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Re: Used hard drives
I find any Hard Drive more useful then not having it. I store Pictures and Music on small hard drives and use them for doc. It is nice to have a hard drive from your old pc and use it in your new one so you can have like your old pc in you new one.Comment
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Re: Used hard drives
I have built several "older" computers to use for long term testing of power supplies. I use Ubuntu as operating system since it is free instead of paying money to Microsoft. As for used hard drives, 6 gig and above is adequate. One thing I found that was interesting.....a hard drive that gives trouble with windows o/s will load Linux and work fine. So why trash it????Old proverb say.........If you shoot at nothing, you will hit nothing (George Henry 10-14-11)Comment
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Re: Used hard drives
Ive noticed that too... mac os also complains...
my guess is that linux doesn't complain... but it will error out eventually. it always has in my experience... usually something random will not work right, even after re-installing the OS... only to be fixed by a new HDD. IMHO if the drive isn't happy under windows like that, then the drive is junk... You never win in the end.sigpic
(Insert witty quote here)Comment
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Re: Used hard drives
I consider 80gb the lower limit. Anything under that is typically old, slow, and has less cache than 80 and above.Ludicrous gibs!
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Re: Used hard drives
I'd usually go for a 40GB 7200.7 over a 60GB Barracuda ATA IV. The ST340014A in particular is really quiet. I'm sure a later generation 40GB drive like the ST340014A would be quite capable of running an office system even today, and an early generation 80GB drive like the Maxtor DiamondMax 80 may well be a poor choice for anything.Comment
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Re: Used hard drives
I re-use all of the hard drives that I get. If it's above 3.2GB and working, it's usually good enough to set up a Windows XP test system. For a system that I would be using (i.e. not a test system) 20 GB is the absolute minimum. Not counting movies, games, and some other large downloads, I think my data (pictures, music, documents) would actually fit on a 20 GB HDD.
As for broken HDDs - I keep those as well, usually for power supply dummy load.Comment
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Re: Used hard drives
I reuse drives for any type of server I may setup.
I have a mythtv setup running on a drive that sounds like its about to go any day.
I don't really care if it does, because the content will only be backed up onto portable harddrive.
Plus mythtv would eventually wear out a good harddrive if your watching livetv from it.
For my download machine headless server, I use a 2nd hand drive to install linux ubuntu server, then different drives for where data is saved, so if something goes wrong with my linux install its just a matter of reinstalling linux to gain it back.Comment
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With the discussion about water pumps failing when cars sit for a while, I wonder what people have seen with hard drives. Do people see hard drives failing after being sat on the shelf for a long time unpowered versus a hard drive that's at least powered up at least once in a while, say, weekly?
Wonder if it's worth spinning up the spare spinners once in a while to keep the bearings lubricated?
Wonder how I should best keep my cold spares for my RAID "fresh" for eventual failures of the working drives. Was thinking about keeping a hot spare but that's another... -
I've gotten into the habit of Looking at peoples Mechanical Hard drives with a Ubuntu thumb drive to boot their system.
I understand the raw values are not really uniform between manufacturers, but I have noticed that high seek and read error raw values at the very least correlate to a drive that is going to have sub par access time, and extremely slow OS booting.
The odd thing is I've often seen very high seek and read error rates on drives with fairly low on time.
Does anybody have any other takes on evaluating smart data? I've used Crystal Disk Info, It seems to present... -
Hi everyone,
I'm in need of assistance with a Dell Precision 5820 Tower. The BIOS is locked with "Dell Security Manager," preventing access to the HDD-1 hard drive.
**Background:**
I recently purchased this Dell Precision 5820 Tower from a recycler who salvages equipment from abandoned office spaces. The computer was left behind by its previous owner and was password locked. Given that it can run Windows 11, I saw this as an opportunity to upgrade my setup.
**What I've Tried So Far:**
1. I accessed... -
i have several dead/bricked (not detected, doesnt show up or making constant clicks of death) and faulty bad sector hard drives. im moving house soon and need to get rid of some dead weight.
i thought of selling them for parts or not working but they are quite heavy and shipping each drive internationally via local post is US$23 each. im using some of the drives as gym strength training dumbells by putting 4 of them in a box to make a 3kg dumbell. but since im moving i cant carry the deadweight with me. any ideas what to do with them that is cost-effective for ppl like me... -
I remember a lot of people before when my hard drive failed told me that I could do a couple of amazing things with backing up data. What stuck out is two things...
1. Software that will backup your data live via a cloud solution or over the internet without having a corporate cloud product.
2. Get a storage tower with hard drives and load them up.
What I mean is there software out there that you can install on your computer. You tell it which data you want backed up. Lets say your main PC with (2) hard drives and (8) hard drives connected to it via a tower....
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