PC giving trouble. Back up your drives regularly.

[Andy_J]

SSDs aren't as hardy as people make out. I used to have a standard external drive and back everything up to there, but sods law, the drive corrupted so I lost everything.
Now, I back everything up twice, to two separate flash drives.
I don't bother backing up my whole system anymore as I find it easier to just build bootable media on a flash drive straight from the Microsoft website if I need to, then just reinstall whatever programs I need to use.

But yeah, Linux is the way forward.

I'll have to disagree. Linux would do nothing for me and I couldn't enjoy my stuff with Linux.

 

[Rob Taylor]

I'll have to disagree. Linux would do nothing for me and I couldn't enjoy my stuff with Linux.

It worked well for me when I was just using it for home use, but when I was contracting, it was too much hassle to get other companies software running on it. I think dual os would be the way to go.

 

[Tinkicker]

Happy outcome. My HP Reverb is happily working using a type A USB 3 to Type C thunderbolt socket adapter on the stock motherboard USB lanes.
Strange it did not work in the USB C port in my GPU when I tried it.

New USB 3.2 PCIe dual socket card is on the way and I have also got 64Gb 3600mhz of XMP enabled RAM heading in my direction.
Will fit both at the weekend.
According to the DCS community , my present 32Gb of RAM that was huge overkill three years ago, is now barely adequate for the more detailed terrains.
As for the malfunction..
I can only assume that my GPU C Port was also failed because the card and the GPU port is on the same PCIe lane, which was shut down when the card faulted.

 

[Andy_J]

According to the DCS community , my present 32Gb of RAM that was huge overkill three years ago, is now barely adequate for the more detailed terrains.
As for the malfunction..

 

[Andy_J]

I very strongly suspect you've bought a chinese fake that's had a bit of jiggery-pokery done to the drive's internals to make it appear to be 2Tb while in fact being perhaps only 16Gb or less.
I'd be very interested to hear the outcome, though I'm pretty sure I already know what it will be.

Given that a Kingston 1Tb flash drive from CCL Computers (a reputable & very competitively priced retailer) sells for £114 I'd be very surprised if you haven't been "sold a pup".

1TB Kingston DataTraveler Max Flash Drive - DTMAX/1TB

Kingston DataTraveler Max 1TB USB 3.1 Flash Drive, Mfg Code: DTMAX/1TB

www.cclonline.com

Well I cancelled my ebay order and got a refund for the 2 tb usb flash drive. But the dumbos still sent it.

Anyways I thought I'd plug it in, do a virus test on it and check it and it is showing as a 2 tb flash drive. How very strange.

PS, I know it's hacked with a partition disguising the actual size.

 

[Sir Veylance]

Download this and run it on the pendrive - it writes until the drive is full, then does a verify - it will tell you the true capacity

H2testw

H2testw, free download for Windows. A free tool to measure the available storage capacity of a USB drive.

h2testw.en.lo4d.com

 

[Andy_J]

Download this and run it on the pendrive - it writes until the drive is full, then does a verify - it will tell you the true capacity

H2testw

H2testw, free download for Windows. A free tool to measure the available storage capacity of a USB drive.

h2testw.en.lo4d.com

Just testing it with testdrive.exe too. Thanks. I reckon it will be about 8gb if lucky.

 

[BarryA]

Oh, and one of my 4 drives in my NAS failed its monthly SMART check last night, so now I need to get a new 4TB disk as well!! Might get 2 as the one that failed has a 'sister' disk.

Have you done anything about this? I'm just asking as I have a NAS with two disks set up for raid 1 (mirroring). The main drive failed so I took it to the computer shop and he replaced both of them and he couldn't get it to work.

I took it back to the office and a lad who works for me used to work in IT so he took a look. Basically replacing both drives was a mistake. He inserted the old, but still good, drive 2 back in and it all booted up. The NAS then recognised that drive 1 was blank and started mirroring back from drive 2. All good now and I have a spare drive if drive 2 fails at some point. My employee might have also had to do some formatting and partitioning. Not sure as it's mostly Greek to me, but he fettled it by just replacing one drive.

Just thought I'd mention it in case it helps.

Cheers
Barry

 

[Sir Veylance]

Have you done anything about this? I'm just asking as I have a NAS with two disks set up for raid 1 (mirroring). The main drive failed so I took it to the computer shop and he replaced both of them and he couldn't get it to work.

I took it back to the office and a lad who works for me used to work in IT so he took a look. Basically replacing both drives was a mistake. He inserted the old, but still good, drive 2 back in and it all booted up. The NAS then recognised that drive 1 was blank and started mirroring back from drive 2. All good now and I have a spare drive if drive 2 fails at some point. My employee might have also had to do some formatting and partitioning. Not sure as it's mostly Greek to me, but he fettled it by just replacing one drive.

Just thought I'd mention it in case it helps.

Cheers
Barry

Hi Barry, yes, you can't replace both drives at once - else how will it find your data / stored files? You have to replace one disk, let the array rebuild itself, then replace the second disk and let the array rebuild itself again - as you've noted. For mine, where I have 4 disks, I can still only change one disk at once. I've still not bought any yet, but will probably get Seagate Skyhawk 4TB disks - but I need to get the correct ones as some are CMR and some are SMR (CMR is better than SMR, but SMR are cheaper). I want the CMR ones.

 

[BarryA]

Hi Barry, yes, you can't replace both drives at once - else how will it find your data / stored files? You have to replace one disk, let the array rebuild itself, then replace the second disk and let the array rebuild itself again - as you've noted. For mine, where I have 4 disks, I can still only change one disk at once. I've still not bought any yet, but will probably get Seagate Skyhawk 4TB disks - but I need to get the correct ones as some are CMR and some are SMR (CMR is better than SMR, but SMR are cheaper). I want the CMR ones.

Thing is I’d already got the data off mine so the guy in the shop thought replace the drives and then add the data back on. However the unit wouldn't even boot properly without one of the old drives in.

At least I’ve learned something this week. Which is always a good thing.

 

[Sir Veylance]

If starting from scratch (ie 2 clean drives) the first thing to do is to load the NAS OS. Seems the shop guy didn't really have much experience if he didn't know this.

 

[BarryA]

If starting from scratch (ie 2 clean drives) the first thing to do is to load the NAS OS. Seems the shop guy didn't really have much experience if he didn't know this.

It seems so. I wouldn’t care but I bought it from him and he set it up for me, at my office, around 7 years ago.

Cheers
Barry.

 

[Tinkicker]

New PCIe USB 3.2 card and 64GB of new RAM modules fitted on separate channels. Everything back up and running well. Phew!

 

[Andy_J]

Hi DCS fans. Here is an interesting video.