One last question (I hope)

On Fri, 12 Jun 2015 17:17:14 -0400, Zaidy036 wrote:

On 6/12/2015 4:42 PM, Al Drake wrote:
On 6/11/2015 8:43 PM, wrote:
On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 16:28:03 -0400, wrote:

I have my parts list made up for a new machine. The case came in
today and I
have to order the other parts this evening. The only thing I'm
waffling on is a
HHD.

My plan was a 500Gb SSD for the C drive and a 3Tb HHD as a D, E and F
drive. I
know, overkill but I tend to do things like that.

I've always liked Western Digital. They give me three basic choices:

Green drive: Available as 3Tb but slower speed as it's a power saver.

Blue drive: Good choice but only comes in a 1Tb model. Do I want
three of them??

Black drive: Available as a 3Tb, but I've read a lot of reviews that
say they're
noisy, and I do not want noise.

Then today I got another idea. Two 500Gb SSD drives as the C and D
drives, then
a WD blue 1Tb drive split into the E and F drives.

This would give me twice the storage I have in my current machine
which has a
1Tb HDD and after five years still isn't filled to capacity.

So, I guess my question is, and forgive me if it's a stupid one (I'm
just not a
techno type) is it alright to install two SSD's in a system?

Thanks for all the help and replies to several posts the past week

My shopping is done. Thanks for all the help and ideas. For those that
might be
interested, here's what I ended up buying:

Antec P-100 Mid tower ATX case
Asus X99-A USB 3.1 motherboard
Intel i7-5930 CPU
Asus R7250X 2Gb video card (I'm not a gamer)
16Gb DDR4 3200 memory
Noctua NH-U12S CPU fan and heat sink
2 Samsung EVO-850 500Gb SSD's
1 Western Digital Blue 1Tb HHD
Asus optical drive
Rosewill ARC M650 power supply
Windows 8.1 full version
Couple of extra case fans, 120mm for front, 140mm for top.

And now, knowing of all the videos on YouTube, I'm thinking I might
build it
myself. How bad could I screw it up? (Sounds like famous last words...)

I just took a good look at your parts and I can say I'm envious. I
don't think you'll have a hard time assembling and testing your new
system. I built my first one in 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon. I cut
much of the time by using a HDD from an old system with Windows XP
already in place. I was in so much of a hurry I figured I'd just see
what happened and after a repair install everything was fine. I had no
help from YouTube but had already replaced everything in a computer at
one time or another. I went to CompUSA to get some more RAM and was
informed it was old style so I grabbed a shopping and I was off to the
races.

Good luck.

Post back with your story and make sure you take some photos along the
way.



Al.

you will need a bracket to mount the SSDs

I believe this case has slide out brackets that accomodate both kiinds of
drives.

On 06/12/2015 04:17 PM, Zaidy036 wrote:

[snip]

you will need a bracket to mount the SSDs

IIRC, I've gotten some that come with a bracket for a 3.5-inch bay.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The Devil...clutched hold of the miserable young man...and flew off
with him through the ceiling, since which time nothing has been heard of
[him]." [Martin Luther]

In article , lid says...

On 06/12/2015 04:17 PM, Zaidy036 wrote:

[snip]

you will need a bracket to mount the SSDs

IIRC, I've gotten some that come with a bracket for a 3.5-inch bay.

Yea, mine (Kingston) also came with an external usb case could use to
first clone the existing drive to the ssd then put it in as boot drive.
Was nice that afterwards made a nice external for an unused laptop drive
I had laying around.

My wife's pc has the ssd only partially screwed into case (nada came
with it). It's not that easy to find any place sells a 2.5 to 3.5"
adapter it seems (or least one that's in stock), online sure but
physically in local area NOT A CHANCE it seems. They'll sell you the
drive and not stock an adapter (Staples, Best Buy, ...?).

In message ,
writes:
[]
Green drive: Available as 3Tb but slower speed as it's a power saver.

If by slower speed, you just mean 5400 rather than 7200, that's just
2:3; not IMO that significant compared to the difference between real
drives and RAM (or your SSDs). I always went for 5400 when I could find
them as I found they ran noticeably cooler (and somewhat quieter), but
you can't find them now - so I assume you're talking about slower in
some other way - do they spin down or something? (I know you've now
bought your bits.)
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. - Mahatma Gandhi
(according to the film Gandhi [1982])

In message , Wolf K
writes:
[]
What do you want to do with three 1TB partitions on one 3TB HDD? If

Better to let people decide the vexed question of "partition or not" for
themself ...

you're thinking backups, it's better to have multiple disks. The

.... with that one exception, where I'd agree. Although even for backup,
some might want to partition for, say, backing up different machines -
not the case in this case.

probability that multiple drives will fail at the same time is the
product of the probabilities of failure for each disks. If that is,
say, 0.0001 for each, then it's 0.0000001 for two, 0.0000000001 for
three, and so on. So in this context, three 1TB drives would be a
better choice.

The product isn't quite the whole story if they're all going in the same
computer, only for external drives: one of the causes of failure is
spikes on the power supply, which would probably occur to all. Similarly
overheating, unless they're in very different parts of the case.

You could also investigate RAID.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. - Mahatma Gandhi
(according to the film Gandhi [1982])

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 16:46:46 -0400, Wolf K wrote:

The probability that multiple drives will fail at the same time is
the product of the probabilities of failure for each disks.

That's what we used to say before Three Mile Island. Now we know
that similar devices may fail in the same way at about the same
time.

mechanic wrote:
On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 16:46:46 -0400, Wolf K wrote:

The probability that multiple drives will fail at the same time is
the product of the probabilities of failure for each disks.

That's what we used to say before Three Mile Island. Now we know
that similar devices may fail in the same way at about the same
time.

---- power_supply_+12V-----+----+----+----+
| |
Primary Backup
Drive Drive

Now, the power supply fails internally, lifting
the +12V motor supply voltage to +15V. This
causes both drives to burn.

Now, what formula involving conditional probabilities
do we use, to describe the look of displeasure on
your face when this happens :-)

Being a reliability engineer is easy. Building
reliable systems is hard.

Paul

On 12/06/2015 03:59, Paul wrote:

Have fun (zoom...),
Paul

I've read this thread with interest. It took me back a few years! :-)

I've reviewed a number of articles on line and also read he

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

I'm left confused as to just who decides what the MAC address will
actually be, where it is physically installed and who puts it there.

I suspect that it's NOT the builder of the computer!

On 6/13/2015 12:24 PM, ~BD~ wrote:
On 12/06/2015 03:59, Paul wrote:

Have fun (zoom...),
Paul

I've read this thread with interest. It took me back a few years! :-)

I've reviewed a number of articles on line and also read he

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

I'm left confused as to just who decides what the MAC address will
actually be, where it is physically installed and who puts it there.

I suspect that it's NOT the builder of the computer!

This might help.

https://standards.ieee.org/develop/r...mac/index.html

In article , says...

On 12/06/2015 03:59, Paul wrote:

Have fun (zoom...),
Paul

I've read this thread with interest. It took me back a few years! :-)

I've reviewed a number of articles on line and also read he

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

I'm left confused as to just who decides what the MAC address will
actually be, where it is physically installed and who puts it there.

I suspect that it's NOT the builder of the computer!

I thought the MAC address is buried on a chip on the network card, is
permanently there. I also think the various manufacturers agreed to each
allocate out of some pool they "own" so that each is using there own
range of values so there's supposed to never be two network cards with
the same MAC imbedded into it.

On Sat, 13 Jun 2015 07:29:21 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message ,
writes:
[]
Green drive: Available as 3Tb but slower speed as it's a power saver.

If by slower speed, you just mean 5400 rather than 7200, that's just
2:3; not IMO that significant compared to the difference between real
drives and RAM (or your SSDs). I always went for 5400 when I could find
them as I found they ran noticeably cooler (and somewhat quieter), but
you can't find them now - so I assume you're talking about slower in
some other way - do they spin down or something? (I know you've now
bought your bits.)
[]
Theyre rated at 5400 RPM, but supposedly through some Western Digital magic spin
faster when needed.

~BD~ wrote:
On 12/06/2015 03:59, Paul wrote:

Have fun (zoom...),
Paul

I've read this thread with interest. It took me back a few years! :-)

I've reviewed a number of articles on line and also read he

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

I'm left confused as to just who decides what the MAC address will
actually be, where it is physically installed and who puts it there.

I suspect that it's NOT the builder of the computer!

MAC addresses are bought in blocks, from
a central authority. The lead digits indicate
a vendor/manufacturer code. The numbers
are *not* supposed to be reused. The
MAC address then, happens to make a great
number to use for Windows activation :-)

In networking, the IP address is "end to end".

The MAC address is "hop by hop". If you do a
traceroute, and your packets go through 10 hops,
the MAC address is lost at the first hop, to be
replaced by the MAC address of the next device.

A MAC address can be used as:

1) An authentication scheme for cable modems.
The cable company used to keep track of your
DOCSYS modem, via the MAC address.

2) When you buy a $39.95 home networking switch,
the MAC address is used for "learning". The switch
remembers the MAC address of each device, and only
sends packets destined to a certain MAC address, based
on that info.

3) Your Wifi router can filter on MAC address, as
a means of enhancing (slightly) security, and keeping
out the bad guys.

But as a tracking technology, it's worthless, because it
doesn't survive transmission across the Internet. It is
only of local significance. Windows Activation likes
it, because of the "guarantee" of uniqueness.

HTH,
Paul

wrote on 6/11/2015 2:28 PM:
I have my parts list made up for a new machine. The case came in today and I
have to order the other parts this evening. The only thing I'm waffling on is a
HHD.

My plan was a 500Gb SSD for the C drive and a 3Tb HHD as a D, E and F drive. I
know, overkill but I tend to do things like that.

I've always liked Western Digital. They give me three basic choices:

Green drive: Available as 3Tb but slower speed as it's a power saver.

Blue drive: Good choice but only comes in a 1Tb model. Do I want three of them??

Black drive: Available as a 3Tb, but I've read a lot of reviews that say they're
noisy, and I do not want noise.

Then today I got another idea. Two 500Gb SSD drives as the C and D drives, then
a WD blue 1Tb drive split into the E and F drives.

This would give me twice the storage I have in my current machine which has a
1Tb HDD and after five years still isn't filled to capacity.

So, I guess my question is, and forgive me if it's a stupid one (I'm just not a
techno type) is it alright to install two SSD's in a system?

Thanks for all the help and replies to several posts the past week.

I haven't read all the replies so this may be redundant. I have a
Samsung SSD as my C drive and I use Samsung Magician software to manage
and configure it. That software provides a warning that certain "magic",
e.g., their rapid mode, is not available to a second Samsung SSD. I have
no idea whether such restrictions are imposed by other manufacturers or
not. I do know that some folks run SSD pairs as simple RAID arrays but
I'm not sure if they have all the bells and whistle optimizations for
the array that are available for a single disk. I guess that my advice
would be to contact sales and/or support for the maker or makers of the
disks you are considering. If you get an idiot or script reader on the
phone, hang up and call back until you get lucky.
--
Jeff Barnett

My sincere thanks to Al Drake, pip and Paul for trying to better help me
understand computing matters!

I really DO appreciate it. :-)