NSK2400 build notes

[mubs]

More notes... err complaining....
The case gets so dusty. I have to clean the outside constantly. And the inside once a month. There is a lot of airflow but boy howdy, it comes at a price.
And this is off the floor on top of the desk unlike the old case. Maybe I just notice it more because it isn't on the floor.

Do you have filters for the air intakes? I use the fiberglass-wool type air conditioner air filters; they're about $10 for one that's about 12" x 18" (or larger), and are available at Home Depot type stores. I cut with scissors to the required shape/size, and shove it between the fan that's typically mounted on the metal chassis, and the plastic grill that's in front. It won't keep all the dust out, but is a lot better than not using one. You'll be amazed at how quickly the filter gets yucky

 

[Will Rickards]

Well this case has lots of air holes and the fans blow out not in.
So I thought about using black pantyhose or something like that. The case is black so I'd like to keep it from looking horrid on the outside. But I was wondering how I'd secure it in place. I was thinking maybe velcro strips would work but not sure.

My old case had a filter on the front but then it had air holes all around the case front. I used glue to seal those holes so all the air went through the filter. Worked pretty well.

The house in general is very dusty. Hard wood floors on the first floor with forced air heat probably don't help much.

 

[P5-133XL]

Turn the fans around so the blow in. Then you can place the filters on them.

 

[ddrueding]

My systems fall into two categories.

1. Opened/rebuild often enough that dust isn't an issue.
2. Never opened or thought about.

In the second case, I've found that filters are better at strangling all airflow over time than letting parts get dusty.

 

[mubs]

People usually use positive pressure to keep dust out. In my cases, I have more air blowing in than out, and the intakes are filtered.

 

[Will Rickards]

In my new house the computer isn't in my living room anymore. It is in a basement office. As such I'm really regretting building a desktop instead of getting a laptop.
This computer just sits in my basement office used once every couple weeks to pay bills and maybe once a weekend to download photos to.

Definitely going to use a laptop for my next computer.
The horsepower in this one is kind of a waste.
I'll probably convert the storage to NAS or something too so I can access the pictures/music from each computer.

 

[timwhit]

You could convert your desktop to a file server.

 

[Will Rickards]

The hard drive is giving me issues. Windows 7 kept wanting to check the C drive when starting. I always shut it down so why does it want to check it? So I started running chkdsk. backup drive checks out fine. C partition checks out fine. D partition doesn't seem to be completing and causes the computer to reboot and then say insert system disk.
This is a Samsung 1TB drive.
I have a full backup so no data worries I hope. Hopefully there is no corruption.

I'm running the samsung diagnostics on it now but I think it is out of warranty.

So I'm more seriously considering what to do.
Ideally I think I want to get my 1TB of storage out on the network so the other computers can access it. But I want it backed up too. I'll have a couple laptops as the clients on the network. Also have a printer I'd like to get on the network.

 

[ddrueding]

WHS sounds like a good idea in your situation. Gets your resources onto the network, allows you to add the redundancy you are after, and gives you an excuse to stick an SSD in your workstation.

 

[Mercutio]

Samsung drives have a 3 year warranty. That'd be a pretty old 1TB drive to be out of warranty already.

 

[Will Rickards]

Well looking up above it appears I bought them around 12/2007. So maybe they are still under warranty. Though for some reason I thought they expired in June last year.

 

[Will Rickards]

Samsung ESTool 3.00g says there is no problem with them.
Running chkdsk in safe mode says no problem.
But running chkdsk in windows causes it to reboot and when rebooting the intel AHCI bios can't see my boot drive anymore, so it says no boot drive. Cold booting resolves the issue. I haven't witnessed the actual reboot, as I can't sit there for 4 hours while it checks the disk.

 

[LunarMist]

Do you need to recover the data? If not, give it a heavy whack or other means of final destruction and just move on. I recall Cougtek had a special technique for handling defective equipment.

 

[Mercutio]

Does the behavior stop if you run the drive out of AHCI mode?

 

[Fushigi]

Do you need to recover the data? If not, give it a heavy whack or other means of final destruction and just move on. I recall Cougtek had a special technique for handling defective equipment.

It's called a "gravity reset". :aok:

 

[Will Rickards]

The ESTool needs to be run out of AHCI mode, so it test fine there.
I assume windows 7 won't boot if I take it out of AHCI mode though.
So I can't really test that.

It sounds like a weird hard drive electronics failure to me.
I'm just ordering a replacement and not worrying about the warranty.

 

[Mercutio]

Try it anyway. Win7 will do a startup repair if it doesn't start right, and if it works OK without AHCI then it may very well be that the drive is not the issue.

 

[Will Rickards]

If the drive isn't the issue it would have to be the controller drivers. I was running the stock MS drivers initially. Issue occurred under those. Then I tried installing the intel storage manager drivers. Issue occurred under those as well.

The only other thing I can think is an actual controller failure.
But the AHCI bios when it boots sees the other drives (cd and another samsung 1TB), it just doesn't detect the first hard drive.

But I'll try it tonight anyway, can't lose much.

 

[Will Rickards]

Tried it not in AHCI mode. Windows 7 installed new drivers for the controllers, asked me to reboot. I rebooted, ran the chkdsk in admin mode again. This time I sort of waited with it by playing flash games for a few hours. It completed without error.

So I don't know what the issue is, but I'm replacing it with a 1TB Samsung HS103SJ.
I'm about to start the testing via samsung's ESTool on that drive before I restore the backup to it.

 

[Will Rickards]

First HS103SJ I got had a bad sector. RMA'd back to newegg (at my cost for shipping - grumble). Replacement tested fine and is in use. But the sporadic C drive chkdsk runs at startup have not gone away. I'm going to swap the data cable, might reinstall windows 7.

 

[Will Rickards]

Weird problem popped up with my Dell 2001FP monitor. The colors were off. White text had a redish tint. Tried messing with the color settings. Tried a different cable as it was using the analog connection. No difference. Tried a different computer as the video source, same problem.
Took it to work and tried the DVI connection and it looks fine after I adjust the colors.
So it looks like I'll have to figure out how to get that DVI connection board I bought long ago for the onboard intel graphics to fit properly in the case. It just wouldn't sit properly before. I'll probably just cut the bottom of the metal plate to make it fit.

 

[Will Rickards]

And the new drive does not exhibit the random reboot when running chkdsk on the D partition in AHCI mode. It completes without error.

 

[Will Rickards]

Well I got the DVI card in but it was the top part (where the screw goes) that was the problem. Bend was too low. So I bent it to make it fit but now it isn't secured very well. It works.

Unfortunately the monitor is not. Worked for a few weeks on the DVI port, now it is shutting off every few minutes. And the power button no longer shuts it off at all. I can pull the power plug and put it back in and it comes back for a few minutes.

It was crazy because it first shut off when I plugged my usb SD card reader in. And then came back when I took it out. And then turned off when I plugged it back in. But it has since done it with nothing attached.

I'm going to hook it up to another computer and check all the cables and such.
But I have low expectations for it working.

So now I need some recommendations for a decent monitor. I'll be doing photography touch-ups on it so picture quality is important.

 

[Will Rickards]

Considering 3TB drives anyone know if the gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R supports them?
I'm guessing not?

 

[Mercutio]

If you're using Windows 7 and the drives are set up as GPT disks, they should show up and be usable. If for some reason you format them on an XP machine you're going to wind up with weirdness.

 

[Will Rickards]

Any recommendations on the drives that are out there for 3TB or greater?
I'm looking to buy three, one for data, one for the backup destination and one to leave on the shelf as a hot spare.
So I see Toshiba DT01ACA300, Seagate barracuda 7200.14 ST3000DM001, and Western Digital Green WD25EZRX basically at the low end of price range around $130.
Does stepping up in price get me anything?
4TB doesn't look better at price per GB. Any other reason to step up to 4TB?

 

[Will Rickards]

There are also the Hitachi 7K4000 models but they seem like double the price. What's the deal with that?

 

[Mercutio]

I've been buying Barracuda 7200.14 3TB drives. They're well behaved and reasonably fast. I have about 30 of them and in the last year I've had to replace two. That's more than I'd like but not entirely unexpected based on past experiences with Seagate.

3TB models dip to $110 on Amazon/Newegg if you're tracking them. 4TB units have yet to drop below $140. The bigger drives are tough to justify but of course if density is important to you, you'll be paying a little extra for it.

 

[Will Rickards]

I asked amazon to match the gold box price from yesterday for the 7200.14 drive of 109.99 and they did. So I got three for that price.
Here's hoping I don't have to RMA any of them for DOA.

 

[timwhit]

At least you'll have a spare if you do.

 

[Will Rickards]

Got the drives. The first two formatted fine, though it takes many hours. For the backup drive I just copied the backup image to the new volume. Then removed the backup drive and replaced with the new drive and then changed the drive letter in disk management. No problems. Then I went to deal with the data drive. I have an SSD as the boot drive but store most of the data on the D drive. I tried via acronis 2010 to clone it but it didn't like the bigger drive and kept trying to make a 2GB partition. So I downloaded Macrium Reflect and tried cloning with that. But it cloned the volume directly, making a 1TB volume with a MBR instead of GPT partition table with one large 2.7TB volume. So then I imaged with Macrium and then restored from the image. This worked. I still have to swap the drive tonight. Here's hoping it goes well.

 

[Mercutio]

The "right" way to do that with Acronis would have been to Add a New Disk through the utilities screen and confirm that you wanted a GPT disk ahead of time.

 

[Will Rickards]

Well because I have programdata/profiles on D: I had some sort of issue when I swapped the drives and tried to logon. Error indicated logon service was unable to logon. I booted into safe mode and ran disk management and changed the drive letter to D: from J:. Still no go. I had to follow some instructions I found online to use regedit and find the profile in the profilelist and swap the .bak version with the non .bak version. Then I could logon fine.

 

[Will Rickards]

Wow almost 8 years now with this system. Still low usage mostly for finances / photo work. I wonder if it will support windows 10.
Upgrade plans are something like a surface pro 3 or one of those high resolution apple laptops. Someday. Something else always seems to take the free cash.

 

[CougTek]

Upgrade plans are something like a surface pro 3 or one of those high resolution apple laptops. Someday. Something else always seems to take the free cash.

The Surface 4 Pro will almost certainly be out by the time Windows 10 is launched (or the two will happen simultaneously). It will feature a much improved battery life.

Apple, really?

 

[ddrueding]

Apple laptops have some sexy hardware, and if you are looking for higher resolution screens in lower-priced units you could squint and make a value argument. They format and take Win8.1 just fine.

 

[Mercutio]

I'd be willing to agree that the MBP has solid specs. The nice screen and moderately not-sucky GPU sort of make up for the keyboard, trackpad, lack of service and upgrade options (max of 16GB RAM? Really?) and uncomfortable palm rest. I'll accept the value proposition there, even if I wouldn't buy or recommend one. I know web developers love them, but I think the main argument in their arsenal is "We have to check our code on OSX/Safari and that is hard to run in a VM."

The Air, on the other hand, is outclassed in every way by the Surface Pro 3. It's lighter, has a better screen and, if no more upgrade or service options, at least the ability to configure with a 500GB drive.

 

[Will Rickards]

Mostly I want the large high res screen. The surface pro is nice but small.

 

[timwhit]

OSX is at least real Unix and has a real terminal. About 90% of my development practice is on MBPs, I am one of the few holdouts, but I run Xubuntu on a Dell Precision laptop. The keyboard is awful on MBPs, otherwise I would probably switch and install Linux on there.

I'd like to get one of these: https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-laptop

 

[ddrueding]

OSX is at least real Unix and has a real terminal. About 90% of my development practice is on MBPs, I am one of the few holdouts, but I run Xubuntu on a Dell Precision laptop. The keyboard is awful on MBPs, otherwise I would probably switch and install Linux on there.

I'd like to get one of these: https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-laptop

That is very respectable and offers a "4k" (3840x2160) screen. I'll be considering one of those when I sell the W540. Thanks for the link!