The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Sam,
It would be nice if they told people that. I got the instructions direct from M$ on how to do it, and they never said a word about not recommending anything!

Perhaps you never got ripped off by them then! I bought a Compaq Laptop, with a 14" screen over 6 years ago. What I received was a motherboard for that model laptop, no 14" screen, no laptop. Ebay's rules at that time stated that you had to wait so many days before filing a complaint. I took the matter straight to my Credit Card Company, and nulled the purchase! Got banned for over 3 years for that, but I kept my money! I sent the motherboard back, return receipt requested, and they refused it. I think it's still in the closet! I never opened it when it was returned to me! It's just another way that Ebay makes money, by keeping your money as long as possible to get the maximum benefit of the interest on it! I've been more than happy with the service I've gotten elsewhere! Free shipping, mostly overnight, and no sales tax!

Russ

 

I ran my USB optical enclosure today. It exceeded 20,000Kb/s without even a stutter. Perhaps it was USB, perhaps it was electrical. I may never know. I'll be running more tests on it this week.

 

ebay policy has changed a lot in favour of the buyer now. Try and sell something on ebay, and you're almost guaranteed to get scammed, as you have no protection at all, somebody can take the item without you seeing a bean, but buy from them and you have a considerable amount of protection these days. Sellers aren't even allowed to leave negative feedback for buyers any more.

Omega: The limit for USB2 is around 30-31MB/s.

 

I gather you're suggesting I should see more? Well that certainly depends on a few factors I would think. My IDE WD5000AAKB drive averaged 20,000 - 21,500Kb/s when ran to one of those IDE to usb devices. But in my secondary system, it averages closer to 55 - 60Mb/s, ran properly to its beloved IDE channel. I Don't believe I've ever seen more than 21,000Kb/s through USB. But as I say, that depends on devices used. As well as OS/Drivers. One of the first things I noticed about windows 7 was improved transfer rates across the board. Sata, USB, etc. Xp was noticeably slower in that respect...

 

I rarely see less than 30MB/s unless the drive is seeking a large number of small files or it's very fragmented, but the limitation could be the controller you're using.

 

I had a feeling about the controllers. Optical drives rarely see that speed anyway. I'm not concerned Though Blu Ray drives easily exceed that speed. As well they should!

 

Oman7,
I gather you are talking about 64 bit, because there is no difference at all using 32 bit. 64 bit XP also had faster data transfer rates across the board.

Russ

 

You're kidding. I wouldn't think that the platform would make any difference? 32bit processing vs 64bit processing shouldn't matter for transfer rates :/

 

Oman7,
With both Win 7 and XP, 32 bit, all the drives transfer data at 93-97MB/s. With 64 bit XP-Pro, the speed is 107-112MB/s. I/O was also noticeably faster with the 64 bit than the 32 bit.

Russ
PS! Loved the Dog/Cat!

 

I'm afraid I never compared 32Bit windows 7. I require insane amounts of ram, so there was no doubt which version I needed I'd probably have 16Gb if it weren't so friggin expensive!

PS: Your welcome LOL! It was pretty funny

Enjoy the new drive creaky

 

I very rarely get transfer speeds that high, usually it's 60MB/s or less if I'm unlucky (and yes the drives are defraged ).

 

Transfer speeds also depend on the actual process. E.g. 7-zip seems to require a C:\ temp cache. So in that process, it's Reading and writing to the same drive. My download directory at present is on C:\, so reading and writing average 30 - 35MB/s simultaneously. If it's simply a transfer from say WD1001FALS to another identical drive, its around 95,000 - 105,000Kb/s. And thats with 25 - 33% fragmentation My VRaptor only transfers at an average of 70 - 75Mb/s. Which isn't that much faster than a regular Raptor Ah well. Almost time for SSD

 

Depends on where you're going to/fro.

Currently I'm testing the first WD20EARS in the eSATA enclosure, and my eSATA port is connected to a PCI S-ATA card, so there's a bottleneck there.

When I copy to it from another drive on a PCI card, I get between 32MB/s and 50MB/s.
When I copy to it from another drive on a PCIe card or on the motherboard, I get between 55MB/s and, so far the highest I've had is 83MB/s.

If the eSATA port was on the PCIe bus, I imagine I'd get even more.

 

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...tm_source=newsletter20101013&utm_medium=email

creaky, what do you think?

 

I generally like Samsung. Had a cellphone, Monitor, Blu-Ray player. The BD player I wish I didn't jump into though. BAD BAD reviews. It was on sale at walmart christmas eve last year. I thought with their name, I'd be safe. Wrong.

Never had a Hard drive of theirs. As long as WD keeps selling me working drives, I won't see the need in trying another manufacturer

Thanks for the tip creaky. I figured something like that existed, just never looked. Never had a large enough job to be bothered by it

 

Shaff: WD20EARS drives are £73-£75 now, so the Samsung is marginally more expensive. So far so good with 3 of the 8 drives I bought, I haven't tested the others yet.
The F2s seem ok, but have the standard Samsung caveat of high mid-term failure rate. Not seen much on the F4s as of yet.

 

Here's that system with the no doubt problematic PSU. I'm leaning that way even more now. This is one of the dustiest systems I've seen in a very long time. You gotta understand though, that this system was not designed for the greatest air flow. Cudos HP LOL! Nah, I loved my pavilion 7905. It introduced me to most of my knowledge. Though I've had a fascination with computers since probably the 5th grade when macs and apples were becoming common in schools, and Oregon Trail was an entertaining game.

This picture didn't even capture the worst of it. The dust on the PSU is probably an eighth of an inch in the majority of the area. No joke. And I rarely see dust collect on the wires like that either LOL! The fan probably quit, and then things REALLY heated up. I won't even open it up again tonight for fear of the dust. I won't even plug it in til I blow it out

Given the cramped nature of this case, I love my HAF932 even more now! Let this be a lesson to those who don't blow their cases out regularly(Including me). It's definitely in your best interest to blow the darn thing out!

Pavilion 8756C Millenium edition, apparently upgraded to XP.