The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

I only said that because you've called it a gamestar in all your previous posts. Was just a correction for the sake of clarity.

 

mine is just taking up a sata slot, I could use for an SSD/HDD. Why I havent gotten an external is beyond me. Can you get external caddies for them? Will it still be fine at burning 360 games?

 

edit: yep, new page bug, back on full form. :/

 

Sam,

My Bad! I'll just have to blame senility! Trouble is, I always forget what I'm blaming it for! {

Russ

 

Well modding your own unit to taste is a bit different than comparing manufacturers ;P

 

I've had problems with LG DVD-RW drives but not as bad as LiteOn has got and LiteOn's services is horrible. I've had excellent luck though with LG BD-RE drive's and they are one of two Blu-Ray drives to use since they can burn at faster speeds then the media is rated for. I use to be a LiteOn fan which were my drive(s) of choice but now I'm buying Pioneer or ASUS which is actually Pioneer. Pioneer is by far the best ROM drive out there especially when it comes to Blu-Ray although they aren't typically as pretty as LG's.

It is much cheaper to distribute software/data on optical media and since I support many others I still use such media. Since I don't download movies and music, I actually buy or rent the stuff, I backup all of my media to optical discs, what a concept! LOL

 

It's definately not cost effective! Better to just find a quality unit and buy that plus then you still have a warranty.

If you are going to bring back to life a dead PS than it is a different story.

We use to replace caps and what not in the old days with Audio gear as it was cost effective and would really make a noticable difference but with a computer PS I'd just wait for it to fail before micky-mousing around. You know Russ though! LOL

 

I fear one ore more quitting on me. If one ore more were to quit, I'd feel Like I were caught with my pants down LOL!!!

 

For you Kevin 3 would have to quit all at once but you would still be well covered... LOL

 

Estuansis,

I only modded my PSU by installing the MOV because I had the part, and it was out of warranty. I bought it used, and after several months, one of the Caps for the 12v voltage regulator started to go bad, so I replaced all of them with Solid ones, as I couldn't see replacing just one because it's almost as much work as doing them all. It was still a well made decent quality PSU before I made any Mods to it, and it was at least 3 years old then.

Russ

 

it really isnt much cheaper at all. Nothing touches the cost per gb that a 2TB drive offers

 

It's far more expensive to use optical media than mechanical storage, not just in discs but also in physical space. Besides, I much prefer on-demand storage, not combing through hundreds of discs, but meh, we've had this debate before. Some of us live in the 21st century, some in the 20th, each to their own

 

So it would be better to buy hard drives and flash cards to distrubute 700MB of data to friends and people you're servicing? Really, I don't think so and that is the context that I used.

And as you well know through our discussions it is not as safe to keep things on HDD's for storage as it is on optical. Unless you're a dolt that doesn't know how to handle media, which is pretty common these days.

 

Actually the reverse is true, with a little common sense applied. With a redundant set of physically separated, grid-isolated drives, I'm actually in better stead for data security than optical media, which can easily get scratched, or get lost.
To distribute data to friends and people, I'd use the internet. Very rarely would I need to distribute data larger than a gigabyte or so, which is only a few hours uploading time on a standard home connection. No need to worry about the friend losing or damaging the disc this way, either.

 

haha exactly.

 

Most people I deal with are not Download junky kids #1, #2 they like to have a disc they can store and fall back on. In another light you wouldn't want to back up your PC's personal data and place it on the internet for all to get at, even though there are some foolish enough to do so.

Having multiple drives makes you safer then having one but still not as safe as having optical backups, hard drives are more problematic. I use hdd's for daily use and they are best for that but not permanent backup. I almost never have a disc I can't read or use to recover from and if it is critical then I have a second backup disc. If you are lazy and want to take the cheap route HDD's are the path for you as permanent backup but that doesn't make it the smart road to take.

 

That just sounds like 'I don't have as much data as you do'. If you only have 50GB or so of data to store then sure, optical media is better. For anyone storing large quantities of media though, it's different. I can't honestly believe you think having physical redundant backups of hard disks using different models and leaving them isolated from power is more unreliable than fragile optical media.

 

You've had bad luck with optical media haven't you sam I do agree to some extent that HDD's are the way to go. I have multiple TB's of data, so HDD's are certainly the logical method to employ.
However, I do use optical discs for certain processes DVDs? Not so much anymore. BD's though are still logical for my personal uses. Provided they burn well, I store them very well. And I treat them like babies. I sure hope that TY Bd's come back though. Can't seem to find them in the states at the moment :S Verbatims will have to do at the moment! Which makes my small stock pile priceless!

 

Nope, never had any problems with destroyed discs when data is important, but I recognise the risks from other people's misfortunes and ignorance. If you're comparing one hard disk in a machine not backed up, versus a loose CD in a bag, one might lose data because someone's been stupid, the other one almost definitely will lose data. Put some thought into backing up your data on HDDs though (and not with nonsense software-RAID solutions) and it's a very viable replacement for optical media. To achieve the same level of data security with optical media you'd need to burn each disc twice with different brands of DVDs.
£13.55 gets me 10 25GB BD-Rs, therefore costing £54.20 per terabyte.
My latest two 2TB drives cost me £53.99 each, therefore costing £27.00 per terabyte.
Backups need not enter the equation because for data redundancy, both methods require two of each, so the numbers are the same. For very small amounts of data optical media makes sense (but realistically, you'd just keep it on your hard disk and use a USB stick to transfer it to someone else's machine, if they want discs, then that's at odds with almost everyone I've spoken to, including those who aren't tech-literate), but for any reasonable amount of data, once you enter the several hundreds of gigabytes, dozens of bluray discs versus two mechanical drives, or a small array of mechanical drives versus thousands of recordable discs. Recordable media has had its day for those who actually understand technology. The only people left using it are those who don't realise there are better alternatives.

 

I hope you're touching wood right now LOL!

Are there any Gigabyte boards that support the 3Tb drives, without a controller card yet?

EDIT- Nevermind. Gigabytes Badboy AM3+ board supports the 3Tb drives I may just upgrade to that badboy in the near future. Though only 6 ports is somewhat a joke!

I'm sure their future ATX boards will have 8 or more Yup, definitely won't be touching the micro atx board. My GPU would cover 2 of the precious sata ports! I can't believe they did that!