No mo' hard drives

[RalphVa]

Wife's Dell computer failed last night. Only 4 years old. Don't know whether it is the power unit or hard drive. Will remove hard drive before recycling and plug it in and see if it works.

Bought her a Dell all-in-one mainly because it was 1 left at Bestbuy and has what I want, very much like the HP all-in-one I'm working on. About $800 for pooter, new Office and video/USB adaptor to use her old screen as a 2nd like I have here on the HP.

No hard drive in either one. A fairly big fixed drive but with 1 TB of cloud storage. Picture attached is similar to what it looks like but in black and 2 legs instead of legs across. CPU and all are behind the monitor. Like these. Down side is USB inputs are all on the back, and flash card insert is behind the on/off switch underneath. Wireless kb and mouse.

Spent the whole day except for brief lunch and our hour hike about 1 setting the thing up: one glitzch after another; it seemed. Then wife complains that her Ivy Farm notes aren't there. That's cuz I elected to only install her calendar and contacts in Outlook, not the big PST file.

Ralph

 

[Roadworthy]

Is there a point to this or some kind of happy ending to the story? Don't buy Dell? Don't shop Best Buy? If so that's cool, I avoid both.

 

[Molalla1]

Is there a point to this or some kind of happy ending to the story? Don't buy Dell? Don't shop Best Buy? If so that's cool, I avoid both.

No, I believe he was happy with his purchase and from the looks of it I would be too . . .

 

[bunyip]

I lost interest in HP after getting a faulty mother board, HP refused to honour warranty and finding someone who could speak english was almost impossible, I hate dealing with OS call centres.

 

[daugen]

very cool looking pc.
Envious about solid state HD's, my 7 year old Acer is making lots of noise, time to swap out the hard drive for a 1TB SS one.
I know it's not hard (no pun intended...) but I don't have enough
confidence to do it myself, particularly moving all the info over.
Maybe after 7 years time to buy a new one....I'm sure the fan is shot and it sure needs a internal vacuuming.

 

[TractorGuy]

I think I will stick with hard drives and back ups. I am migrating to SSDs.

 

[pmsmechanic]

I would never use cloud storage for anything expect what you don't mind not having access to. It's to easy to be held for ransom.

 

[bunyip]

Both my desktop and laptop are SSD, it is the way to go, for storage I have a multitude of 1 and 2TB drives, I take a lot of pics as does SWMBO on a 13mp and 35mp camera and often shoot fine and raw combined, the tech who put together my desktop said 500gb SSD is the best way to go, he doesn't like the 1TB, says they are not as reliable.

 

[mrmikey]

I don't trust the 'cloud'. My stuff, I want it where I can use it and not have to be dependent on the whim when someone decides to put a fee on it. Look at Photobucket or as it's called now, Photofu**et, how'd that turn out?..............Mike

 

[Code54]

I always run a SSD in my laptops with iCloud backup. I personally wouldn't care for cloud only as our internet is way too unreliable to depend on 100% of the time.

 

[cdaigle430]

Been IT since the 1990s, started out when 20mb was expensive and considered alot. No I have mostly SSD drives, first one to get the change was the wife. She has no patience for technology and has destroyed several HDDs by dropping, throwing or hitting the laptops. Since the SSD changeover...no problem.

Cloud is also very good to have. I like using mine to backup all my phones. Whats also great is I can edit my 4k videos and drone videos and share them for streaming off the cloud. They are huge, over 7GB sometimes. Its the only way I know to share 4-7 gb files. I also have my own internal cloud...

Key thing is backups of backups on you important data. Dont care about the OS or the OS Drive...it doesnt matter and can easily be rebuilt.

I also have passport drives that are inexpensive, I back up all my important data and keep it in a fireproof safe.

If you have a smart phone then chances are your using the cloud-icloud o google cloud.

 

[Jstpssng]

I don't and won't use the "Cloud" for any and all of the reasons listed above. I have a company "iPhone" and hate it; at least in part because the laptop they supply me with is a PC. It's almost impossible to transfer files back and forth, the only way that I can do it is when I have internet service... and there aren't many "hotspots" out there in the hemlock trees. I used to be able to get an email with a spreadsheet, download it, and use it immediately; now I have to wait until I get home. I used to be able to generate a map, upload it to my phone, and use it in my "Avenza" program; now I have to wait until I have internet service. About 85% of the places that I work have zero cell-based internet coverage; so again, a "Cloud" would be worthless.

 

[cdaigle430]

I don't and won't use the "Cloud" for any and all of the reasons listed above. I have a company "iPhone" and hate it; at least in part because the laptop they supply me with is a PC. It's almost impossible to transfer files back and forth, the only way that I can do it is when I have internet service... and there aren't many "hotspots" out there in the hemlock trees. I used to be able to get an email with a spreadsheet, download it, and use it immediately; now I have to wait until I get home. I used to be able to generate a map, upload it to my phone, and use it in my "Avenza" program; now I have to wait until I have internet service. About 85% of the places that I work have zero cell-based internet coverage; so again, a "Cloud" would be worthless.

Im from Maine-middle of nowhere I work from home all the time-but I have to use a combination of cell phone boosters, cell repeaters and wifi calling to make the on call thing work for my job-cell coverage very bad). I have excellent cable internet though-rarely goes down, my colleagues in Toronto Canada, Singapore and India go down way more than I do. I love the cloud-use it even when I go in the middle of nowhere in South America. Third world countries have better cell and internet coverage than we do in Maine LOL.

My parents live up in the county and cell phone is non existent by Allagash-but they have good internet cable.

While I said I do love the cloud-I only put things there that are not too private or I wont care if I lose.

 

[YLee Kioti]

New egg, build your own. Use gamer components for max performance. SSD 1Tb are cheap.......

if you don't have time to build, New Egg still had desk tops from other top vendors that have sales......BB, yeah what they all said....pass....

 

[i7win7]

Don't need no stinkin' cloud
https://www.pc-pitstop.com/15-bay-12gbs-sas-tower-jbod-enclosure-j1512
Use RAID controller set for RAID6 two drives can fail without data loss. Replace bad drive and controller will rebuild data on new drive. PC still usable while rebuilding data.

 

[5030]

Both my desktop and laptop are SSD, it is the way to go, for storage I have a multitude of 1 and 2TB drives, I take a lot of pics as does SWMBO on a 13mp and 35mp camera and often shoot fine and raw combined, the tech who put together my desktop said 500gb SSD is the best way to go, he doesn't like the 1TB, says they are not as reliable.

Hard to beat a chipset hard drive. No defrag, quick up time and you can always add memory. ..I have a Dell and it's flawless but then my BIL is in the business (Dell Business Dealer) so he gets mine and sets them up for me. Got my last one as well. It lasted 10 years.

 

[Macinnis]

If you are looking into a new pc, I would go with an m.2 drive instead of ssd. Just make sure your motherboard has a slot. Like anything...you get what you pay for. The less you spend, the higher the frequency of repairs/replacement.

 

[YLee Kioti]

If you are looking into a new pc, I would go with an m.2 drive instead of ssd. Just make sure your motherboard has a slot. Like anything...you get what you pay for. The less you spend, the higher the frequency of repairs/replacement.

Oh...maaaaahn......thank...ya...thank..ya...very much..... m.2 drive | Newegg.com

My desk top unit was built in 2005 for collage.....MSI all gamer components.......put in storage in 2016 so now when we move into our house this month it will spend a week updating W7. I knew the world zipped by pretty fast but had no stinking idea.....sigh......
IF I have to build another unit......it's be the kid in a candy store all over again. Not into computers like back in the 90s......I research for weeks build one and use them until they die, rinse repeat...looks like December will be rinse cycle....:laughing:
On top of all the winter spring projects on my plate.
May have to go back to work so I can get some rest....

 

[Macinnis]

In 1990, when I started college, my dad gave me a 286 out of his office. I think I spent $1500 upgrading from 2-4 meg of ram and a new hard drive to 50 meg...and the chip upgrade from 286 to 486.

Took me a year to pay it off...that machine smoked.

 

[BravoXray]

I have switched my office computer to SSDs. Faster access, less power consuption and noise.
I will never trust the cloud, every other day you hear about Google, MS, or some other vendor's cloud services going down.
Instead, I use a couple of NAS boxes, actually, I guess I have three of them, for a total of 15 TB of storage. Full backups are done automatically every week.
The computer, router, network switches and all the NaS boxes are all connected to UPSes, so if power goes out I can save whatever I'm doing, back it up and then shut down in an orderly fashion.

I've seen too many friends and customers lose days, weeks and even months of data because they didn't back it up. No excuse for not backing up data.