Decommissioning old hard drives

[Handruin]

I finally broke down and purchased a new drive to replace my ageing WD 18GB expert. My question to everyone is what do you do with older hard drives that you don't particularly need any longer?

My case being that my WD 18GB drive has been in use for over 3 years in my machines and now that I'm switching it for a WD 120 GB SE, I don't really need to keep it running. I haven't decided fully to decommission it, but I'm wondering what others do in this situation. Do you all just keep a drive running until it dies, or do you draw the line at some point and put it on the shelf to collect dust?

My main reason for decommissioning this drive is that I'm worried about its reliability. For the last 2 years the drive does this strange thing where it will spin down randomly from time to time. This has happened in more than one machine with different power supplies and different OS’s. I'm certain it is not power management because it is disabled and no other drive of mine has ever spun down at random times.

 

[Mercutio]

Give it to me!

Actually, I think the best thing to do (besides giving it to me) is to drop it onto ebay. SOMEONE will find a use for it. If it was an IDE model, it'd be an easy decision - you probably know someone for whom ~20GB would be a big upgrade. With SCSI, ebay is, I think, the best possible choice for a drive you don't actively need.

I've never had a drive I didn't need. What's that like?

 

[CougTek]

Wow, a rare opportunity to nitpick on Merc! :mrgrn:

The Western Digital Expert was (is) a 7200rpm IDE drive, while the one you're thinking about (Western Digital's SCSI drive) was named the Enterprise. In fact, the Enterprise is more the name of Western Digital SCSI lineup for capacities that range from 2.1GB up to 18GB. There were the Enterprise (7200rpm) and the Enterprise 10K (guess how many rpm).

 

[Mercutio]

My bad. Thought I read "Enterrprise".

Don't you know someone with a crappy computer that needs an update?

 

[Fushigi]

In no particular order:

- Use it as the starting point for a Folding machine.
- Give it to Mercutio.
- Ebay.

Since reliability is becoming a concern, using it on a Folding-only box shouldn't matter as the only risk is the current work unit. Grab a cheap integrated mobo+Duron+128MB RAM+case for less than $200 and you're pretty well set.

What I do is re-deploy my used components into the systems I 'support': My wife's, inlaw's, and sister's PCs are all basically built from my hand-me-downs with occasional new bits as needed. My 10K II went in my wife's PC when I bought my 160SE so her PC's 22GXP could go to the inlaw's box (replacing a flaky WD drive I got free). If I upgrade my video to that Radeon 9100 I'm eyeing, my sister will likely see my wife's GeForce DDR which would be replaced by my current GeForce 2GTS. It's a bit of effort, but each upgrade for me results in improvements to two or three systems overall.

- Fushigi

 

[Handruin]

So the theme seems like, decommission, and re-deploy. Right now I have them both running so I can transfer the files over. I don't know if it is a bad idea or not, but I'm using it as a single 120 GB drive, although it works out to about 111GB after formatting.

I tried some quick tests on the new drive and I can't even hear it with the case open. The folks who are sensitive to noise would probably hate my machine since the new WD has no noise that is audible over and above my 2 altas drives.

So I think I'll re-deploy it into another machine down the road as a few have suggested.

One thing that I noticed with this drive is that the box says it is an ATA 100 drive. OK, that's fine and dandy. So I unpack the contents of the drive and I decide to use the EDIE cable that shipped with the drive. During a closer examination of the drive, the cable says ATA 66 on it, WTH? Now I don't know what my previous cable was, so I'm using the one that shipped with the drive. Do you think there is any difference? I doubt this single drive will push the ATA 66 mark, but I'm surprised to see the drive ship with an ATA 66 cable versus an ATA 100. Maybe there is no difference.

 

[SteveC]

One thing that I noticed with this drive is that the box says it is an ATA 100 drive. OK, that's fine and dandy. So I unpack the contents of the drive and I decide to use the EDIE cable that shipped with the drive. During a closer examination of the drive, the cable says ATA 66 on it, WTH? Now I don't know what my previous cable was, so I'm using the one that shipped with the drive. Do you think there is any difference? I doubt this single drive will push the ATA 66 mark, but I'm surprised to see the drive ship with an ATA 66 cable versus an ATA 100. Maybe there is no difference

There's no difference between cables for ATA 66/100/133. They're all 80-pin cables.

 

[Handruin]

I checked my BIOS and it reports the drive running at ATA 100 so it is working. I thought there might have been some differences in ATA 66 vs. ATA 100/133 cables, but apparently not.

I think I'll keep the 18GB drive running for a little while longer. The new drive doesn't get very warm sandwiched inbetween two other drives so it's no big deal. I wasn't sure if adding another drive would be too much for the power supply, but it seems to be OK so far.

I ran out of power cables. I had to do some soldering to get my fan connections into one expansion mylex pass-through.


Picture inside case

{Edited to return thread to normal width.}

 

[Mercutio]

So the theme seems like, decommission, and re-deploy.

You forgot the "give it to Mercutio" option!

 

[jtr1962]

A couple of my own ideas:

1)Buy a few inexpensive removable hard drive racks(Cyberguys has one for only $7.99), put a rack in each of your machines, and use the drive for backup/ file transfer.

2)Use it to upgrade the drive in your Linux/other experimental box.

3)Sell it on eBay. I'm frankly surprised at the high prices that old drives are going for, so this might not be a bad thing once you have no use for the drive. I was thinking of picking up an 8.4GB drive cheap(i.e. < $10) for my Linux box, but these are selling for $30 and up on eBay. Given that CompUSA occasionally has 20 or 30 GB drives for $40 with rebate, I just don't understand this why people are paying this much for old, smallish, second hand drives. But since they are, why not take advantage of it?

4)Give it to me or Mercutio. I'll be happy to take any EIDE drive over a few GB, provided the price is reasonable, meaning ~$1 per GB plus shipping(a bit more if never used, less if bad sectors or flaky operation). I just don't have any spare drives in the over 2 GB category, although I have a bunch under 540 MB that I got on eBay cheap. In fact, my total inventory of drives over 2 GB is as follows: 3.6GB(got from friend, not working), 8.4 GB, 18.2 GB, 20 GB, 40 GB, 100 GB. I purchased the last five new, and all are currently in use.

 

[Mercutio]

jtr, trust me when I say that cheap drive racks suck in ways you cannot imagine. All my lab PCs have a couple of them and I can tell you a few things about them.

1.) Metal racks are REALLY loud with a fan.
2. Plastic ones get drives REALLY hot, fan or no.
3.) Every time I open up a PC, I disable the fans on the racks. They're loud in a 1st gen Cheetah sort of way and don't seem to make a meaningful difference in cooling.
4. The cages and the docks can both fail at the interface.
5. The keys all look the same, but ARE different between vendors (you'll wear out the lock if you use the wrong key)
6. The rear interfaces all look the same, but are different between different vendors. This is an issue for me 'cause I have students who cook the drives every once in awhile putting 'em in the wrong enclosure. Hope you can remember which generic you bought!

 

[Howell]

jtr, trust me when I say that cheap drive racks suck in ways you cannot imagine. All my lab PCs have a couple of them and I can tell you a few things about them.

Yeah you shoud spend at least $10 to get a good one. All the other problems can be taken care of by buying the same rack only. My plastic Inclose racks even work with my bike lock keys.

 

[Mercutio]

Good ones are more like $20. Lian Li makes some that don't suck as much.

Again, the big problem here is that you probably won't buy all the ones you need, and if you don't buy a brand name you can remember, you'll never figure out which fly-by-night made yours.

Heck, I've got a bunch of cheapies, all "made" by "The Sunshine Group", in the same boxes, with the same product ID, that are electronically incompatible (e.g. even though a reasonable precaution was taken, my employer still got the wrong thing in the right box).

 

[Handruin]

I looked at the label date on the WD 18GB expert and it says May 1999. I leave my machine on 24x7 so this drive has a lot of use. I would feel bad giving this thing away and then having it die on someone else's time.

It might be easier to use the network for file transportation over installing hard drive between machines. The cheap integrated Duron solution sounds intriguing... How can I get a machine for less than $200 as mentioned?? That would make a nice Linux test rig for a cheap price. Hell, I can even start my NAS solution I've been trying to get into.

 

[Mercutio]

Let's see...

Going "as cheap as humanly possible", how about...

Biostar M7VKQ ($51) - integrated LAN, Video (trident blade)
$20 more would get you a basic nforce, if you swing that way.

256MB SDRAM - $25 (not from newegg)
Tbird 1.1GHz ($35), Duron 1.3GHz ($48), XP 1700 ($55)
Fan ($10ish)

Decent case (around $50)

LiteOn burner ($50 last time I looked).

That comes out to a hair over $200, or $225 with an XP1700.
That'd be a great little machine.

 

[Handruin]

Let's see...

Going "as cheap as humanly possible", how about...

Biostar M7VKQ ($51) - integrated LAN, Video (trident blade)
$20 more would get you a basic nforce, if you swing that way.

256MB SDRAM - $25 (not from newegg)
Tbird 1.1GHz ($35), Duron 1.3GHz ($48), XP 1700 ($55)
Fan ($10ish)

Decent case (around $50)

LiteOn burner ($50 last time I looked).

That comes out to a hair over $200, or $225 with an XP1700.
That'd be a great little machine.

That's cheaper than the mini-ITX I was looking at. Have you worked at all with the parts mentioned? I know it's cheap, but how stable would it be? The one review I read said:
"Good, cheap SETI farm board, if it works, especially if you have PC133 memory laying around...if not, get one of the KT266A or nForce based boards." I don't have and pc-133 laying around, so maybe it's a good point.

What about this:

Asus A7N266-VM $71.99 (nforce with video, lan, and audio)
CRUCIAL MICRON 256MB 32x64 PC 2100 DDR RAM - OEM $35.99
AMD Athlon XP 1700+/266 FSB Thoroughbred Processor CPU 1700+/ 1.47GHz -Retail $68 (this way it has HSF unless I can get one for less than $13. Also has 3 year warranty)
case antec SX830 $0.00 (already own and not in use and has 2 case fans)
ASUS CD-S520 52X CD-ROM $27.99

Total with S&H from newegg = $ 203.97

Hmm....

 

[Howell]

In about a week I can let you know how much of what you have listed I have available form my upgrades. Probably RAM, Proc & fan, maybe CDROM.

 

[Mercutio]

I used the Biostar board in a couple of super-cheap builds a couple of months ago. They were pain free but the onboard video was, well, obviously made by Trident. For your application I certainly wouldn't have any trouble recommending one.

The problem with that nforce is that it says both "nvidia" and "asus" on it. That does not speak of a high pedigree to me. I suppose someone will pipe up and say how much they love theirs.

Also, for $13, it's possible to get the HSF combo that we've been talking about in the "Speeze thread" for the last couple of months. Might be something to look into.

 

[GIANT]

One could always buy an external Firewire or USB 2.0 case that has a ATA bridge board and use older smaller ATA/IDE hard drives as backup devices.

 

[CougTek]

For the cheapo box :

• DDR SDRAM is now cheaper than SDRAM.
  
  The Asus A7N266-VM is a good board. E-Dawg can confirm, as well as a few of my customers...if they would be able to write English.
  
  Even if it's dearer, get a T'bred B and the Speeze cooler Mercutio is so in love with. Then o'c the hell out of it (although overclocking might be problematic on the A7N266-VM) and let it run F@H 24x7. This doesn't prevent you from messing with Linux as there is a (slower) F@H client for it.
  
  Wait at least until the middle of the week or until the recent price drop on both Intel's and AMD's CPU hit the street. Won't affect much the price of the 1700+, but every buck counts.
  
  Even though burners are very cheap compared to what they were just a year ago, they are still a luxury that I wouldn't recommend you to include for a 200$ system.

Lastly, let me think about it a little, I'll search like a mad to find what's the most bad ass rig you could get for 200U$. I don't think I'll find much better than a T'bred on an A7N266-VM though.

 

[Mercutio]

Once a week, newegg throws some refurb boards up on its site. I've seen $19 ECS K7S5As (thought $29 is more likely). A $20 motherboard that'll take that 1700 = a pretty decent video card, or maybe a doubling of RAM if you've got something old laying around to stick in that AGP slot.

I've also seen $80 Epox 8RDA+s...

 

[CougTek]

Sorry, can't do better. Haven't seen any mainboard with good overclocking potential at less than 75$, without integrated graphics. No O'cing for a sub-200$ rig I guess.

 

[Mercutio]

The sad thing is, the $200 rig we're discussing is still a nice improvement over the 1.2GHz machine I know Doug has...

 

[blakerwry]

i think i'd go for the duron over the T-bird... less heat.. similar performance for the price of OEM chips.

 

[timwhit]

The problem with that nforce is that it says both "nvidia" and "asus" on it. That does not speak of a high pedigree to me. I suppose someone will pipe up and say how much they love theirs.

I have used that board in 5 different builds and it is by far the most painless to install motherboard I have ever used. And the systems that I use it on are rock solid and quite fast. I would recommend it in a second.

 

[Fushigi]

ASUS CD-S520 52X CD-ROM $27.99

Check the Sunday paper for the rebate special-o-the-week; you can usually find a BusLink, I/O Magic, Cendyne, or other 48x CD-RW for about $20 after rebate. Some of those use LiteOns; I know you can tell pretty easily on Cendyne's packaging. Sure you have to wait on the rebate, but you get a burner and save a few $ in the long run.

- Fushigi

 

[Mercutio]

I/O Magic is I/O Magic. They're um... not that good. Good tray mechanism and they are quiet, but I installed a 52x model just yesterday, and using 48x rated media it took almost 5 minutes to make a data CD with the the included copy of NTI CD Maker v5.

Cendyne alternates LiteOn and Sony drives. Buslink and Verbatim are all Liteon as far as I know.

 

[CityK]

Cendyne alternates LiteOn and Sony drives

Based upon a lot of the accounts reported on the various CD hardware sites, it appears that *several* of the Sony drives are simply rebadged LiteOns themselves.

CK

 

[Fushigi]

Mercutio & CityK, thanks for the clarifications.

 

[blakerwry]

yeah sony's are liteOn drives...

btw, if you want cheap CD-Rom's I have found that you can usually get one for ~$10 after shipping if you hunt on ebay.. i bought a 16x and a 24x slot loading CD-ROM drive a month or so ago.

 

[Mercutio]

Some Sony drives *do* have a different face plate. Thus my assumption that they're different drives, since BusLink and Cendyne don't bother with different ones, mostly.

 

[Handruin]

$27.99
ASUS CD-S520 52X CD-ROM DRIVE

Speeze CPU Fan Model 5F263B1M3
$8.00 + $5.00 S&H

CRUCIAL MICRON 256MB 32x64 PC 2100 DDR RAM
$35.99

Asus A7N266-VM AA
$71.99

AMD Athlon XP 1700+ Thoroughbred /266 FSB Processor CPU 1700+/ 1.47GHz -OEM
$55.00

Total
$ 203.97

Only thing I'm missing is thermal grease. I looked up the artic silver and it was a decent price...but the shipping was the same price as the thermal grease...WTH. If I get the speeze cooloer, they charge me $5 S&H.

So it will be the same price if I get the setup with speeze cooler and OEM CPU as it is to get the retail CPU with HSF included. I can just get the retail setup and it probably comes with the thermal tape.

Coug, how do I know if the thoroughbred they are offering is the latest one? I know you gave me the different numbers, but I don't see them listed. Also, was the price cut happening today?

This is all the info they have:

"AMD Athlon XP 1700+ Thoroughbred /266 FSB Processor CPU 1700+/ 1.47GHz -OEM, AXDA1700 The Ultimate Digital Media Experience in an x86 Platform.Tailored for Microsoft® Windows® XP. Featuring QuantiSpeed Architecture for Rapid Execution of Applications. Tomorrow’s Technology Today.The Power of a Reliable Partner.
Specifications:
CPU: 1.47 GHz
Type: 1700 XP Thoroughbred
Cache: 256K
BUS: 266MHz
Micron: .13
Socket A (PGA)
OEM - CPU Only Model#: AXDA1700"

Unless the Asus is that bad of a CD-ROM, I don't know if it is worth hunting around any more for a cheaper drive.

Last thing, do you think the 300 watt PSu in my antec case is enough for this rig?

 

[Mercutio]

Good gods yes, 300W is enough.

The Speeze HSF comes with a pad of grease. It's not artic silver, but it works for an initial application.

 

[Mercutio]

Oh. And that Asus drive is noisy as all hell.

 

[Handruin]

I didn't know it came with grease. Do you think it's worth getting the speeze over the stock HSF when the retail has a longer warranty?

How about Lite On 52x Cd Rom - Model LTN-526 -RETAIL for $24 + $4 S&H?

 

[CougTek]

Oh. And that Asus drive is noisy as all hell.

I want to double the above : that Asus drive IS noisy as hell. Get a Samsung, a Lite-On or an AOpen. Even a Mitsumi 54x is better.

There're two ways I know to differente the two Thoroughbred flavors. The first is by the CPU ID, once the CPU is plugged in. CPU ID 680 is T'bred A while 681 is T'bred B.

The other moethod is by the last number of the first letter string of the third row, on the CPU label. If the last letter of that string is "A", then it's a T'bred A. And if it ends by a "B", then I'll let you figure it out. I know it's not very clear when explained like this, but I'll send you two images with small retouches of my own and hopefully, it will be clearer.

I'm pretty sure NewEgg only sells T'bred B since late January. Look at their customers' comments for this CPU.

 

[Mercutio]

Like Coug said, best of all is to wait a bit for price drops, but Lite-On doesn't make any bad drives IMO, and that Speeze HSF is way, way quieter than the stock retail model. If it's a big deal, pay $5 or whatever to extend the warranty on your OEM CPU.

Or buy the Speeze and the retail CPU. If you don't like the Speeze I'll buy it off you.

I replaced all the CPU fans in my apartment with that Speeze unit.

 

[Handruin]

I read through the comments and most people received the T-bred B version. I found a link from the comments that gives an overview of the part numbers here. I didn't know if there was a way to tell from neweggs part number if it was a B version, but you can't.

The extended warranty isn't a big deal, most processors last a long time if they survive the first fews days. The speeze cooler isn't going to break the bank so I'll probably just get it. If it is quiet enough, I may order a second one to replace my Alpha...or I could just buy a new fan to quiet it down.

 

[Handruin]

I've got another question since I'm very close to ordering this new rig. I'm going to need a second monitor for the new machine and I'm debating odering one online. Last time I did that fedEx had a field day with it. I ordered a monitor for a friend and the case which houses the glass screen was broken open. I had not seen a monitor as badly damaged as this one was.

So I was thinking about buying one from a local retail place like worstbuy or crapusa. I'm happy with my iiyama, but those are hard to find at a retail store. I was thinking something with a mitsubishi diamondtron tube or a viewsonic. I'll have to look up reviews tomorrow.

Where do you guys purchase monitors?

 

[Mercutio]

I scrounge lease-returns, man. Nothin' like a $180 21" CRT. Most computer shops will have some, if you don't have a Comdisco or something nearby. Aren't there failed .coms in MA?