedEx Ground as the standard. Plus their packing was much better. Cut out rubber foam blocks instead of bubble pack. But if the deal is that much better at another outfit it may be worth it to go with another supplier.

[dr_ml422]

I received some HDDs in that cut out foam also. Makes sense really and you could use that foam for w/e later on. I think 1 was from SMS and another or 2 from ZipZoomFly. I'll have to check if SMS has options though because most of their shipping is w/UPSidedown.

They're opening a Micro Center in Yonkers in the Spring. I'm checking it out to see how far and what I need to take to get there. It'll be really nice to just walk in and come out w/w/e you want.

CompUSA went totally online and actually bought TigerDirect. I was just getting used to them when I 1st joined here as they were on 37th street or so and 5th ave.

Idk if you're still using the air cans to blow out the dust from the case. It gets a lil expensive w/these so I'm looking at a air compressor at Sears. Comes w/the gun handle etc... On mtdl.

You cracked me up on that so easy to figure out RamDisc quote. Reminds me of when I posted here asking for a link to a site about Digital Video. Lol... I swear sometimes I think I'm getting early dementia. It's more like a really great past due vacation though.

[MilesAhead]

I envy you guys that build because you can open the door without being afraid the damn thing will come off the hinges. These HP things seem easy, 2 thumb screws and the side panel comes off, but you can spend 1/2 hour down on the floor trying to get those stupid little tangs into the little slot holes putting it back on. Don't know how many times I just got it back on with one thumb screw and waited until the next day when I wasn't all spazzed out to realign the damn thing. That was one thing I envied about the IBM PS/2 PCs. They had some mechanical engineering. I couldn't afford to go that route retail though.

I miss CompUSA brick & mortar for sure. If Best Buy goes away I don't know what I'll do. I like to buy my PCs and throw them in the trunk. I don't like to buy stuff over about $100 online. Seems like the bigger the package the lousier the luck.

[dr_ml422]

I got so used to building I can't see myself buying anything other than a LT. I mean once I get the mobo and cpu the rest is history.

My purchasing is also going to change. Once Microcenter gets to Yonkers. Best Buy is ok but just computers really. No additional hw. They just put 1 in where Circuit City used to be.

I worked on my friend's daughter's Dell and same thing w/case. Only in front. For the life of me I couldn't pull it out/open where the odd's/Floppy were. Those cases are hardwired as well. Can't do squat w/them if you should want to later on.

[MilesAhead]

I was trying to find it again, but there's this video from HP how to R&R a drive for my PC. Pavilion m9515y. It's hilarious to think of Joe sixpack making his first foray into changing or adding a drive in this thing. Take off side and front panel, unsnap cage that holds up to 2 drives. Disconnect cables. Now you can unscrew the drive if you are replacing. Screw new drive in. Hook up cables. Now here's the fun part. Imagine this PC is a few years old. The technician now sneaks this cage through the clutter and has to align 4 little protrusions into the 4 snaps directly underneath the cage, that he can't see!! I can just imagine they did about 20 takes until the tech got it to look easy. And that was on a pristine new box. They squirrel that crap in there so that they can squeeze a bay for the USB Personal Drive when they should have just sold an external dock for the thing. I could maybe see it if it gave you a Sata connection, but it's a standard USB drive shaped so you can only slide theirs in. What a nightmare!!

Looks like the only thing that may be doable in this box is put a USB 3.0 card in the single open express slot. Then I can at least use a USB 3.0 docking station or 2. I know they are not as fast as hoped, but I'm only getting about 24 MB/sec with 2.0 docking station. If I got 50 MB/sec or better it would be worth it. I could realistically run some small apps off those drives without waiting forever for them to load.

[dr_ml422]

I'm glad you're experiencing what some of us have noticed regarding searches ala Google. More and more less than accurate hits to our inquiries and older answers virtually non-existant. Happened to me trying to find the answer that totally showed how to fix the Nvidia Found New Hardware issue Art was/is going through. I couldn't get it again and had to settle for the closest ones.

Now I see these morons that put the pre-build's together in 2 ways. 1 they figure since most users are the average Joe Sixpack they think not many will even go inside so they put it together as they wish. 2nd they just don't get it as the few like us that really get involved want to soup up these amap, and still offer the options to minimally do so but fighting tooth n nail to do so. Basically both views are correct regarding the drunk/underpaid genius that made these.

You'd be 1st in posting back how a USB 3.0 card and docking station would fair and at the same time doing a lil futureproofing. Go for it. The addon card works better than the integrated ones on the mobo as far as e-sata goes. It's a lot sturdier w/the cable connection from the docking station to the port.

I already see a big difference using e-sata w/the docking station. Very fast. Faster than USB 2.0. just keep in mind that as of now the word is that the 3.0 isn't that much faster/or even as fast in real life usage as the e-sata. Take achance see how much of a bump in speed you get, and if not all that get a e-sata also as both are great futureproofing add-ons.

Worse case scenario you'd be transferring data from 1 pc to another using a e-sata station and a 3.0 one. That should be nice.

[MilesAhead]

I just found out the video tuner card in the quad core uses an expressx1 slot. I've never used the tuner yet, so I could pull it if I had to. That's how I got gigabit network in my dual core. Pulled the TV tuner. But now where there's no analog anymore I'm reluctant to do it in case I ever want to try to pull OTA digital. All my TVs have the old analog tuners. They only work due to cable.

I'd like to see some in person demonstrations of the USB 3.0. The only video I saw was the BlacX from the trade show. You couldn't really see too much in the way of detail but it looked like they copied a 700 MB video file with a 2.0 BlacX, then with a 3.0. From what I could see on the screen, the cameras must've been 6 feet away, the progress bar looked like maybe 3.0 hit 2X the speed of 2.0 if that. It was noticeably faster, but it didn't exactly zip across.