No mo' hard drives

[rangerfredbob]

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.

Probably about as fast as Windows 10 on a 4 year old computer... I like how all this "new faster" junk is slower than a Windows XP computer, all the memory and processing to try to figure out what you are going to do really slows down things when it's wrong 90% of the time... I miss XP... it was dumb enough that it was easy to figure out what it would do. At work I occasionally print word documents to a PDF, and Win 10 keeps the printer settings similar with all programs so when I go to print a PDF on the printer I walk to the printer only to realize it's trying to print a PDF... from a PDF...

I have 1mbps internet at home, cloud storage and windows updates and all the modern bandwidth happy websites drive me BONKERS...

 

[bunyip]

My first was a Mac that needed the programme on a 3.5" floppy to start it, mine was luxury as I had an external drive that I could write to, a huge 800mb or was it kb?
I paid $4500 for that high performance set up with a dot matrix printer, all mono of course, no colour then.
Remember a 5000 word essay I was doing for my MA at the time, had a power failure and lost the lot, deciding on the choice of slashing my wrists or starting again.
Next was a colour Mac with 20mb hard drive, huge........

 

[Frankenkubota]

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.

I know little about it except, I'm convinced that some day you are going try to do something routine and an error message will pop up saying, you must increase you cloud storage!

I know some folks enjoy this stuff but I truly hate it. I try to save the word hate for the govt. but i've been fighting this i.t. crap for 40 years. I owned my own business and I DID NOT HAVE a network administrator. I even won a software contest in school once, prime number generator, I thought it was pretty neat stuff.

like all things, double edged sword.

I finally gave in, bought a new i phone and i pad so they could work together, exchange contacts and texts etc and make my life pleasant. Not.

After 3 months all I get is error messages saying i need to increase my cloud and oh, by the way, it's cheap. Texts do not exchange and if i want to post a photo, i take it with my i phone, text it to myself but must make sure i receive it on my i pad.

I've never been a fan of apple, they define the send it to china movement. Now I like them even less!

 

[lman]

Uploading files to the cloud might take some time with my dsl upload speed of .5 Mb and not practical.

 

[RalphVa]

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.

For her, it's the best deal. I'll every once in a while go over and back up to her flash drive. Had been having her back up to her flash drive, and it created a mess! Copy this, Copy 2 that all over the place. She's working on the SSD auto backed up to OneDrive.

For me, I do everything on the flash drive and don't use the SSD on this HP. Then back up manually each time I make a change to OneDrive. Even have OneDrive on my iPad. Handy.

Ralph

 

[RalphVa]

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

You DO NOT want to be working directly on a cloud file. Too many glitzches in saving, etc.

Ralph

 

[YLee Kioti]

......about the cloud....IF you have been tagged as being conservative by what ever means the technoligarchy determines....Cloud Flare has been know to glitch for those 'types' of folks.....just a PSA......cloudflare is a huge host and during the election week has numerous ahem glitches.

....just saying.....many reasons NOT to ever use the cloud when TB storage is cheap for back ups......and reduce exposure to those "glitches' where millions of xxxxxx accounts accidentally got released or hacked or whatever the excuse of the day is used.

 

[RalphVa]

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.

Is there a standard SSD connection? How do I get the SSD info if the mother board or power system fails on the computer? For my hard drives, I remove them and use them if I can. The HD from my old Dell was being used to access Google Earth; it was retired because it had slowed due to some bad sectors. Recently found another hard drive from the wife's other old Dell. Put it on there. It works but had been erased. Will remove the one from the recently deceased old Dell and see if it works. Put my old Dell HD back on the converter (to USB), and it has quit. Will bash it up and throw it away now.

On this machine, my flash drive is my main drive with cloud backup, but I backup both my machine and her machine about once every 3 months to a flash drive located in a fireproof box in the fireproof basement of the carriage house. I'm big on backups. Even have some on some old CDs and Zip drives.

Ralph

 

[RalphVa]

Is this what will work on all SSDs: This $5 cable will turn your old SSD into a portable drive | PC Gamer?

Ralph

 

[LittleBill21]

Is this what will work on all SSDs: This $5 cable will turn your old SSD into a portable drive | PC Gamer?

Ralph

ssd's come in multiple flavors. that being said, a "SATA" ssd hooks up the same way the older hd's did. the M2 style looks like a ram chip and will need a interface specifically for it.

so you need to know exactly what ssd you have to determine what you need to make it an external unit.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

If you have a SSD, be sure to do regular backups. That flash ram has a limited number of write cycles.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Probably about as fast as Windows 10 on a 4 year old computer... I like how all this "new faster" junk is slower than a Windows XP computer, all the memory and processing to try to figure out what you are going to do really slows down things when it's wrong 90% of the time... I miss XP... it was dumb enough that it was easy to figure out what it would do. At work I occasionally print word documents to a PDF, and Win 10 keeps the printer settings similar with all programs so when I go to print a PDF on the printer I walk to the printer only to realize it's trying to print a PDF... from a PDF...

I have 1mbps internet at home, cloud storage and windows updates and all the modern bandwidth happy websites drive me BONKERS...

XP was good for small stuff, but couldn't access more than 4 gb RAM. It was hopeless on big projects.

 

[rangerfredbob]

Fair enough, but Windows 10 won't even function on less than 4gb... my work computer was useless for 2 hours or so today while it was installing an update in the "background", the disc was at 95% the whole time, there were times where it took 30 seconds to bring up the start menu, then if you tried to open up something 5 minutes... I refer to it as the "Windows Update Virus" since it kinda is, it does what it wants when it wants and just takes over, you have no say, sure you can disable it but only for a few days...

 

[Frankenkubota]

Im convinced the cloud is a big step into our Orwellian future. That and putting cameras and mics on everything and networking it all. I read in Japan, you can get a toilet that's connected to the internet, i guess to monitor your diet?

The idea that apple watches everything I do, everything i search, every message i send....pisses me off! I hope one day one of the apple believers goes to flush his toilet and gets an error message, you must upgrade your cloud storage.

Here's where I got it wrong. In most of the 1984 type novels the government was the bully. As a young person, that made some sense.

Now, after watching our govt. in action, i'm not at all afraid of them collecting all our data etc. They are totally and completely incompetent. Just look at the mechanics of the election, they could screw up a wet dream!

I'm afraid they will let apple steal our data and then they, the govt. will force apple to give up the data. Let apple do the dirty work and make a buck at the same time.

And like a bunch of sheep.....

 

[lman]

Apple has none of my data unless they bought it from google. The only apples I have are round and edible.

 

[Grumpycat]

If you have a SSD, be sure to do regular backups. That flash ram has a limited number of write cycles.

Yes, but, the magic of making SSD reliable is wear-averaging, and monitoring to know when memory cells are weakening. The machine is not given raw access to the SSD memory.

You can get SSD in SATA packages. The fastest these days is in PCIe sticks.

Apple MacOS (now officially macOS) includes a backup utility called Time Machine. This will incrementally backup every hour to a storage medium of your choice. Local HD or network or both. What works really nice is to have an Apple Airport Extreme with external USB HD, or Apple Airport Time Capsule which is an Airport Extreme with HD inside, but also has external USB.

Can list multiple storage devices in Time Machine. It will use one the first hour, another the 2nd, the next the 3rd, until the end of your list then start at the top again. Each gets a full incremental backup at the time it is updated. Redundant. And encrypted if you wish.

Restoring from Time Machine is very easy. A Mac can boot off a Time Machine repository, or you can browse the incremental to restore a single file (or email) from this morning or last week, or last year. Whatever.

Am saddened Apple halted development of Airport WiFi routers in 2013. They were really ahead of their time. Very easy to set up. And very easy to create a "mesh" network: just plug it in and use the Airport Utility to add it to your network when it appears on the list.

Apple Airports do not have the knobs to turn other SOHO routers offer, but they do what they do very very well.

 

[RalphVa]

Had an issue with Microsoft 365 Outlook (MS 365 is what they're called Office now). Outlook's Sent Items and Trash were not showing. I did everything I could from Outlook itself and online stuff. Finally did a chat this morning with an MS person and gave them control of the computer. Didn't take them hardly a second to fix it. Something to do with Google folders hiding behind another. Sent Items and Trash sprang into view. Took them off access and thanked them.

Haven't checked my side of it yet. I've me and her set up on her computer because I'm administrator. Guy said it should be okay. If not, it's back to chat to fix my Outlook on it.

Ralph

 

[Alien]

Too bad if china buys out 'The Cloud' Won't happen?

 

[RalphVa]

My hard drive/USB adaptor quit on me after I tried the wife's old Dell's HD on it. May have been shorted out or whatever. Put another HD on it that I'd read before: had been erased. Would not read it. Adaptor is history. Don't really need it any more.

Looking to take apart these 2 HDs. Need a T6 driver. Ordered on. Couldn't get onto the screw heads with pliers. Want to see what they look like and can destroy them more thoroughly if I get the case off.

Ralph

 

[LittleBill21]

My hard drive/USB adaptor quit on me after I tried the wife's old Dell's HD on it. May have been shorted out or whatever. Put another HD on it that I'd read before: had been erased. Would not read it. Adaptor is history. Don't really need it any more.

Looking to take apart these 2 HDs. Need a T6 driver. Ordered on. Couldn't get onto the screw heads with pliers. Want to see what they look like and can destroy them more thoroughly if I get the case off.

Ralph

simply breaking off the sata connector on the drive itself will stop 99.9% of people