best cheap/free scores 1.1

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

antistatic bag and then wrap them a couple times in small bubble wrap, and put them in a box with paper or more bubblewrap. They'll survive.

I second this.

I've received HDDs like that from eBay and never had problems. Anti-static bag + 2 layers of fine bubble wrap on each drive + some fine bubble wrap around the sides of the box should do the trick for up to 10-12 drives.

Avoid the air pouches. Some use them in place of bubble wrap. Air pouches are okay for clothes and things that aren't sensitive. But for HDDs, it has to be bubble wrap.

@ TC: I think I have 2 SCA HDDs I can send you. Posted in your dual Celly thread. Just have to check them out for functionality.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

yea i can say that air pouches or air pillows dont work. due to the weight of the drive, if it suffers a jolt during transport, the weight of the drive would rupture or burst any of those air pillows. i often end up with deflated air pillows or pouches from shipped hard drives.

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

do americans have bubble-wrap?? /sarc
every item i got from the u.s. via ebay was packed in screwed-up newspaper pages.
dont get me wrong, a good 4-6" of it all around, but always newspaper rather than bubblewrap.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored this PC. Not bad but definitely not the best either:

ASRock P4V88+ mobo w/ 6 bulged KZGs (recapped)
P4 HT 3GHz Prescott (no wonder why the caps died)
1GB RAM
Radeon 9250 128MB
P&O LC-B400ATX (MAX:400W (yeah right.) gutless wonder
Allied/APEX PC-115 case
Samsung SD-612 DVD-ROM
NEC ND-3540A DVD-RW
Maxtor STM3160215A 160GB 7200RPM.
Windows 7 (italian)

Came with a free Windows 7 DVD as well, but don't know if it's SP1 at all.

KZGs are known to bulge while sitting! (And it looks like a mid-2000s' CPU and motherboard, so no surprise that the KZG-series caps on that motherboard, are shit!)

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

KZGs are known to bulge while sitting! (And it looks like a mid-2000s' CPU and motherboard, so no surprise that the KZG-series caps on that motherboard, are shit!)

Depends. I had a batch of KZGs bulge while sitting on a MSI P965 Platinum, while these ones I removed from the ASRocl clearly pointed to the heat from the Prescott chip. (the caps were brownish-black instead of the usual light brown KZG have.) It also didn't help that the PSU was a Deer that has a EI-28 transformer. (yes, you read that right, EI-28 transformer!)

Then there are some boards I have on which KZGs still live like nothing happened. I guess it also depends on what the CPU heat output is, because unsurprisingly these that didn't bulge yet were found on a uATX AM2 motherboard.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Depends. I had a batch of KZGs bulge while sitting on a MSI P965 Platinum, while these ones I removed from the ASRocl clearly pointed to the heat from the Prescott chip. (the caps were brownish-black instead of the usual light brown KZG have.) It also didn't help that the PSU was a Deer that has a EI-28 transformer. (yes, you read that right, EI-28 transformer!)

Then there are some boards I have on which KZGs still live like nothing happened. I guess it also depends on what the CPU heat output is, because unsurprisingly these that didn't bulge yet were found on a uATX AM2 motherboard.

While they seem less likely to take a shit on Core 2-era motherboards, it still looks a bit too early to tell! I have yet to confirm a visibly-bad one with my own eyes on Conroe-era motherboards. (65nm Core 2 Duo)

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

While they seem less likely to take a shit on Core 2-era motherboards, it still looks a bit too early to tell! I have yet to confirm a visibly-bad one with my own eyes on Conroe-era motherboards. (65nm Core 2 Duo)

Well, the P965 IS a Conroe-era board. As for bad without bulging, didn't really have such cases with KZG. I did have that happen though with at least a WHOLE round of G-Luxon and several TK ATWY caps on a Biostar motherboard.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Well, the P965 IS a Conroe-era board. As for bad without bulging, didn't really have such cases with KZG. I did have that happen though with at least a WHOLE round of G-Luxon and several TK ATWY caps on a Biostar motherboard.

While they apparently can support Conroe with a BIOS update, there's a good chance that it's from 2005, or so it seemed (sorry) and thus still the Prescott-era and the like. (Cedar Mill, Smithfield or similar, IIRC)

2005 would put it in well in the bad cap danger zone! As even high-end Asus motherboards were known to have bulging and leaking wet-electrolytic caps! Yikes! After all, my 2005 Antec SmartPower 2.0 was confirmed to have a bad Fuhjyyu cap, in probably the standby zone! (I made the discovery in 2011, after hearing a whine, a lower-pitched squeal, like a radio, with the Acer Aspire M5630 PC off, when the house was very quiet, IIRC, back when I of course still lived at 105 Main St.)

[brethin]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Only KZG I had bulge was in a Asus P4C800D that had a over clocked 3.4 and it was my fault for not cooling the case better.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Only KZG I had bulge was in a Asus P4C800D that had a over clocked 3.4 and it was my fault for not cooling the case better.

Not your fault. KZG was bad for this. I've seen 'new old stock' KZG's die on the shelf. Seen gazillions of them fail in action.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

do americans have bubble-wrap?? /sarc

LOL! YES?

every item i got from the u.s. via ebay was packed in screwed-up newspaper pages.
dont get me wrong, a good 4-6" of it all around, but always newspaper rather than bubblewrap.

Weird. I've gotten bubble wrap way more often than newspaper. Come to think of it, I've gotten newspaper only on a few occasions. It was done very well and nothing got damaged. And the nice thing about newspaper is that I don't feel bad about dumping it back in the recycling bin. Bubble wrap, I try to save, if new or newish looking... and have accumulated a couple of big boxes already.

KZGs are known to bulge while sitting!

True for most of the older ones.
I haven't seen any bad ones with a date code of 2008 and later. That said, I would still avoid the 6.3V 3300 uF KZGs - just never seen any of them last.

While they apparently can support Conroe with a BIOS update, there's a good chance that it's from 2005, or so it seemed (sorry) and thus still the Prescott-era and the like. (Cedar Mill, Smithfield or similar, IIRC)

Agreed. I consider the i915/945/955/965 chipsets to be Prescott -era too, even though both 945 and 965 will support some Core -based CPUs.
So if the board is old enough to have one of those chipsets, it's probably also has the potentially-flawed KZGs.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Only KZG I had bulge was in a Asus P4C800D that had a over clocked 3.4 and it was my fault for not cooling the case better.

That's likely the same period as the Asus A7N8X-X I had, where the KZG-series caps on the motherboard, when just sitting, bulged with a Hawaii-style eruption at the top vents. (and some at least about to do that, if not already!)

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

HP Pavilion dv7 (i5@2.5G, 8G, 500G) and a MS Surface (not sure which version).

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I just got 10 in a box....it was a little 'girthy', but all was well. wrapped each drive 2 layers of bubble wrap was fine....so stacked, there was technically 4 layers, plus the antistatic bag....packed snug in the box with more bubblewrap so they weren't hitting eachother loosely.

OK, I'll do a dry run (with SATA drives) to see how many I can fit in a "conveniently available" box (so I don't have to keep a particular box on hand waiting for the next chance I have at rescuing some drives).

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

picked up 4x seagate 9.1gb 68-pin cheetah's for 20 bucks. They're the 1.6 height ones....they had slower seek speeds, but with all the platters + 10k RPM, they sound mean spooling up!

[Uranium-235]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I once got a Promise Vtrak 15100 for $100

all bays, both psus still worked. Tested it after I cleared out the settings with a serial cable.

[goontron]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Nice icon U235

[Uranium-235]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^ I probably don't even want to know the story behind any of that!

[Uranium-235]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

It's a character from a cartoon. There was an animation error that made her eyes, well, like they are in my avatar. Everyone found it funny so they kept it like that, made her somewhat...slow (though she makes very few appearances throughout the show). The fans eventually called her "derpy" (south park reference). Her name made it into the show but some asshat parents thought they were making fun of retarded people so they just cut her name out (although her (derpy) name still shows up in the closed caption to this day). Shes somewhat of a lovable eh, 'disabled' pony that only made her mark from animation mistake and fanart

edit: After the derpy incident, they offically named her "Muffins". Later in one of her few appearances, she officially had some connection to her name

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO9JRtLYhRQ