The Official Computer Tech Support Thread

[The Batlord]

I mean don't the calculations become longer with time so there's less return or something?

[Mindy]

Originally Posted by The Batlord

I mean don't the calculations become longer with time so there's less return or something?

oh yeah that too, that's called a halving

thats over a long period of time though compared to week to week price action

[innerspaceboy]

Just sharing my latest PC endeavor.

I took on a large-scale project for my archive this week. After reading a scholarly text on digital library management I was reminded that physical hard drives should be replaced every 3-5 years. Researching my receipts I discovered that all of my drives were approaching the 10-year mark and were at 87% capacity. Not wanting to risk data loss I surveyed the market and invested in new hardware.

Amazon had the best deals and the drives I found were all Amazon's Choice with tens of thousands of 5-star reviews so I felt confident in the investment, though it was considerably more than I'd planned to spend this year. I rationalized it as an incremental annual investment for the next decade and the peace of mind is worth the expense.

Amazon dangled a carrot at me during checkout - offering a $40 discount on the purchase if I signed up for their credit card. I've never had a credit card a day in my life. My rule is that if I don't have the cash at that moment I don't make the purchase. And the APR on the Amazon card was a staggering 28%. But I'm highly self-disciplined and knew that the card would not present any temptation for me, so I signed up, was approved in minutes, applied the discount to my order, made sure to pay with my existing debit card, and will dispose of the Amazon credit card when it arrives. (I made sure that there is no annual fee.) I was happy to take the $40 effectively for free. It took the edge off the otherwise daunting expense.

The drives arrived in time for a 9-day stay-cation I had scheduled so I was able to dedicate myself fully to the project. I had to reformat the disks as ext4 filesystems, merge the contents of various smaller legacy drives using a graphical front-end utility for rsync, manually transfer protected and locked Linux system image files from the terminal, and performed other related tasks. The project took about 80 hours of my vacation time but I'm relieved to have it completed at last.

Hopefully I'll be set for upwards of the next ten years.

[Trollheart]

As Blackadder once opined, the long winter evenings must just fly!

What drives did you get, if you don't mind me asking? I've found both Samsung and Western Digital to be very reliable... so far.

[innerspaceboy]

Originally Posted by Trollheart

As Blackadder once opined, the long winter evenings must just fly!

What drives did you get, if you don't mind me asking? I've found both Samsung and Western Digital to be very reliable... so far.

Sure thing. I picked up a Seagate external and a Western Digital internal.

As I mentioned these were Amazon's Choice for both internal and external drive categories at this capacity, and beat NewEgg's pricing for both.

Hopefully I'm set for a good while after this.

[Trollheart]

Very nice indeed. I have three of those Seagates, though I think they're only 6 TB. Got them a lot cheaper than that though. But good drives, very good drives.

It was actually Seagate I meant, not Samsung duh!

[Plankton]

Just a few hiccups with the install, but nothing major. I already tested out Twinmotion maxed out and boy o boy it's a screamer.

[Mindy]

looking cool^

[Plankton]

Thanks! I'll be keeping it over the weekend while I finish up installing a ton of software.

[Mindy]

chair without armrests

clean setup though, the L shaped desk is cool, I just use a cheap small one