Re: Those were the days

On 102khz Polychromic shrieked:
Ashikaga wrote:
On 36khz Polychromic shrieked:
<snip>
You mean you "need the 15K spin rate, but still the budget is tight".

Actually I don't, /and/ my budget is tight. I only have one SCSI
controller, and it's the U160 one, so getting a 15K spin rate would not be
cost efficient.

Everyone needs faster, better harddrives. Don't deny it. You must wait
more than 0 seconds for Windows or games to load. Therefore you do need
it. Being able to afford it is another matter altogether.

(*ignores the sales pitch*) Having SCSI drives alone is fast enough for
me. People keep complaining their Sims 2's loading time is very slow, or
back in Gabriel Knight 3's time, people complained about graphics
stuttering, but not me (though my graphic card isn't any faster than
theirs). They really should have realized their system's bottleneck is the
HDD.

I can't afford the new drive, but you know the reason.... (don't beat me
up)

What I want is getting one 147 GB (or the largest consumer end SCSI drive
available) SCSI drive to replace several my now considered tiny SCSI HDDs.
It's a low priority upgrade, since it's not a necessity but a system
tweaking (lower heat emission, lower power consumption, and increase
reliability because they are really old and one is very screechy).

Top priority is to get a new DVD-RW drive.

Is your DVD-RW SCSI as well?

Heck no. Too expensive and the last time I had a SCSI optical drive, it
died on me after only two years (which is also why I never have any faith
in Toshiba's optical device since).

What I do want though is a SATA model, so I can cut down the cable mess to
only SCSI and SATA only.

For some reason, I spent money on a framed reprint of Gold Adele.... And I
bet AllPoster.com uses "Just In Time" inventory, except they doesn't do it
on time!!! Should have got a new drive instead.

For shame, spending money on a wall instead of your computer. I wouldn't
be at all surprised if your computer didn't start acting up to spite you.

But it's the Gold Adele! (formal name is Adele Bloch-Bauer I) If you have
seen her, you'd fall in love. But let's hope the quality of the reprint is
really good or I'd really regret spending money on it rather than
maintaining Hank.

Just to make myself feeling less guilty, I did install a new GPU fan on him
recently (because the stock fan died) and cleaned the dusty inside him.

Anyways, I know you are an avid reader already (which is laudable), but
don't you invest in some form of arts too? Having some cultured hobby
can't be bad. I am somewhat idle at home right now but at least I try to
keep myself busy with music listening and art appreciation (and Sims...,
erm I mean architecture appreciation). Modern world can be very busy, but
enrich yourself with some arts may refine that somewhat minimalistic aspect
of life.

BTW, Poly, there is something wrong with my computer.

Yep, what did I tell you.

:-p

When I shut down my
Windows, once a while there would be an error dialog menu that says
something like memory register 0x(whatever code is) could not be read.
Windows will shut down properly, however. I wonder if it's a fault in one
of the RAM's register.... Any idea?

You mean it gives a BSOD when you shutdown, or there's a regular popup
error window? Did you look in the event viewer for a corresponding item?
I think it's probably a driver error rather than a hardware failure.

There is no BSOD. Just a regular popup error dialog with OK button (except
the Windows continued the shut down itsself, so I didn't have enough time
to read the whole thing). Last night that thing showed up again, and it
was something like reference memory 0xfffffc (or something) could not be
written this time around....

I was unable to read the dialog's title bar in time to know which program
caused the problem. Wait..., let me try the thing you taught me last time
to see the error log.

This is the closest one I could find. The other stuff are unrelated.

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Userenv
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1517
Date: 5/30/2007
Time: 12:33:10 PM
User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
Description:
Windows saved user registry while an application or service was still using
the registry during log off. The memory used by the user's registry has not
been freed. The registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use.

This is often caused by services running as a user account, try configuring
the services to run in either the LocalService or NetworkService
account.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

The one that isn't SCSI is an HP SATA 500GB.... How expensive is that
drive! It's not even 10K RPM....

But it's HP! That makes it worthless, er, I mean, worth it!

My cousins like HP, but not me. To me, the HP name is already tarnished
and I am not all that interested in buying their stuff.

You have something against "pretexters"?

Pretexters? What's that?

Actually the first place I looked was CDW and they have lots of expensive
drives but they're mostly specialized server drives.

That's understandable. Those server drives are expensive for reasons.
SCSI drives are more reliable in general as well because of the same
reason. My old Seagate Cheetah has been running for probably 7 years
already and it's pretty much fault-free (though I really need to replace it
for preventive measure), if not better than newer drives. Try that on IDE
drives.

I have lots of drives that old. They're just small and slow by comparison
to more modern drives. In fact, the only drive failure I've had myself
has been a 20GB Western Digital that I got in '99. It's a bit odd because
it will sometimes work, and SMART reports no errors, and it spins up fine,
but usually it won't communicate with the controller. I guess the problem
is after the electronics that does the SMART checking. I still haven't
taken it apart.

How do you use that SMART thing? I have some SCSI drives that have that
feature, and I /think/ I enabled them, but don't know what software or
whatever I should use to check the status or know what it does.

Heck, I still have that 10MB drive I was talking about before. As long as
drives are operated at the proper cool temp and are not subjected to
fluctuating voltage or physical shocks, they really should last a long,
long time.

Yeah. But my Quantum/Maxtor drive had a very bumpy inception. Though it
did work later on, but at first it was making some funky noises. That's
why I don't buy SCSI stuff from them (and they don't make them anymore).
Honestly, I think Seagate is probably the only good SCSI HDD company left.

--
Ashikaga - a29 5/31/2007 10:43:17 AM
.

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