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Don't agree about the tape - there is just too much risk of not being able to find a reader for your data somewhere down the track. Best option is SATA hard drives - they are cheap (probably cheaper than tape once you factor in the cost of the readers), very reliable, and easy to store - any...

I shouldn't think so. A much-reduced percentage would be my guess. Oh, my own sales of this sort of system have shrunk to practically zero in recent years, but I attribute most of that to other factors - primarily (a) my primary market is older than the average gamer, and (b) games bore me...

Never had the slightest issue with this. (Well, for a given value of "never".) It has always been a complete non-issue for us. (For a given value of "always".) But for many years I have stocked good quality, full-size mini and midi tower cases, ones with actual metal in them, and which (among...

How much space do you want? I just replaced the Seagate 160GB drive in my ASUS netbook with a Samsung 640GB unit. But for me, space is everything, performance (on this machine) not particularly an issue. YMMV.

I want a slab that does megapickles!

Well there you go, mate. Google is never wrong. Obviously, Mercutio is the World Authority!

Essentially, yeah. Collecting failute statistics from drives sent for data recovery is absolutely and completely pointless. Oh, it's quite interesting, but it doesn't tell you anything about between-brands reliability. All it really tells you is something about the kind of clueless fool who is...

Your drive is a 10MB unit. International shipping is too much of a pain; I agree. I'd never heard of Otari Electric, BingBangBop, until you mentioned that drive. Apparently Otari Electric bought Disctron, which itself was formed from a merger between RMS and Data Peripherals, and then sold the...

My best filter uses a brass thread. Much nicer, doesn't get stuck. Expensive though.

Just image quality, Dave. They can be really, really bad, or they can be half-decent. Always good to avoid them though.

Sorry Dave, other way about. (I already know that stuff you said because it is exactly the same here.) How would the US enforce competition (if it wanted to)?

Yeah? How does that work?

Cool! Thanks Bill! I have a Fujitsu MPD3108AT and a MPE3102AT (both 10GB drives) some 60GXPs, about 6 or 8 Fireballs ST and SE (those were the great Fireballs, when Quantum led the world) and 31 different Conner models - though "different" is a strange word to use with Conner, 'cause the...

I don't quite see how they could do it either, Dave - this is the thing with multinational companies, they are simply above the law and can do as they please.

And damn good ones too. :)

Samsung SV0842D is a V9100 according to my sources. See here: http://redhill.net.au/d/99.php The photograph on that page, unfortunately, is a scam - that's a V4300. Hell yeah! The older the better. I'll have examples of most of them already, I imagine, but there is always the chance of a nice...

Oh what a shame! I was about to say that I don't have a U Series 5, or (surprisingly) a V9100, and to say to send me the pair of them (working or not, but unopened and intact) and I'd send you good quality working drives by return.

Codegen is a really good name to know. They are very cheap and can usually be trusted ..... to fail after about 5 minutes use. I've owned helium balloons that were heavier than the average Codegen PSU. If you have a good one, treasure it - 'cause it's one of a kind!

Get some better information: http://gsmartcontrol.berlios.de/home/index.php/en/Home Actually, on re-reading, it looks as though you are getting SMART info already. But in reality, as you know, the drive needs to be replaced pronto. Which 10GB Quantum, BTW?

While there is Europe, there is still hope. http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/05/31/eu_disk_mergers/

Oh no. There is no shortage of good, reliable cheap(ish) PSUs. Sure, you have to try a few till you get a brand that does what you need, but we have pretty much never had an issue sourcing good, reliable, trustworthy PSUs for everyday use in everyday systems. The problems start when you want a...

Heating and cooling should be able to account for a massive change. Most houses have terrible insulation, and even worse passive design. (Germany is much better than Oz in that respect, but so is Mars.) That will take time - you can't replace/refit an entire nation's housing and office stocks...

Maybe they just intend to waste less.

All good points, Tazwegion, but none of them answer my question. Why is there this massive gap in the market? Sure, you go up from one model to another, but ... let's put it this way: if PSUs were meals, you'd be going from airline meal to roadhouse feed to counter meal or good, plain home...

In other news today, the conservative government of Germany has moved to phase out all nuclear power generation within ten years. The oldest German plants, which are temporarily closed already as a safety measure, will not reopen...

Be careful you fool! Last time someone started a thread like this, it wound up turning into a 1274532312235 page monster!

Nope, genuine drive, Seagate agree that it is under warranty. I do have an alternative RMA method available (through the wholesaler), or else I can try sdbardwick's latex method. Ran out of time this week. I'll try again next week.

I don't generally sell Seagate drives these days, but I happen to have a 500GB Barracuda 7200.12 which was DOA and needs to be returned. So I went to the Seagate website and ran through the hoops. Long story short, the Seagate website REFUSES to accept the RMA. It admits the drive exists, it...

Chewy - great post!

I forgot to mention: I used to use Sparkle PSUs back in the day, Merc. They were good. It was a while back - I think we were building Athlon Classics with them, or maybe Athlon Thunderbirds. Whatever, it was quite a while back.

This is the one I use, Merc: http://www.anyware.com.au/PS-RK500.aspx I suppose I've gone through close to a hundred now, bit less than that at a guess, and I don't have a record of the failure count but .... one? none? I'm pretty sure that there was one crook one out of the whole lot. Of my...

That was ambiguous. What I meant was that I try a few different brands and models in the desired price range (low!) until I find one that seems to go OK. Then I stick to it for as long as it stays available or until I see too many failures, mostly the former. It's worth mentioning that FSP are...

Oh: my FSP return count - one or zero, not sure. More than satisfactory, certainly. The cheap things fall over sometimes, but I don't bother returning them, just throw them away.

Absolutely right. FSP make excellent power supplies. I've sold hundreds of them over the years, and provided that I select a PSU appropriate to the task, FSPs are as reliable as any brand, and better than most. We usually sell three PSUs as aftermarket parts (i.e., in addition to whatever...

Gmail doesn't work if you aren't connected all the time. That is a deal breaker. Same with all that other useless cloud rubbish. (Different for city people, sure. No good out here in the real world though.)

Mate, for enterprise-level stuff, I have no clue! I stopped having anything at all to do with companies of any size ... oh ... five, no, more like 10 years ago. I deal with homes and small businesses, professional people, stuff like that - up to maybe five or six computers would be typical. I...

Forget Q2 - you already answered it via cross-post.

I can't believe that anyone would think that I'd recommend Incredimail. (Or indeed that anyone else here would recommend it. Well, maybe Trinton Azaleth or whatever his name was. It would be about his speed.) I probably said the plain vanilla version of "I dislike Outlook" here a decade ago. If...

Nailed it.

1: show me some evidence of this claim, please. Frankly, I don't believe it. I have heard this claim a zillion times, but no-one has ever substantiated it. In reality, Incredimail and spyware only go together because Incredimail users are clueless. It ain't the software that causes the...

No, Incredimail supports brainless animated butlers walking across your screen announcing "you have new mail" complete with brainless sound effects that pop up when you are in the middle of doing something completely different and also lots and lots and lots and lots of different icons and...

START >> RUN >> SETUP.EXE >> enter email address >> enter password >> enter name of mail server If it needs any more than that to work properly - and by "it" I mean any mail client of any flavour - it is broken, borked, faarked, up the duff, farnarkled, trashware. No two ways about it: if...

Merc is right. As for me, I don't get paid enough to deal with Outlook problems. Any kind of Outlook problem. If you bring a machine to me and you are still stupid enough to be running Outlook as your primary email client, I'll spend 5 minutes on it. Five minutes flat. Anything that goes wrong...

Rubbish. Western Digital made the best MFM controller cards, and their Paradise video cards were extraordinarily good.

Interesting, Blake. I've had no issues of that nature, and I use XP exclusively. But then, FF is usually my third browser (behind Opera and Seamonkey) and doesn't get the hammering with a zillion tabs and windows that Opera does - I suppose it's rare for me to have more than maybe 3 Firefox...

Surprised to see the lack of positive comment here. FF4 is vastly improved over 3.x. Vastly. Hell, I actually use it quite often, and I never did like Firefox or use it more tan I could avoid. Two big changes: 1 - a lot faster, hell, it may actually be quicker than Opera now (I haven't...

What did you buy? Nothing. How much was it? Nothing. Why did you buy it? Because I thought it would go OK, and indeed it does - it fulfills 100% of my expectations. ;) Well, I do have a kitchen radio, which I don't use for music, and if by any chance I want to listen to something musical, I...

The paste deteriorates over time, Lunar. This is why the CPU manufacturers recommend (or certainly used to recommend) one-time pads, and why they ship new product with a pad, not with paste. The pads are not quite as efficient (about 2 degrees less effective) but they maintain their function...

I've had a Samsung external 2.5 inch 1TB drive for quite a while now. I don't know anything about it except that it works just fine. Perhaps it is the same as the 640GB drives we are familiar with but has an extra platter.

The last combat veteran of the First World War died today. Claude Choules disliked Anzac Day, or any celebration of war, but I think most of us would honour him at this time just the same. More here...