PC Tech Thread

BTW, all this stuff... USB hubs, daisy chaining, bandwidth of TB, startup order of attached devices / peripherals, bandwidth of USB, PCI lane exhaustion... it's all frustrating... the vast majority of performance extremes are beyond the capability of devices available on the market, and so compromises are built in.

I've had a few of these issues:

• I chose to buy a very expensive NVME drive to not use the PCI lanes
  
• My monitor sometimes auto-detects a fraction longer and might not detect the keyboard
  
• My webcam invisibly (to me) passed through a lower bandwidth USB hub within a device and I was saturating the bandwidth
  
• My new monitor (4k @ 240hz) saturated the DisplayPort cable I had, and then with the right cable I realised the TB hub cannot actually support 4k at more than 60hz (indicating internally they've probably routed via HDMI and didn't keep a true DisplayPort path!), so now I have a DisplayPort cable running alongside my TB cable
  
  

There's just a lot of subtle gotchas... but try and plug the drive in an early stage

Anyone have an idea about Chromebooks?

Only that they're a walled garden experience provided by the most surveillance-capitalist company there is.

But I'm not sure this is a constructive thought TBH.

To your prior question, so long as you're using their store (I assume they have one) for all apps... I guess you're as safe as you can be from malware and antivirus... and that no you shouldn't install one as I'm not sure with the sandboxing that it could work anyway... but also if there is malware in the apps you download you're going to be screwed... as always the best advice for any computer platform is to only install what you actually need and don't install anything else.

I might just get Puget or someone to build my next one. Or just revert to working on a mac and gaming on PC but then, ultimately, I won't be able to alt-tab so easily when my wife walks in and wonders why I haven't completed a project from 3 months ago.

On an entirely unrelated note, now going to look up KVM switches.

I went the other way, and invested in a way over-spec'd desktop... aiming for very few components but all very capable... less future-proofing along the lines of "oh I can always add lots of drives", etc... and more "just buy near the biggest and best drive available today so I don't need other ones".

And you are right... system builders are good at balancing all of these concerns, and laptop manufacturers still have all these trade-offs but in a closed box you don't have to worry about them. Then Apple have an advantage here too, all the same restrictions exist but now they control heavily all the peripherals too and can balance things even more in their favour.

With freedom comes great responsibility ability to build a system that glitches in weird ways and isn't finely balanced.

There will be settings on your BIOS, and in Windows, which control your Thunderbolt security and DMA settings. Most likely, a port profile has been set somewhere which forbids hot-plugging for that specific port/device.

For my archive /back-ups I use a couple of Cal-digit drives with a removable drive tray which i usually fit whatever drives are getting good failure rates on Backblaze and will order from 2 separate brands/models. these are ‘enterprise’ drives such as this:
https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/45178-toshiba-hdwg440uzsva/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAvJarBhA1EiwAGgZl0C-ygKisvhrGNQ0Wyad5zC2dUK-abHeJW3Ty-drXlWlMNtqau7-EVBoC3rMQAvD_BwE

These are designed for raid systems but i just use them as JBOD and will then take the caddy out once i’m done with them and put them in storage and occasionally refit if i need to access a file.
I presume there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with using this type of drive? I use a Mac if that makes any difference.

No difference at all, it's fine.

Only that they're a walled garden experience provided by the most surveillance-capitalist company there is.

But I'm not sure this is a constructive thought TBH.

So do no evil ;) it is cheap, and has a long battery life.

Wondering as yesterday was getting issues contacting three different car part websites all mentioning ddos attacks so was wondering if it was the Chromebook.

Could be an adblocker or script blocker, I've had similar in the past (not on Chromebook).

Or it could be the same car part website with different skins, it's more common than you think...

Thanks, thought it was ok but them somebody who knows about these things might have a “well yes but technically.."

Nah was different websites. (GSF and ECP)

Was failing in brave and chrome. Even in private browsing on house WiFi.

Halfords worked on brave on mobile.

For the system backups I settled on this
https://www.veeam.com/agent-for-windows-community-edition.html

Seems pretty powerful, lets you browse down to, and extract, the individual files and, if you convert the files, you can run them as a virtual machine.

My main PC with most of my data is in my loft. My desk is in a spot which has average wi-fi (75Mbps say).

Occasionally I'd like to transfer large files up to the main PC from a USB drive. Is there something cheap that would plug into the wired network and show up as a network drive for USB stuff or something and transfer at full speed up to that main PC. I have a spare Pi4 if that would be any good. Cheers

These are designed for raid systems but i just use them as JBOD and will then take the caddy out once i’m done with them and put them in storage and occasionally refit if i need to access a file.

I presume there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with using this type of drive?

It's fine. One advantage is you normally get 3 ('NAS' drives) or 5 years ('Pro/enterprise') manufacturer warranty instead of 2.

Is there something cheap that would plug into the wired network and show up as a network drive

You could certainly use the Pi4 as a wired client and plug your USB drive into it; you don't need a screen as you can remote control from your desk PC. Or possibly automate the upload.

But is there a good reason not to connect your desk PC/device to Ethernet, or powerline, or better Wifi?

Different websites, same backend is what I was trying to get at. GSF is owned by Euro Car Parts, so both websites could be taken down by one DDoS.

Edit: replied to the wrong thread

Didn't know that GSF is under ECP now. But understand your comment.

Who is left in the car parts supply business.

Desk is in an awkward place for ethernet and wi-fi is coming through a solid wall with a fridge/freezer and microwave between the desk and AP. I do have plans of moving an AP and upgrading to wi-fi 6 but that's a bit costlier.

Powerline is possible but I've found them hit and miss in the past and in this case one end will be plugged into a 12 way mains adapter and the other into a 6 way one.

I guess a Raspberry Pi just showing as a network share should do it. Just not sure whether I need to do any annoying shit around mounting stuff to get any USB drive/stick (including NTFS ones) to show up automatically.

I have done a weird thing with backup... I've stopped doing backup, and instead use syncthing to provide backup.

I never need full disk image or system backup, I've been fine with thinking of the operating system and applications as ephemeral and reinstallable, for many years I've only been thinking that files, the data itself, is important enough to need backed up.

First use of syncthing was: make sure really important files are in more than one place. By which, I mean all devices are encrypted hard drives and I have a folder that used to be in Google Drive which contains every receipt and letter received since 1995, and all the house conveyancing, and every payslip and tax form, and every legal matter, and all health things, etc, etc... basically everything admin in my life. This is sync'd to every laptop / desktop / server I have... and as most are off, it's trivial to keep it all safe, there's always a version cold somewhere.

Second use of syncthing: Replace Google Photos by having photos sync from my device straight to my NAS, and then process them there and make them available on my phone and other devices through a web UI.

Third use of synching: Replace all backup with syncthing by having multiple NAS devices at different locations, initially sync'd in the same location (because copying 35TB of data takes a while), and then separated to two distinct locations, both obviously having syncthing on it. Have the remote "backup" NAS configured for Wake-on-Lan, and use that to turn on the backup each month and then it will automatically sync via syncthing, when my monitoring reveals the network goes quiet (finished syncing) then I get an alert and I log in and turn off the backup. In essence, a remote cold backup kept up to date each month, and local backups on multiple devices kept up to date whenever they are turned on.

Syncthing also appears to happily sync 100GB files (though it does take a while initially and I guess you really don't want to modify these files), and folders containing 250k files. You do need to raise inotify watchers, but it all works.

And this is what I did with the old spare NAS.

Bit smaller and lighter. I miss the floppy cable of the Razor and the mouse speed is much slower at the same setting, so I've now got the tracking speed maxed out in Windows which is a bit odd. But it is about a 1/3 the price of the Razor.

Ok, the button on top obviously controls the speed. It's now fucking hyperspeed...

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Sweet LEDs bruh

You should be able to set the sensitivity from the corsair software and reprogram the buttons if you want.

If I knew (or ever bothered to google) how to turn them off...

corsair software

LOL.

I never installed the Razor software, I'm not going to start now. Plug and play, baby!