So I've read. However, I don't believe that would be the explanation
this time. For one thing, I've had a lot of experience cleaning delicate
precision optics to far higher standards than this tape drive likely ever
saw. I used to be a laser technician in a Type 10 clean room.
Doesnt mean a thing as far as being able to work out where
the EOT sensor is in that particular drive is concerned.
And if you did manage to clean it properly, likely its just failed
and it isnt hard to replace it if you know what you are doing.
Completely trivial to measure if its failed or is just dirty.
You dont have a point, just mindless one eyed pig ignorant bigotry.
is that there is a better world possible,
if we would only work towards it.
We've already done that, using redundancy where the cost is warranted.
Its never going to be possible to never have any
failures at all. The ony viable approach is redundancy
to handle failures when they inevitably occur.
I'm sure there is a fascinating reason that you are such a Microsoft fancier.
Just another of your rather pathetic little fantasys.
All I have ever said is that MS products are clearly
usable and if you dont agree, no one is holding a gun to
your head and forcing you to use anything you dont like.
I would love to hear how you arrived in that frame of mind.
Oh, just using and developing computer systems
since before you were born. Gates too.
About $10 a port and a PCI slot from Outpost.com. Then
the caddy system is $50 each (for caddies that take parallel
ATA drives). So, do I want to put money into keeping my
legacy drives removable, or cut my losses and go to SATA?
I dont think there is any real point in
removable drives in your situation, as I said.
I think its time to shift to SATA.
I think its time to realise that there isnt any real
point in removable drives in your situation and
that you are just furiously living in the past on that.
So, what do I do with all these parallel drives I have?
Throw them at the cat ?
Or put them in external USB2/firewire cases if you insist
on keeping them. Doesnt make any sense with the small
ones tho. Makes a lot more sense to get another very large
drive in an external USB2/firewire case if you really must
have a removable drive to say put in the fireproof safe.
But even that is distinctly arguable value when it makes a
lot more sense to write multiple DVDs for the offsite backup
of stuff thats completely irreplaceable like the photos. Gives
much more protection than the safe can ever give.
Here is my plan at the moment. I can put a
few boot OSes on my 120 Gig WD SATA drive
Yes, thats generally the best way to do multiple OSs.
that is housed in a removable SATA drive bay.
But there isnt any real point in having that drive removable.
I can mount two 80-Gig parallel drives to the internal bays.
I can use my old IDE removable drive caddy to access my
60-Gig drive, two 30-Gig drives and one 20-Gig drives.
Pointless bothering with all those old small drives.
They have passed their useby date.
My CD burner and DVD ROM drives will also fit in my computer.
And if they didnt, the only thing that makes any sense is a better case.
Within a few months I can replace my CD burner
and DVD-ROM drives with an 8x DVD combo burner.
Yep.
I would like to replace the IDE removable caddy with another SATA caddy.
Cant see the point in one of those, let alone two.
I'm wondering what the capabilities of the onboard SATA and RAID
controllers are? I have two SATA ports on my FIC AU-13 motherboard.
I've never configured a RAID controller, though I have a general idea
what the differences are between the different levels of RAID.
The short story is that there isnt really any point in RAID
with personal desktop systems unless money is no object
and you only care about convenience, in which case a full
hotswap RAID5 system is the only way to go, at a higher
price than the personal desktop system that its being used on.
Something less than that is generally all thats really required,
particularly fully automatic backups with something like V2i
Protector with a bit more work required on a hard drive failure.
Few personal desktop system really need the very high
uptimes that RAID5 provides, at a very significant cost.
Shouldn't I be able to daisy-chain my SATA drives?
Nope, SATA is basically one drive per cable.
I have two SATA ports, but how many SATA
drives could I have attached to them?
Basically 2.
And, I understand that some levels of RAID require identical hard drives,
Not really.
though I don't remember exactly which ones do (RAID 5,
I'm pretty sure, but I'm not sure whether 1+0 or 0+1 does).
Its more complicated than that, but the detail doesnt really
matter when RAID isnt really viable for personal desktop systems.
I regret that I can no longer hold out any hope for my old FIC AZ-11
motherboard. It's time to pull the plug. My hopes were raised when I
realized that my old 30-Gig Seagate would only work in that machine,
Dont believe it.
but now I find that the system cannot reliably access the DVD-ROM
drive. It had been chewing up clusters on my hard drives when I
ordered my new motherboard. BTW, it doesn't work any better
now that I've removed the IDE removable bay from it.
It could be something as basic as lumpy capacitors on that
motherboard. Those are the usually black or blue plastic
coated posts sticking up from the motherboard vertically.
If they look lumpy or have leaked, its likely the problem.
I'm looking for a cheap motherboard that can
support my Duron 800 and PC133 memory.
What is the point ?
I assume those chips are still good.
You cant assume that with the cpu.
Plenty have for years now. They've all got egg on their faces now.
There may be a pitched battle coming,
Nope, Its a fart in the bath as far as MS concerned.
but I really don't see Linux going any direction but up.
Sure, but it will always be a fart in the bath as far as MS is concerned.
When even the might of IBM got done like a dinner,
Linux doesnt have a hope in hell of damaging MS.
