COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[PanBiker]

One thing you could do please is to explain why SSD are better than HDD. I think I know but would like confirmation.

Similar to the difference between an electromechanical relay and a transistor, no moving parts so a lot faster.

They are manufactured to interface onto existing drive buses such as SATA or you can get them to plug into the PCI slots and similar.

Not sure how they handle the possibility of redundant sectors or or the equivalent or whether that's even an issue with solid state. Been out of the loop too long.

[Pluggy]

More or less what Ian said, There is some deep magic with solid state drives which swap stuff around to reduce the number of erase/write cycles which shortens the life of the drive and slows the process down (wear levelling). It shouldn't be an issue with good quality modern SSDs with a reasonable amount of free space on them. If it were me I'd leave the data drive as a HDD an just change the drive the operating system lives on. The difference in performance will be small and I'm still of the opinion that old school HDD's offer better long term reliability. I have an SSD for the operating system and a seperate HDD on my own system. It flies even if it is a lesser machine than the FM3. I'll email you a price and specs.

[PanBiker]

More or less what Ian said, There is some deep magic with solid state drives which swap stuff around to reduce the number of erase/write cycles which shortens the life of the drive and slows the process down (wear levelling).

Similar to sector swapping on SCSI arrays. Interesting that you include deep magic in your reply, I once had a high level hard disk engineer use similar terminology, (dark magic) when asking about a particular problem I was having with the functionality of various makes of drives on an IDE bus. Too complex to explain succinctly, (if you don't actually need to know don't ask).

[Pluggy]

Borrowed from CS Lewis....... Chronicles of Narnia.

[chinatyke]

Yes China that's exactly where I was on 1703 everything up-to-date then on the 19 Nov came the 'configuring' and I was suckered into this missed update. Version 1709. Have a look in your > settings.> updates, but don't go any further or you'll never talk to me again.

I was offered the update to Version 1709 yesterday so I had to try it. It was like when you see a notice 'Wet paint - do not touch' - I thought about your warning but still went ahead. I started at 1am and left it running whilst I watched a movie. The movie was boring and at 3.30am I woke up and the new version was installed, so it took <2.5 hours. I use a laptop with a monitor attached with an HDMI lead. My laptop had the usual rock solid display but the monitor was flickering like crazy. No matter what I did, such as changing the monitor resolution and refresh rates, I couldn't get a stable display. Removing the HDMI lead gave a steady 'No signal' display. I switched everything off and left it until this morning. 7 hours later I started up from cold. Again the laptop display was steady but not the monitor. Like you, P, I went back to the previous version which was quickly installed and runs perfectly.
Why would Microsoft release such a buggy version? The message I got was 'Thank you for trying this version' when I opted to restore the previous version.
The good news is that I've now tried out the recovery option <Go back to a previous version> on Windows 10 and it restored things in a few minutes. Almost as good as my old Mac, which has been consigned to the scrap heap, and the old Windows Vista Ultimate which restored in 12 minutes.

[Stanley]

Pluggy, I can see the logic in your options in the email and agree with you, the most sensible one is to replace the OS disk only and 1Tb should be ample. I am using less that 3% of the existing 2Tb HDD. with that in mind, would a smaller SSD be a saving?
Kev, very pleased to hear FM2 is behaving itself.
Pluggy is right about the FM3, it is fast and will be a touch faster with the OS on SSD. Any other changes would be silly. I can't tell you how fast it is, the lad got it right first time. To give you an example, if you put JPG into the image search it takes less that a minute to load about 25,000 thumbnails.... Ordinary searches are only slowed down by the fact it searches both drives and with SSD for the OS it will speed up data search as well.
New versions taking that amount of time reminds me of my Windows days! I would never dream of going back.......

[PanBiker]

1Tb? if you are using a 2Tb now and only using 3% of it it will still only be 6%. Over egging the pudding I would say. Solid State drives are expensive and buying a big one that will have over 90% free space is madness. Most of my Widows boxes have less than 100Gb drives for the OS and I reckon that is overkill. I don't know what size data drives you have but you could add the 2Tb into the data stack (maybe as a mirror to build in redundancy if you don't already have any). Then put a sensibly sized (and considerably cheaper) SSD to support the OS. That kind of model is common practice in server type roles to optimise speed and protect data.

Does your machine have RAID capabilities for the data storage?

[Pluggy]

I wasn't sure how much of his present storage Stanley was using. I've quoted for a 250MB & a 500MB. Bear in mind they don't like being run at close to their capacity. (The wear levelling goes into overtime and shortens the life of the drive). I think that Stanleys machine does have RAID capabilities but its not a route I'd go down. The increased speed and possible reliability are outweighed by the increased complexity when something goes wrong - in my opinion. (Been there, done that, got the burns to show for it..... )

[PanBiker]

Depends on your personal experience I would say. Raid has got me out of the doo doo on more than one occasion so always a consideration. I had it two machines back on my own machine and that was one which didn't end well as the controller failed. On the whole though when involved in more expensive circles the good outweighed the bad. I would think a 250Gb primary drive would be plenty big enough though, that would equate to no more than 25% of the drives capacity in use supporting the OS, hardly close to capacity.

[Pluggy]

I'd agree. Mine is running about 50% without any signs of stress. Its been in since early this year. Yep the controller went down on the SCSI RAID. Getting the stuff back from the drives was a non starter, couldn't get a compatible controller, even the specialist recovery guys were throwing up their hands in horror... Slummed it with a less than pristine backup in the end.

[Tripps]

I'd agree. Mine is running about 50% without any signs of stress. Its been in since early this year. Yep the controller went down on the SCSI RAID. Getting the stuff back from the drives was a non starter, couldn't get a compatible controller, even the specialist recovery guys were throwing up their hands in horror... Slummed it with a less than pristine backup in the end.

Anyone else getting a feeling of total inadequacy here?

[Pluggy]

If I had my time over, knowing what I know now, would I do the same again?

I doubt it......

[Tizer]

Anyone else getting a feeling of total inadequacy here?

It's almost as bad as trying to understand cricket!

[Stanley]

Ian, I've always gone for overkill and never regretted it. I think I once used RAID on the FM1 that Doc built and that went badly so I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. I've settled with Pluggy and taken his advice, he is ordering a smaller SSD for the disk that handles the OS and programmes. We'll leave the separate data disk alone (a good example of the advantages of having a separate drive for data.... I seem to remember being told more than once that that was overkill as well!) I shall get Pluggy to do a complete format on the 2Tb drive that comes out and it will be a spare if ever the data disk gives trouble. Bottom line will be that a reasonable outlay will make a fast box even faster.
It just struck me that having two separate external HDD for data backup is 'overkill' as well but one of these days I'll be glad I did it. Actually it's happened once already. One of the drives died on me so I used the other. Turned out that it was only the voltage reduction plug in the feed so that was all right but the principle of multiple redundancy was correct.

[Big Kev]

Why not just use the 'other' 2TB drive for internal backups of the othrr data drive. You could just schedule it then, be a lot quicker than an external drive.

[PanBiker]

I don't know what size data drives you have but you could add the 2Tb into the data stack (maybe as a mirror to build in redundancy if you don't already have any).

Great minds think alike Kev, but maybe my terminology was misunderstood. You might as well use it in the machine than stick it in a drawer doing nothing, it hasn't done a lot so far in it's life at 3% usage.

Glad you have seen the light on your primary drive. Massive overkill here is no advantage at all, it's just wasted space you are paying for unless you partition the drive and have use for the extra storage.

[Stanley]

Kev, no problems about speed backing up to external drives, it only takes a minute or two. My backup strategy is to have the data in a location entirely removed from my box, doing it internally wouldn't achieve that.
Ian, I suppose having two external drives is overkill as well.... (I like big tower cases as well.....)
As for seeing the light, I looked at the options and asked questions. I now have a route forward and Pluggy and I will see to it. It will be a good time to backup data and clean the inside of the box as well.

[Pluggy]

Probably going to be midweek Stanley. Its been dispatched but its coming from Belgium - which I didn't catch onto when I ordered it.

[Tizer]

I hope it understands Stanley's English!

[Stanley]

No worries Tiz.
Pluggy, no push. Have a word with me when you are ready and I'll make sure I have everything opened up and ready for you.

[Pluggy]

Just to keep you guessing Stanley, the SSD arrived late last night (about 8:30) So I could do it today.

[Stanley]

Pluggy rang and I shall do my overkill backup this morning and tomorrow I shall open the box, clean it out and be ready for His Majesty at 10:00!

[Stanley]

Backup done with no problems. Once more I am struck by the fact that while they are both fast, the Seagate drive is faster than the Samsung.....
Later..... Pluggy has been and worked his deep magic. All my favourite programmes have been re-installed and the icons in the same place as before. Very comforting for an old dinosaur. The new drive lives up to its promise in that start up is much speeded up and the influence of the speed increase is showing up in other places as well. We have left the old hard drive in place in the case, if ever there was the need the leads can simply be swapped from the new drive to the old to resume service. I am extremely pleased..... We are very lucky to have Pluggy on the manor! I would have struggled with some of the more esoteric adjustments.

[Stanley]

One long standing problem still remains. The inability of my card reader to read the card out of Mrs Nikon. I have tried everything including re-formatting in the camera but failed miserably so I have decided the problem is most likely a bum card so I have ordered a new one and will see if this cures my woes. If not I will be calling for help from Kev! (Isn't OG wonderful.....)
I've checked and the card from the Powershot is still fine. Almost certainly a bum card in the Nikon, it was in the camera when I bought it secondhand......

[Big Kev]