My slave drive.....

[Phuzzy4242]

I’m not finding much in the 3 GHz or better area.
2.66 appears to be the easiest to find.

You may want to look online at places like MWave (www.mwave.com) and get the pieces separate. You can have your computer shop put it all together if you're not comfortable doing it yourself, but it's really not that hard to do.

I like Antec cases. I like Asus motherboards. AMD processors are A-OK (there used to be compatibility problems, but not any more), but get Intel if you're more comfortable with it. NVidia video. Kingston RAM. Gigabit NIC(s). LiteOn DVD burner or BluRay if you can afford it.

Maybe Phuzzy will recommend a SMART disk utility that will let you gauge the condition of your hard drives. If your drives really are on the verge, SMART should tell you something.

I use HD Tune (see earlier message) - has all that in it plus benchmark and error/surface scan.

DB, you might consider using "portable" software to ease your installation pain. Truly portable software doesn't leave any tracks on the PC at all, but "semi-portable" software doesn't have to be reinstalled - it will operate from anywhere, even if it writes stuff to the registry. That means you can leave it on your non-OS partition, and if you have to redo the OS, all you need is to recreate the shortcuts, not reinstall the program again. Google pen drive or portable apps and that should give you some ideas about what's available - you might be surprised. Apps like VLC and KMPlayer, eMule, Open Office, etc. are all portable. I've got nearly all my diagnostic tools on a flash drive - you'd know I'm a techno-geek right away because I carry 4 or 5 flash drives around all the time.

[Debaser]

Emuler, it appears that the majority of people think I should go the 64bit route, but this has put me off getting this chap to build it for me. Why wouldn’t he recommend 64bit if its that good?. At the end of the day I would be paying him more money for it!
I will def go for Win7 whatever.

FLL, don’t you worry about Dell looking at your computer? This is exactly why I didn’t pay extra for Dells longer service contract.

I’m not sure about BluRay yet Phuzzy. I don’t use a bluray player for my main TV and don’t feel the need to pay extra for BluRay disks when im happy with DVD.
I guess that’s something I can look into further down the road.

After having another jiggle with the HDD cables and giving the inside of the case a blast of compressed air, my primary drive appears to be loading every time.
Ill probably give it a bit longer before deciding that it is working ok.
This is a little frustrating having now got used to the idea of getting a nice new computer.

[plonkah]

If you are in UK, check out EBay, they have some great deals at the mo. The max RAM you are likely to find on a laptop is 4GB, if you are using 64-bit CPU and you can afford to upgrade, ask them how much to upgrade to 8GB RAM - that will futureproof your mahine nicely, and watch it fly in W7 x64 !!!

Do advanced search on Ebay - if laptop then something like this :-

http://computers.shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html ... 1&_ipg=100

and for PC try this :-

http://computers.shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html ... 1&_ipg=100

Two things you should note :-

1. It is not really much value in having 64-bit OS if you only have up to 4GB RAM. A 32-bit OS can fully address to this limit, so the only value would be more efficient processing.

2. Most sellers are still offering a 32-bit OS.

I would make sure, since you are shelling out good money, that you get a good deal on upgrade to 8GB RAM, a 500GB HD, and a 64-bit OS bundled. Difficult, but not impossible.

Good luck - exciting times new comps !!

[Phuzzy4242]

I’m not sure about BluRay yet Phuzzy. I don’t use a bluray player for my main TV and don’t feel the need to pay extra for BluRay disks when im happy with DVD.
I guess that’s something I can look into further down the road.

I was looking at BluRay more for backups. A single-layer DVD holds 4.3 GB. I have three 500 GB hard drives. If they were completely full it would take about 350 blank DVDs to hold it all. I remember spending hours shuffling 60 or 70 5¼" disks around when I only kept 10 MB data on a 30 MB hard drive because backups were such a pain. Other than tape, what else besides BluRay holds enough data to make backups something besides a nightmare?

[emuler]

I also think you need to muster up the nerve to format your main drive and do a clean install. It is long overdue - Windows rarely lasts more than a year under normal home use; after that, performance starts degrading noticeably.

It all depends on your tolerance and how you use the PC. If you spend much time using a new fast PC, at work for example, then going back to an older slower PC will be irritating and the considerable effort and risk involved in redoing your system is justified. I think that could be your case, possibly, emuler. In my case, I am still using my 1.6GHz Pentium Dell laptop I got in April 2004, and have never done a reinstall, still running XP SP2. Sometimes it gets a little slow when I have Firefox open with 10+ windows and 100+ total tabs (which is about average for me), and I generally have to reboot weekly, but I am careful about what I use and install and don't demand ultra performance. It can be done. I will be getting a new PC sometime this year (this one is no longer eligible for a Dell service contract, which was worth the money as the motherboard has been replaced three times) and I would rather spend the considerable time involved in setting up a new machine than dicking around with an old one.

I suppose you've never had your car serviced either. That said, laptops are a pain to update/upgrade. Unless the manufacturer provides updated drivers, etc. you're more or less stuck with what you got. Not saying a general system restore (with either the restore DVD or the restore partition) won't help after its been in use several years.

DB, yes, I know when you've practically made up your mind to buy a new one it is disconcerting to have your old one start behaving like a good boy! An extra computer can always be put to good use. I often recommend using older computers for P2P - you don't want to leave your new computer running 24/7, do you? Not that there is any technical reason for it, but just because it is new, you want to use it sparingly.

About that 64bit thing. If you have old hardware lying around, like TV Tuner cards, there will be issues with finding 64bit drivers for them. Old technology chips can't always support 64bit, and even if they can, there is little incentive for the manufacturer to develop the 64bit drivers - they want you to buy new stuff.

However, with a new computer and all new hardware, this is not the case. So your decision comes down to - do you have any old computer cards that you would like to put in your new computer? Put up a list here and we'll do what we can to advise/assist you.

Why the computer guy is not happy with 64bit: he is most probably recalling the terrible time he had when 64bit first came into existence. E.g. when XP 64bit was launched, everyone who tried it installed it on their existing hardware. Driver support totally sucked; you had to try various drivers from various other manufacturers of similar equipment and pray they worked. It will take a while before the guys that got burned by 64bit get rid of that bias. Things have changed. Now almost everything comes with 64bit certified drivers - there are enough 64bit computers out there to make it essential for a product's survival. Except for a few highly specialised pieces of kit (e.g. HDMI video capture) where the new drivers aren't ready yet, 64bit has arrived and is here to stay.

[Debaser]

I’m not sure about BluRay yet Phuzzy. I don’t use a bluray player for my main TV and don’t feel the need to pay extra for BluRay disks when im happy with DVD.
I guess that’s something I can look into further down the road.

I was looking at BluRay more for backups. A single-layer DVD holds 4.3 GB. I have three 500 GB hard drives. If they were completely full it would take about 350 blank DVDs to hold it all. I remember spending hours shuffling 60 or 70 5¼" disks around when I only kept 10 MB data on a 30 MB hard drive because backups were such a pain. Other than tape, what else besides BluRay holds enough data to make backups something besides a nightmare?

I’m seriously thinking of using a TB HDD to store further backups. I already have two large cases holding 300 DVD's each!
My obvious concern would be the possibility of the external HDD failing, where as the chances of 600 DVD's all failing at once is unlikely!!
The thing is the external HDD would only be running during backing up so it wouldn’t be suffering much wear and tear.

[Debaser]

"Why the computer guy is not happy with 64bit: he is most probably recalling the terrible time he had when 64bit first came into existence"

Thats an interesting point emuler. Ill insist he does go with 64bit then.

Ill let you know what old stuff I would like to add to the new PC when I get a moment.

Cheers

[Phuzzy4242]

I’m seriously thinking of using a TB HDD to store further backups. I already have two large cases holding 300 DVD's each!
My obvious concern would be the possibility of the external HDD failing, where as the chances of 600 DVD's all failing at once is unlikely!!
The thing is the external HDD would only be running during backing up so it wouldn’t be suffering much wear and tear.

I'd think your experiences with hard drives would make you leery of trusting them that far, and aside from heat and shocks, startup is when the most stress is put on a drive.

If you're going to use hard drives for long-term storage, you need to either get two of them and make two separate backups, or use RAID to ensure you don't lose anything when a drive fails. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID for more info. RAID1 (mirroring) is two drives with identical info so if one dies, your data is still safe on the other. If I was going to that expense anyway, I'd get a good RAID5 card and at least 3 hard drives - data is striped across all the drives along with information that lets any one drive in the array completely fail. When you replace the bad drive, its data is rebuilt from the info on the other two drives. Some motherboards have RAID built-in, but you have to select it in BIOS and the drives will be formatted at that time, so do it before installing the OS!

You could get a tape backup, but most are SCSI and they aren't cheap - HP 72GB DDS4 costs about $350, Exabyte 160GB 8MM costs about $375, plus the SCSI card, plus the cost of blank tapes (average $35 each). Tapes wear out, tape heads must be kept scrupulously clean, and tapes must be babied - keep out of the light, away from magnetic fields, clean dry temperature-controlled place, etc. An internal Lite-On 4X Blu-ray burner costs about $175, blank 50GB disks cost about $15, and ordinary carefulness is sufficient - lots better and more convenient IMHO.

[plonkah]

LaCie are doing a RAID-enabled 2TB drive for about €210. You can either stripe it, or, what i would do is mirror it. OK so you actually waste 1TB of space, but if space is not your issue, but reliability IS, then this is hardware RAID at very low cost.

[Debaser]

Just a quick update (cos real life is mental right now).

Since I removed enough data to give me 15% free space on my primary drive to do a defrag the machine has been starting fine (touch wood).
I’m not sure about the slave drive because iv pretty much avoided using it for the moment.

This thread won’t have been a waste though because sooner or later im going to have to replace my machine and you guys have posted more than enough info for me to use.

Over n out