O.T. Dell 780 Problem

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , R.Wieser
writes:
John Gilliver,

Could you tell me where you got that CD image of macrium (reflect ?)
from ?

From what I remember, I didn't download it, but made it from within the
(Windows) Macrium software; "make boot CD" (or similar wording) is one
of the menu options.

I just visited the macrium website, but it looks like all I can
download is
a web-installer. Which is something I rather detest, as I like to have
offline installable versions of the software I'm using.

Also, which version of it are you using (current downloadable version
is 7)
?
I'm using 5, because it works for me; however, see Paul's post. The bits
that go with later versions may make USB3 work, though I'm not sure if
that is Macrium itself or the supplementary bits, so they _might_ work
with 5. However, if starting anew, I'd not go for less than 6. 7
apparently has some arguably unnecessary processes (services?) that
earlier versions don't.

Someone provided feedback that Version 7 is fixed now.

The boot CD can use one of four different WinPE versions,
and I use one of the two latest versions in order to
get USB3 support from the emergency boot CD.

Between 5,6, and 7, there might be some differences in
driver preparation for the emergency CD. As the latest
CDs I've got, networking "just seems to work". Whereas
some earlier version of Macrium, there was some whining
about adding the drivers manually.

I won't be providing the link to the version 6 downloader
anymore, for as long as people are telling me 7 is fixed
and doesn't waste CPU cycles for one of its background
services.

Paul

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Paul
writes:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message ,
Mark Twain writes:
I have spare HD's but you bring up a point.

If your HD dies, even if you have a spare HD - you won't be able to
restore a working system, unless:
[snip]

His setup includes a cloned OS on the backup drive.
Amongst other things.
[]
Ah, I hadn't realised he was cloning - I thought he was just imaging.
(Of course, for a laptop, cloning is only valid if it's to a 2.5" drive!)

Cloning is only done the one time, to "prepare" the backup drive.
Rather than being a pure backup partition, there's a partition
for the OS (a small one) and a partition for backups.

The cloned OS makes the drive suitable for emergency usage
as a C: drive, if the internal one were to break.

The backup pattern is a normal one, of backing up the internal
disk at some interval, to the backup partition on the external.

Paul

I think of all of them I'd choose the gold HD
because it was designed for servers.

How does the Seagate compare with the Gold WD?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...1Z4-0002-002V0

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16822148834


I found this link from when we were looking
at cases before I picked Star Tech. What do
you think?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16817182247

or

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...9SIA6V84AV8386

Robert





Robert

It amazes me that there isn't much out there,
whereas I thought there would be given all the
computers manufactured over the years and continue
to be manufactured.

I saw a show recently on You Tube where the city
had an ordinance prohibiting throwing away any
electronic device, so as a consequence there are
tons of computers everywhere for the taking.

That would be ideal for setting up a used parts
inventory of hard to find cards, power supply's
etc. I saw one where it had two processors with
fans on the same motherboard. I've never seen
that before?

Pretty cool.

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
I think of all of them I'd choose the gold HD
because it was designed for servers.

How does the Seagate compare with the Gold WD?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...1Z4-0002-002V0

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16822148834


I found this link from when we were looking
at cases before I picked Star Tech. What do
you think?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16817182247

or

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...9SIA6V84AV8386

Robert

Yeah, the Rosewill RX358 is probably OK. You can see in the manual
how the wire is a bit floppy and long, but you can probably
assemble this without pinching the wire. The manual was written
in 2007, so the box has likely been changed since then. It
doesn't have any rubber feet, similar to the other case.

https://www.rosewill.com/media/downl...nual-RX358.pdf

When I need a no-skid surface, I use pieces cut from old bicycle
inner tubes. So I don't have to buy stick-on feet for small
stuff. For example, my external DVD burner rests on two strips
of inner tube, and that resists flying off the table.

*******

The issue with the ST2000DM001 Seagate is whether it's new stock.
The 667GB platters would be just fine if it was. I don't really
want any part or SMR drives, as I don't feel consumers should
be saddled with them.

The most likely drive that will ship is ST2000DM006. Which is
made in a 3 platter and 2 platter version, with the same SKU.
You're safe as long as it's not one platter. The device dimensions
are 1" high. A two platter setup would fit in a 0.8" high drive,
as would a 1 platter 2TB SMR, if they wanted to cheat. The 64MB
cache is not practical for SMR, so you're probably not getting
SMR from this product. They cheat on many things, but it's
not normal for them to change the cache RAM in mid-production.

https://www.seagate.com/www-content/...100804187c.pdf

I would only purchase the WDC Gold, if I absolutely didn't trust
Seagate to be honest. If I thought the Seagate DM006 had changed
to SMR, I'd be buying something else.

The Seagate drives with the 1TB per platter, they were the
first Seagates I'd got since the 500GB fiasco. Where I
had around five of the Seagate 500GB drives (for usage as boot drives),
all start throwing reallocated. And also, the 500GB drives
had the "flaky feeling", where the slower half of the drive
would drop to 30MB/sec read rates. Sometimes writing the 500GB
drive from end to end ("Clean all") would perk the drive
up again. Well, the Seagate with the 1TB platter didn't
behave like that at all. It behaved like a normal hard
drive. I would hate for Seagate to slip back into another
"flaky" era.

With the WDC Gold, you could get the funny noise from the
motor on spindown. And it could have the head parking thing,
which I hate. WDC didn't always do that, and their older
drives before the current era, kept spinning. I have 2TB
and 3TB older WDC stock which have proper table manners.

I want my drives to be usable for OS booting, if some other
drive wears out. I don't want a pile of SMR which can't
be used for anything except linear Macrium backup patterns.
Maybe that's why Seagate likes the idea of SMR, so it
will complicate drive management in the computer room.

You *could* use SMR for a boot drive. But I cannot
see why day to day usage would not be pure misery.
Combine one of those SMR drives with Windows 10 (which
is always scanning stuff), your machine would be
constantly frozen.

Paul

In message , Paul
writes:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Paul
writes:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message ,
Mark Twain writes:
I have spare HD's but you bring up a point.

If your HD dies, even if you have a spare HD - you won't be able to
restore a working system, unless:
[snip]

His setup includes a cloned OS on the backup drive.
Amongst other things.
[]
Ah, I hadn't realised he was cloning - I thought he was just imaging.
(Of course, for a laptop, cloning is only valid if it's to a 2.5"
drive!)

Cloning is only done the one time, to "prepare" the backup drive.
Rather than being a pure backup partition, there's a partition
for the OS (a small one) and a partition for backups.

The cloned OS makes the drive suitable for emergency usage
as a C: drive, if the internal one were to break.

So it's _not_ a clone of the normal working system ...

The backup pattern is a normal one, of backing up the internal
disk at some interval, to the backup partition on the external.

Paul

.... and the backup (presumably image[s]) is not intended to be restored
to the backup drive - in other words the backup drive is used to combine
the boot CD and the backup drive, and is still intended to be used with
a (separate) _new_ hard drive. Have I got that right?
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"He who will not reason is a bigot;
he who cannot is a fool;
he who dares not is a slave."
- Sir William Drummond

Above all things, use your mind.
Don't be that bigot, fool, or slave.

I went back and checked the Seagate ST2000DM001
and it shows 11 new at $61.99 and 3 refurbished
at $52.89 and on the same page they show a newer
version is available (ST2000DM006).

It's got good reviews, although there's some
issues with delivery but overall it seems to
be worth taking a chance. I've had excellent
usage with Seagate HD's and like I said they
are very quiet.

I've also never had a problem with Newegg.

As for cases,..I think I might go with the Rosewill
since it's allot cheaper and has good reviews.

What do you think?
Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
I went back and checked the Seagate ST2000DM001
and it shows 11 new at $61.99 and 3 refurbished
at $52.89 and on the same page they show a newer
version is available (ST2000DM006).

It's got good reviews, although there's some
issues with delivery but overall it seems to
be worth taking a chance. I've had excellent
usage with Seagate HD's and like I said they
are very quiet.

I've also never had a problem with Newegg.

As for cases,..I think I might go with the Rosewill
since it's allot cheaper and has good reviews.

What do you think?
Robert


Give it a shot.

When you get the new drive, run HDTune, check the
Health Tab and SMART table, and see how many Power On Hours
the drive has. That's a way to try to assure yourself
they're new.

The HDTune SMART works, if you connect the drive to
a SATA port. Whereas SMART doesn't work, once the drive
is inside the USB3 enclosure. If you want to do that
kind of testing, you do your tests outside of the
enclosure first.

You could also use SeaTools against the brand new drive
while it's on the SATA Port, and get SeaTools assurance
it's healthy.

While the RoseWill case has an ESATA port, you're unlikely
to have the cable for that. My "good" computer store has
zero ESATA cables (I asked), so if I needed to connect
via ESATA, I couldn't do that in a hurry (no cable).
I don't think my Best Buy had ESATA either.
It's possible that the 8500 might have one of those
on the back, you never know. You'd have to check the
manual to see if they included such a port. Sometimes
they convert one of the Southbridge SATA ports for
ESATA usage (as SATA and ESATA are almost exactly
the same, just the electrical signal amplitude is
slightly different).

And on the RoseWill, you only use one data cable type
at a time. If the USB3 is plugged in, you don't use
ESATA. If the ESATA is plugged in, you don't use the
USB3. They don't always document details like that
on the cases. It's typically one-protocol-at-a-time,
because of the electrical chain on the PCB in the
enclosure and how the chips are connected.

Paul

Could you please provide me with a HDTune
download link?

Hmmmm I never thought of ports and cables
so perhaps I should go with your original
suggestion.

Another thing,. I had an update to malwarebytes
so I clicked it and now I get this when I clicked
on your previous link:

https://www.rosewill.com/media/downl...nual-RX358.pdf

http://i64.tinypic.com/szu6tz.jpg

I thought it was just a update to the free version
yet somehow it put me on a premium malwarebytes
trial without telling me it was doing so.

Even though its not costing me anything its
messing my computer up because the link doesn't
work anymore although the one below it does.

Yet they both should work. So is there a way
to opt out of the free trial?

Thanks,
Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
Could you please provide me with a HDTune
download link?

Hmmmm I never thought of ports and cables
so perhaps I should go with your original
suggestion.

Another thing,. I had an update to malwarebytes
so I clicked it and now I get this when I clicked
on your previous link:

https://www.rosewill.com/media/downl...nual-RX358.pdf

http://i64.tinypic.com/szu6tz.jpg

I thought it was just a update to the free version
yet somehow it put me on a premium malwarebytes
trial without telling me it was doing so.

Even though its not costing me anything its
messing my computer up because the link doesn't
work anymore although the one below it does.

Yet they both should work. So is there a way
to opt out of the free trial?

Thanks,
Robert

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

You could check to see if MalwareBytes has a control panel
that turns off the Phishing check. Or flip it to the Free
version.

I just scanned the URL and you can see that not many products
make that detection (i.e. a false positive). This shows basically
why MalwareBytes did it, because nobody else did.

https://www.virustotal.com/#/url/977...b6b4/detection

How to disable the Trial is described here.

https://support.malwarebytes.com/docs/DOC-1033

With one caveat. They don't show the tick box set
properly. It should be set like this. This will leave
the on-demand scan feature only.

https://s18.postimg.org/ir6z2bwzt/ma...ee_version.gif

They were trying to confuse people... on purpose.

Paul

Thanks for the HDTune link and many thanks
for the instructions for clearing malwarebytes
especially the last picture showing how to properly
set it. Very helpful.


I'll go with the Fideco and Seagate and I checked
on my Star Tech link from Newegg and they show it
out of stock so they do show new, refurbished and
out of stock notices. The Star Tech's are good cases,
I should of bought more.


I had this link about a black WD I guess from when we
were deciding on which HD's for the backup system
we were putting together?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16822236624

Many thanks,
Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
Thanks for the HDTune link and many thanks
for the instructions for clearing malwarebytes
especially the last picture showing how to properly
set it. Very helpful.


I'll go with the Fideco and Seagate and I checked
on my Star Tech link from Newegg and they show it
out of stock so they do show new, refurbished and
out of stock notices. The Star Tech's are good cases,
I should of bought more.


I had this link about a black WD I guess from when we
were deciding on which HD's for the backup system
we were putting together?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16822236624

Many thanks,
Robert


But you remember that the WD Black is one of the noisy ones.
They're a bit noisy on seek. WD2003FZEX is 29dBa idle, 34dBa seek.

A rough rule of thumb, is you want to stay below about 30dBa or so.

There are some drives that get as low as 20dBa, and those you
can't hear them from outside the enclosure.

The Rosewill has two connectors on the back, but there won't
be a problem just using the USB3 cable as always. That part
of it doesn't hurt anything. If there are extra connectors,
you can ignore them.

*******

When you compare the two products, you also would want to check
whether the fan is replaceable. Some products use standard
"square" fans, with the four holes in the corners that are
in a standard location. With the square (ventilation) fan
concept, it allows broken gear to be repaired by buying
a new fan.

My CPU coolers all use standard fans. When I broke the Coolermaster
120mm on my current CPU cooler, I was able to use a standard
1" thick 120mm square fan in its place. Square fans come in
15mm, 25mm, 37.5mm thick, with the 25mm being typical for
computer ventilation. One of those disk enclosures could
use a 15mm thick fan (with some standard outer dimension like
80mm x 80mm).

Video cards are bad for that sort of thing. A lot of the
video card fans, the "body" of the fan is part of the heatsink,
and you cannot easily replace the fan if it breaks.

I have some enclosures here, that use those terrible
40mm fans. On the good side, they're square and replaceable.
On the bad side, those 40mm are all bad quality. And I
end up buying a 40mm Nidec at the electronics store to
replace them.

So for your enclosure, an enclosure gets bonus points
if the fan is square, and it comes out if the fan
needs replacement. And this is necessary, because
Chinese enclosure makers only want to pay $1 for a
fan, and the fans are pretty bad. Check the reviews for
each product, for comments about the fan.

Paul

So that's one of the reasons you picked the
Fideco for me,. it has a square fan.

One of my spare 2GB Seagate HD's slipped
and dropped. Only about 6 inches but it
hit hard wood enough to mess it up. I
tried attaching it to the 8500 with two
different sets of USB and power adaptor's.
I hear the connection sound but nothing
pop's up and there's no USB connection icon
on the taskbar.

So it looks like it's gone. I'll be able to re-use
the Star Tech case of course.

Robert

I just went back and compared the Rosewell and
Fideco cases. Assembled they both look fine but
Fideco has a definite edge in that it's all
assembled and easy to open.


Great choices as usual...

Thanks,
Robert

I remember the HDTune now.

I downloaded and tried it on the
8500 just to test it out before
I get the new HD's.

http://i64.tinypic.com/34xj2tc.jpg

http://i65.tinypic.com/2mxpjqp.jpg

http://i66.tinypic.com/b7i9uo.jpg

http://i64.tinypic.com/2hnaypi.jpg

http://i65.tinypic.com/5bpv7r.jpg

Robert