Dell computer with no input

"Wolf K" wrote

| That's my hesitancy about USB sticks and
| hard disks. Magnetic storage. I don't really
| understand how it works, but it seems that
| it has to be less durable than grooves in plastic.
| And maybe it's susceptible to magnetic fields?
| I don't know.
|
|
|
| Cosmic rays?
|
| The Earth's magnetic field is strong enough to degrade magnetic storage
| over time. That's one reason VHS/Beta tapes become unusable.
|
I didn't know that. I guess it must also apply to
cassette tapes for music. I also wonder about
things like proximity to a computer or UPS, or
even the magnetic field from a car alternator.

In article , am
says...

"Char Jackson" wrote

| Mayayana mentioned grooves in plastic within the context of backing up
| data to DVD. Obviously, there are no grooves... ;-)
|

My understanding is that the writer cuts grooves
at various depths underneath the surface as a way
to record data. Is that wrong? In any case, it cuts
some kind of marks in plastic. It's not just magnetic
storage.

Old vinyl is a physical groove, one spiral per side. It's why they wear
out over time, e.g. fidelity goes down more often played.

CD/DVDs are "burnt". There's a layer of "something special" sandwiched
in the disk. Data is stored by either burning (or not burning) a "pit"
into that layer. It's physical in a sense that something physical is
alterred. My understanding is that rewritable disk use a special layer
that can be reheated and hence any prior pits are lost as that surface
becomnes more or less a liguid for a moment while it's being erased. The
nice thing about optical is that nothing actually touches the surface so
no normal physical usage deteriotion.

In article , am
says...

"Wolf K" wrote

| That's my hesitancy about USB sticks and
| hard disks. Magnetic storage. I don't really
| understand how it works, but it seems that
| it has to be less durable than grooves in plastic.
| And maybe it's susceptible to magnetic fields?
| I don't know.
|
|
|
| Cosmic rays?
|
| The Earth's magnetic field is strong enough to degrade magnetic storage
| over time. That's one reason VHS/Beta tapes become unusable.
|
I didn't know that. I guess it must also apply to
cassette tapes for music. I also wonder about
things like proximity to a computer or UPS, or
even the magnetic field from a car alternator.

Magnetic fields are a Yes worry if strong enough.

My old reel-to-reel tapes from the seventies are no longer any use but
truth told they weren't stored the best, e.g. wood heat.

On the "we're all different" theme:

In message , Char Jackson
writes:
[]
True, but I weigh that against the enormous inconvenience of optical
media. CD-Rs are completely out of the question for data storage, I hope
you'll agree, but even single layer DVD's with their ~4.5GB storage are
a non-starter for me. That doesn't even hold a movie unless you forego
the HD versions, which I'm not willing to do. Also, I don't have pockets
big enough to hold discs.

Least with optical you can often retrieve a
lot of it

Things must have really changed since I exited the stage. I've never,
not once, heard of a case where you could retrieve part of a damaged
disc. It has always been all or nothing, in my experience.

It ought to be possible in theory, just as with magnetic discs.

where-as with flashdrives and hard disks it tends to be an all
or nothing affair with limited number of attempts.

I've never had a flash drive fail on me, so I guess that's something I
can look forward to happening someday. When it happens, it won't matter
because everything on a flash drive also lives somewhere else. (Famous
last words)

I've had them fail - and when they do, it's nearly always been sudden
and total.

For hard drive longevity, the best advice I can offer is to stay away
from external drives. Always mount your hard drives internally. I know
that flies in the face of how a lot of folks here use their drives, so I
don't push it. Of the folks who have asked me to help them replace a
failed hard drive over the years, I'd say 99.7% of them have been
external. No one ever says they dropped it or bumped it while it was
writing or anything. It's always 'it just stopped working all by
itself'. If it's internal, they can't get their hands on it and it just
keeps going until it's too small to be practical.

The main problem with internal (or "always on") drives is not electronic
or magnetic failure (though I guess being always on increases the chance
of those), it's the danger of corruption - either user mistake, or
ransomware or similar (OK, some very holier-than-thou types would say
ransomware and similar are user error too, but YKWIM).

Optical usually are
4.5 Gb which is a lot less to loose than my 3 Tb drives but I trust the
optical more.

And here I sit, wondering what to replace my 4TB drives with: 6TB isn't
enough gain to be worth it, so it has to be 8TB or 10TB, I guess. My
server case only holds 15 data drives, (OS drive is mounted over an
unused PCI slot and doesn't use a full bay), so I have to maximize the
capacity or I run the risk of having to replace my 15-drive case with a
24-drive case. Ugh...

(Wow, what do you handle - HD movies for the whole family? The 250G
drive on my main machine still has plenty of space, so my backup 1T one
[external and disconnected except at backup time, but a 3.5" one] has
multiple backups on it. We certainly are different in that respect!)

I do burn the occssional toaster but not nearly as many as days past.

Good to hear that it's less of a problem now.

I haven't made any for ages (apart from my Macrium boot mini-CDs). Of
the ones I made many years ago, some have not worked when re-accessed. I
don't think I'd use them for backup as such, though for archiving stuff
I'm not _sure_ I'd want again, I might continue to use them. I never use
the burner anywhere near its maximum speed, as I feel doing so
significantly reduces the reliability of the burn, but I haven't
actually done any tests of this.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Know what happens when you don't pay your exorcist?
You get repossessed!
- Randle Brashear, 2015-8-9

In message , Mayayana
writes:
"Wolf K" wrote

| That's my hesitancy about USB sticks and
| hard disks. Magnetic storage. I don't really
| understand how it works, but it seems that
| it has to be less durable than grooves in plastic.
| And maybe it's susceptible to magnetic fields?
| I don't know.
|
|
|
| Cosmic rays?
|
| The Earth's magnetic field is strong enough to degrade magnetic storage
| over time. That's one reason VHS/Beta tapes become unusable.
|
I didn't know that. I guess it must also apply to
cassette tapes for music. I also wonder about
things like proximity to a computer or UPS, or
even the magnetic field from a car alternator.


Though proper storage in mumetal or similar casing can help.

I've got old audio (mostly cassette, but some open reel) tapes that are
still as good as they ever were (and I _haven't_ been storing them in
any sort of metal).

VHS (and other video) are not linearly recorded as raw video, but are on
an FM subcarrier, making something not that unlike a digital recording
in that their deterioration has something like a threshold (though it
will vary from player to player). Having said that, I think the main
reasons old VHS etc. video recordings are not due to deteriorations of
the recordings themselves, but two other main causes:
1. The _equipment_ deteriorates (especially if unused for a while -
well, it does if it is used too, but in different ways), and
2. It was never that great anyway. What we used to consider acceptable
just isn't nowadays, when compared to modern alternatives.
I think reason 2. is the main reason!
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Know what happens when you don't pay your exorcist?
You get repossessed!
- Randle Brashear, 2015-8-9

In message , pjp
writes:
In article , am
says...

"Char Jackson" wrote

| Mayayana mentioned grooves in plastic within the context of backing up
| data to DVD. Obviously, there are no grooves... ;-)
|

My understanding is that the writer cuts grooves
at various depths underneath the surface as a way
to record data. Is that wrong? In any case, it cuts
some kind of marks in plastic. It's not just magnetic
storage.

Old vinyl is a physical groove, one spiral per side. It's why they wear
out over time, e.g. fidelity goes down more often played.

CD/DVDs are "burnt". There's a layer of "something special" sandwiched
in the disk. Data is stored by either burning (or not burning) a "pit"
into that layer. It's physical in a sense that something physical is
alterred. My understanding is that rewritable disk use a special layer
that can be reheated and hence any prior pits are lost as that surface
becomnes more or less a liguid for a moment while it's being erased. The
nice thing about optical is that nothing actually touches the surface so
no normal physical usage deteriotion.

Someone else has given chapter and verse on the chemicals.

Mass-produced (stamped, like music CDs and software distribution) do
have pits of different heights for 1s and 0s (it's more complex than
that but I'll go on); both depths reflect the same amount of light, but
the reading spot is designed to be slightly wider than the groove, so
that some of the reflection is from the flat area either side of the
groove and some from the bottom of the pit; at one depth, the
reflections are in phase, at the other they cancel, so that the
reflection is either cancelled or isn't. CD-Rs do indeed have some
chemical that "burns" - becomes non-reflective - when hit with
sufficient laser power; when played in the same way as a stamped CD, the
beam either reflects or doesn't, though for a different reason. CD-RWs
have a chemical whose reflectivity can be reset.

The chemicals are not inert: that in CD-Rs can become darker in time in
the bits that are supposed to be reflective, especially if exposed to
light for a long time. (The chemicals in -RW discs are, by their very
nature, more likely to change properties with time; never use -RWs for
archiving.)

The writer doesn't actually cut the grooves - for writable discs, the
grooves are already there on the blank, for keeping the head aligned;
what the burner does (hence the name) is change the reflective
properties of the chemical in the groove. (For mass-produced CDs, the
stamper - basically not _that_ different from an LP stamper, just a lot
more precise! And a reflective layer is added afterwards - does make all
the marks on what starts as a flat piece of plastic. And there aren't
grooves as such, but the bits are encoded in such a way that the pits
themselves are sufficient for head tracking - there is never a long
enough run of no-pits that a gap long enough for mistracking is laid
down.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Know what happens when you don't pay your exorcist?
You get repossessed!
- Randle Brashear, 2015-8-9

On Sat, 2 Dec 2017 03:05:15 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

On the "we're all different" theme:

In message , Char Jackson
writes:
[]
True, but I weigh that against the enormous inconvenience of optical
media. CD-Rs are completely out of the question for data storage, I hope
you'll agree, but even single layer DVD's with their ~4.5GB storage are
a non-starter for me. That doesn't even hold a movie unless you forego
the HD versions, which I'm not willing to do. Also, I don't have pockets
big enough to hold discs.

Least with optical you can often retrieve a
lot of it

Things must have really changed since I exited the stage. I've never,
not once, heard of a case where you could retrieve part of a damaged
disc. It has always been all or nothing, in my experience.

It ought to be possible in theory, just as with magnetic discs.

AFAIK, if the TOC is damaged or corrupt, the disc is toast.

where-as with flashdrives and hard disks it tends to be an all
or nothing affair with limited number of attempts.

I've never had a flash drive fail on me, so I guess that's something I
can look forward to happening someday. When it happens, it won't matter
because everything on a flash drive also lives somewhere else. (Famous
last words)

I've had them fail - and when they do, it's nearly always been sudden
and total.

I have a large-ish Ziploc bag of them, some going back to about 2002
that were handed out by people (vendors) who wanted my help to get their
stuff into the corporate network. Someday I should use or write a
program that just writes data in a loop until they die.

For hard drive longevity, the best advice I can offer is to stay away
from external drives. Always mount your hard drives internally. I know
that flies in the face of how a lot of folks here use their drives, so I
don't push it. Of the folks who have asked me to help them replace a
failed hard drive over the years, I'd say 99.7% of them have been
external. No one ever says they dropped it or bumped it while it was
writing or anything. It's always 'it just stopped working all by
itself'. If it's internal, they can't get their hands on it and it just
keeps going until it's too small to be practical.

The main problem with internal (or "always on") drives is not electronic
or magnetic failure (though I guess being always on increases the chance
of those), it's the danger of corruption - either user mistake, or
ransomware or similar (OK, some very holier-than-thou types would say
ransomware and similar are user error too, but YKWIM).

I don't personally consider internal drives to be at significant risk.
I'm going to need some really bad experiences before I change my mind. I
think external drives are at a much higher risk. I know most folks here
won't agree with that, but that's what my experience has shown me.

And here I sit, wondering what to replace my 4TB drives with: 6TB isn't
enough gain to be worth it, so it has to be 8TB or 10TB, I guess. My
server case only holds 15 data drives, (OS drive is mounted over an
unused PCI slot and doesn't use a full bay), so I have to maximize the
capacity or I run the risk of having to replace my 15-drive case with a
24-drive case. Ugh...

(Wow, what do you handle - HD movies for the whole family? The 250G
drive on my main machine still has plenty of space, so my backup 1T one
[external and disconnected except at backup time, but a 3.5" one] has
multiple backups on it. We certainly are different in that respect!)

My server here has 40TB of internal storage, about 38TB usable after
formatting, and I have it configured as a single volume. It would be
nice to bump that to at least 80TB so that I'd have some breathing room.
I have a stack of 10 2TB drives that I've pulled out of a second PC, but
what can a person do with such small drives these days? Not much, so
they stay stacked in a drawer for now.

--

Char Jackson

In message , Char Jackson
writes:
[not Char]
Least with optical you can often retrieve a
lot of it

Things must have really changed since I exited the stage. I've never,
not once, heard of a case where you could retrieve part of a damaged
disc. It has always been all or nothing, in my experience.

It ought to be possible in theory, just as with magnetic discs.

AFAIK, if the TOC is damaged or corrupt, the disc is toast.

I'm imagining a disc sector editor. I've never done it, but then I
haven't used sector editing on magnetic discs for decades.

where-as with flashdrives and hard disks it tends to be an all
or nothing affair with limited number of attempts.
[]
I have a large-ish Ziploc bag of them, some going back to about 2002
that were handed out by people (vendors) who wanted my help to get their

Those (1G or 2G - or possibly even smaller) are probably quite reliable.
(See Paul's past posts [Ppp!] for why - bits per cell.)

stuff into the corporate network. Someday I should use or write a
program that just writes data in a loop until they die.

Why destroy them deliberately?
[]
The main problem with internal (or "always on") drives is not electronic
or magnetic failure (though I guess being always on increases the chance
of those), it's the danger of corruption - either user mistake, or
ransomware or similar (OK, some very holier-than-thou types would say
ransomware and similar are user error too, but YKWIM).

I don't personally consider internal drives to be at significant risk.

You've obviously never had an aggressive virus. (Nor have I, but I do
read about them!)

I'm going to need some really bad experiences before I change my mind. I
think external drives are at a much higher risk. I know most folks here
won't agree with that, but that's what my experience has shown me.

I don't have experience of external ones in cases. All my use of
external drives have been using bare drives, either with a "cable"
(though obviously with some electronics in it) or, more recently, a
dock. The only ones I've had trouble with were ones that were giving
trouble before removal from what they came out of.
[]
(Wow, what do you handle - HD movies for the whole family? The 250G
drive on my main machine still has plenty of space, so my backup 1T one
[]
My server here has 40TB of internal storage, about 38TB usable after
formatting, and I have it configured as a single volume. It would be
nice to bump that to at least 80TB so that I'd have some breathing room.
I have a stack of 10 2TB drives that I've pulled out of a second PC, but
what can a person do with such small drives these days? Not much, so
they stay stacked in a drawer for now.

You're either winding me up, or you have _very_ different requirements
than I! I've never had a drive as big as 2T. What _do_ you handle that
takes all that space (-:?
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

But remember, in a permissive society, it is also permissible to stay at home
and have a nice cup of tea instead. Andrew Collins, RT 2015/2/14-20

In article ,
lid says...

On Sat, 2 Dec 2017 03:05:15 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

On the "we're all different" theme:

In message , Char Jackson
writes:
[]
True, but I weigh that against the enormous inconvenience of optical
media. CD-Rs are completely out of the question for data storage, I hope
you'll agree, but even single layer DVD's with their ~4.5GB storage are
a non-starter for me. That doesn't even hold a movie unless you forego
the HD versions, which I'm not willing to do. Also, I don't have pockets
big enough to hold discs.

Least with optical you can often retrieve a
lot of it

Things must have really changed since I exited the stage. I've never,
not once, heard of a case where you could retrieve part of a damaged
disc. It has always been all or nothing, in my experience.

It ought to be possible in theory, just as with magnetic discs.

AFAIK, if the TOC is damaged or corrupt, the disc is toast.

where-as with flashdrives and hard disks it tends to be an all
or nothing affair with limited number of attempts.

I've never had a flash drive fail on me, so I guess that's something I
can look forward to happening someday. When it happens, it won't matter
because everything on a flash drive also lives somewhere else. (Famous
last words)

I've had them fail - and when they do, it's nearly always been sudden
and total.

I have a large-ish Ziploc bag of them, some going back to about 2002
that were handed out by people (vendors) who wanted my help to get their
stuff into the corporate network. Someday I should use or write a
program that just writes data in a loop until they die.

For hard drive longevity, the best advice I can offer is to stay away
from external drives. Always mount your hard drives internally. I know
that flies in the face of how a lot of folks here use their drives, so I
don't push it. Of the folks who have asked me to help them replace a
failed hard drive over the years, I'd say 99.7% of them have been
external. No one ever says they dropped it or bumped it while it was
writing or anything. It's always 'it just stopped working all by

If 2 Tb drives are too small for you I'd gladly take them off your hands

On 01 Dec 2017, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote
in alt.windows7.general:

I never use the burner anywhere near its
maximum speed, as I feel doing so significantly reduces the
reliability of the burn, but I haven't actually done any tests of
this.

I've heard it said, and my experience seems to bear this out, that the
most secure burns are done at or near the *media*'s rated maximum, not
the writer's max. The writer could burn at a faster rate than is best
for the media, and that would be a bad thing. My favorite burning
software, Imgburn, has a feature that remembers the optimal speed for a
particular make of disc (based on it's manufacturing code, not the
brand name on the label) and will automatically switch to that
operating speed.

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

|
| VHS (and other video) are not linearly recorded as raw video, but are on
| an FM subcarrier, making something not that unlike a digital recording
| in that their deterioration has something like a threshold (though it
| will vary from player to player). Having said that, I think the main
| reasons old VHS etc. video recordings are not due to deteriorations of
| the recordings themselves, but two other main causes:
| 1. The _equipment_ deteriorates (especially if unused for a while -
| well, it does if it is used too, but in different ways), and
| 2. It was never that great anyway. What we used to consider acceptable
| just isn't nowadays, when compared to modern alternatives.
| I think reason 2. is the main reason!

I don't know if this is unusual, but I recently
re-watched Bill Moyers interviewing the mythologist
Joseph Campbell on PBS. The broadcast was in
1988. So I've had the VHS tapes sitting on a shelf
for 20 years. (Campbell weathered more over that
period. I've always thought of him as a very original
thinker. I rad Hero with a Thousand Faces as a
teenager and was transformed. It read like a key to
religious symbolism. But listening again after all this
time I see that he he also had a bit of New Age fever.)

The oldest CDs I have date to about '99. Back then
I bought Visual Studio 6 and Paint Shop Pro 5. I made
a backup of the VS6 CDs. Both VS6 backup (written to
Memorex CD with an HP writer) and commercial PSP5
disks are now perfectly functional. As are data CDs
going back to at least '04. I don't care for them
except to keep them in plastic or paper sleeves.

I don't know if it matters, but I've always used only
Memorex disks and have used ImgBurn for a number of
years to write CDs/DVDs. I once bought a pack of
Sony CDs and none of them would write. After that
I went back to only Memorex, to be on the safe side.
I'd heard rumors that all of them were made by the
same 2 companies. I'd also heard rumors that all
VHS recorders were made by only 2 companies. But
I've never seen any kind of dependable analysis of
differences in disk quality. Are there differences that
you know of?

On 12/01/2017 05:14 PM, Ken Blake wrote:

[snip]

I know a man who has used AOL for umpteen years. What's strange about
it is that his technical knowledge and skills are generally very
good.

I had AOL for awhile but left in 1998 (IIRC, that was also the last time
I sent a fax).

BTW, AOL was supporting "X2" (so-called 56Kbps modems). The local ISP I
switched to had not yet, but internet access was still twice as fast.

--
23 days until the winter celebration (Monday December 25, 2017 12:00:00
AM for 1 day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

Man created God in his own image.

On 12/01/2017 07:23 PM, pjp wrote:

[snip]

Old vinyl is a physical groove, one spiral per side. It's why they wear
out over time, e.g. fidelity goes down more often played.

I once played a 7-inch record repeatedly for several hours. Fidelity
really went down.

[snip]

--
23 days until the winter celebration (Monday December 25, 2017 12:00:00
AM for 1 day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

Man created God in his own image.

On 11/28/2017 09:27 AM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 11/28/2017 9:08 AM, philo wrote:
On 11/27/2017 01:06 PM, Mathedman wrote:
Â*Â*Dell computer with no input capability!
My wife just bought a New Dell "all in one" computer.
But the thing is bizarre. It has no DVD drive,
nor place to install one. It has one USB port ---
but the computer does not recognize anything plugged
into the USB slot !
Â*Â* Further more, it has Windows 10 installed which
doesn't have "Control Panel (at least none I could find)
Â*Â* So how do we do anything? We can access internet sites
It doesn't even have Internet Explorer!
Â*Â*So what to do with the thing?



I looked at the specs for the lowest end Dell I could find and it has
four USB ports.

I suspect you are doing something wrong

I suspect Mayayna is right, And she bought a tablet with keyboard.

Rene




Perhaps so.

I never saw the point of a tablet.

In message , Nil
writes:
On 01 Dec 2017, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote
in alt.windows7.general:

I never use the burner anywhere near its
maximum speed, as I feel doing so significantly reduces the
reliability of the burn, but I haven't actually done any tests of
this.

I've heard it said, and my experience seems to bear this out, that the
most secure burns are done at or near the *media*'s rated maximum, not

I've read that said - here, I think.

the writer's max. The writer could burn at a faster rate than is best
for the media, and that would be a bad thing. My favorite burning

That I could understand.

software, Imgburn, has a feature that remembers the optimal speed for a
particular make of disc (based on it's manufacturing code, not the
brand name on the label) and will automatically switch to that
operating speed.

I'm curious, though, especially as you say you have experience to back
it up, why faster should be more reliable than slower. I'd have thought
the transitions between burn and no-burn would be clearer if made at a
lower speed, and perhaps the burn parts would be more definite as well.
(I can only think of one possible reason for slow to be marginal, and
that would be if the burning laser is not turned off enough when it's
supposed to be off, which would be drive-specific rather than media-.)
What form does your experience take?
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The best way to achieve immortality is by not dying.