PC Tech Thread

Why a caddy?

Either get a western digital external hard drive and dump data onto that or if you are feeling flush, a Synology Nas

Oh and optical, just get a cheap one from Amazon.

Why a caddy?

I've got a couple of spare internal HD and thought I'd make use of them.

But a quick search suggests that's there's not a huge saving, so I might just do as you suggest.

I did look at OD on Amazon, but there's such a choice I was hoping for a steer, to avoid buying a POC.

I suspect the internals of the optical drives are only made by a few manufacturers, whilst there are thousands of brands on amazon the difference will largely be styling/branding. I would just buy the cheapest and treat as disposable but LG is a solid brand.

Hard drives are so cheap on a per gig basis that it rarely makes sense to recycle old hard drives.

As for ripping cds - what is this, the 90s 😄

You're right: OD are <£15. I'm overthinking it.

Point noted re HD too.

I still have a box of C90...

Depending on how critical the data is, you may benefit from some sort of protection against data corruption. It doesn't matter if your film loses a frame, but you will care if some less resilient document won't open as it's corrupted.

What sort of thing do you have in mind?

Two back-ups?

Yeah, that's one way of doing it. If you really care about something then actual CD/DVD is excellent if the limited capacity isn't an issue.
If you want to run your own backup then a (expensive but more robust) alternative is a NAS running a filesystem with self-healing/monitoring capability.

Or, try crashplan/backblaze.

Probably not Crashplan as they are ditching consumer product.

Also, I believe @Scilly.Suffolk is on Linux and Backblaze doesn't support that (underlying B2 storage does though).

If @Scilly.Suffolk is on linux then why doesn't he just run his own ZFS pool?
I've looked at B2 as an offsite backup for my FreeNAS box but it seems bloody expensive compared with the personal backup stuff for the amount I want to store. I ended up copying it all to some massive hard drives and taking them to my mum's house...

I have the dubious pleasure of now having a windows machine in the house.

What anti-bad things software do I need?

I need something that stands in the way of exploits that happen just by being connected to the internet, rather than protecting against opening random exe files.

I would also like something that doesn't constantly burn all the CPU and memory.

Wayback when, hijackthis and an automated reg cleaner utility used to suffice.

I haven't used anything other than Microsoft Security Essentials for years.

'just' run a ZFS pool? That's a storage setup anyway, not a backup method. @Scilly.Suffolk can you be more specific on how much data, what kind, how many machines, OS, need for incrementals etc?

Yes, it's a storage method, but you can cycle out drives to achieve a duplicate of the ZFS pool with correction for data corruption and drive redundancy.

Is that bundled in already?

can you be more specific on how much data, what kind, how many machines, OS, need for incrementals etc?

• <500gb
  
• video, photo, audio, document
  
• one desktop
  
• Linux Mint 18.2 Cinnamon 64-bit
  
• I'm not sure I understand the question, but the date doesn't alter much, rather files are added (or removed)
  
  

As much as I appreciate everyone's time and trouble, my needs are quite modest as is my experience with Linux.

Despite fidbod's advice I've now bought a caddy and an internal SSD, which means I have two HD spare and intend to cycle those for my back-ups.

The 'incremental' question was about whether you intended your backup to be just storing one or more simple copies of all your files at a point in time, or a more comprehensive system which stores a complete copy every so often, and then the changes (adds + deletes) on each backup.

The latter (like say Apple's Machine) allows you to 'go back in time' and browse the files as they existed then. It is vastly more efficient than storing multiple complete backups.

It also deals with the problem when you accidentally delete a file, and don't notice for a couple of months, by which time you've overwritten your simple backups, and lost the file forever. Which I did once.

Software audio drivers other than Realtek? I'm getting a graphical and audio 'stutter' on my work machine that's really grinding my gears. The two seemed to be linked as they happen at the same time, the graphic one I can live with, but the audio is cramping my listening pleasure. Am I right in thinking the graphics card deals with on-board audio, or are they likely just symptomatic of something else which affects both?

Hey folks, anyone in East with a pc with a spare sata port up for updating the firmware on an SSD for me? Should take 5 mins...

Computer seems quite loud. It's a fractual design R4 (I think, might be R5 not sure) doesn't seem to be coming from the case fans. Silly question but anyway to find out if it's the CPU fan or the power supply?

Are they easy to quieten down?

#firstworldproblems

When was the last time you properly cleaned the dust out? Graphics cards in particular can be loud if the airflow ports are clocked.

Unplug, open up the case, look for dust around proc fans and case fans. Dislodge and hoover it up. Remove graphics card. Dislodge and hoover up dust. Same for fan in PSU.

If that fails look at quietpc.co.uk for your silent fan needs.

download speccy and see if anything is running hot.

Will that work for PSU's etc?

it won't show PSU but everything else.