Computer taking too long to connect to the Internet:

I guess I've been lucky with my Seagate's.

As I said my 8200 lasted 10 years before I
switched HD's and the present one has been
in it almost 5 years now.

What about Western Digital?

Robert

I guess I've been lucky with my Seagate's
but at present I don't feel comfortable
with buying one after looking at the reviews.

There's no rush on this but its a shame that I
can't get a quiet well made drive.

btw, don't I have to switch back the drive to
operational to make the safely remove function
functional again?

Thanks,
Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
I guess I've been lucky with my Seagate's
but at present I don't feel comfortable
with buying one after looking at the reviews.

There's no rush on this but its a shame that I
can't get a quiet well made drive.

btw, don't I have to switch back the drive to
operational to make the safely remove function
functional again?

Thanks,
Robert

You mean "Online" in Disk Management.

You can do that, if the drive letter doesn't
seem to show up. That would be your first hint
it was still "Offline".

*******

If I knew of the perfect hard drive, I'd have
picked it out for you by now. Some of the drive
failures, we can blame on handling (no bubble wrap
when the drive is shipped), but I've seen
evidence here, that some of the modern disk
problems are actually "wearout". If the heads
on the disk drive, stay within an area of the
disk, that's the area which starts to show
reallocation problems. And can be doing that,
with no warning from SMART. SMART only
works well, if the errors are uniformly spread
all over the disk. And a wear pattern doesn't
have to be spread all over the disk.

I have bought one Seagate (3TB) as an "experiment"
but it'll be a few years before I can comment on
how things turned out. It doesn't have enough
operating hours on it yet. You could shop for a
WD drive, but you're going to need to see a
comment in the reviews that it is "quiet".
Historically, WD doesn't make quiet drives
so you would want proof in the customer
review comments, that they cannot hear the
drive when it is running. Seagate comes pretty
close to that.

Paul

Since its not urgent I can wait on buying
another HD at this point but I appreciate
you enlightening me.

I went into Disk Management and everything
looked OK but when trying to safely remove
the Patriot key (which I had inserted)
instead of my usual icon there was USB Safely
Remove.

Remember, that was because we couldn't get the
computer to eject the Patriot key and we had to
turn off the actual drive which finally released
it?

So do I wait the remaining days for USB Safely
Remove and then it will revert back to its default?

Thanks,
Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
Since its not urgent I can wait on buying
another HD at this point but I appreciate
you enlightening me.

I went into Disk Management and everything
looked OK but when trying to safely remove
the Patriot key (which I had inserted)
instead of my usual icon there was USB Safely
Remove.

Remember, that was because we couldn't get the
computer to eject the Patriot key and we had to
turn off the actual drive which finally released
it?

So do I wait the remaining days for USB Safely
Remove and then it will revert back to its default?

Thanks,
Robert


Look in Programs and Features and remove the trial version.

Paul

I uninstalled it and then went to check
to see if my icon had returned and it hadn't.

Or will it once I use a key?

Thanks
Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
I uninstalled it and then went to check
to see if my icon had returned and it hadn't.

Or will it once I use a key?

Thanks
Robert

The icon could be inside that "excess icons"
icon. My Safely Remove usually hides in there.

If you have the SATA controller using the AHCI
driver, the C: drive is usually considered
a candidate for Safe Removal. Only you cannot
remove the C: drive of course. Because there
will always be busy files on it. But the
advantage of using the AHCI driver for
SATA, is it helps keep the Safely Remove icon
always available.

On this machine, Safely Remove only appears
when I plug in a USB key. Then the icon shows up.
I don't use the AHCI driver on this machine,
as from a performance point of view, it's useless.

But if I wanted to see Safely Remove all the time,
that's what I could do.

The icon should also be manually start-able.

https://askleo.com/safely_remove_har...re_without_it/

Start : Run : then_enter_the_command

RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

A simpler command to try, would be

control hotplug.dll

You can also do those from a (Run As Administator)
command prompt (cmd.exe) window. I don't know
what the icon will do, if there are no eject
candidates present.

HTH,
Paul

I should have just tried it before
posting. The icon appeared and I
was able to safely remove the
Patriot key. So all is good.

I forgot to ask you though is it
OK to delete the Rescue.ISO file
or should I keep it?


In passing, the WD is a Western
Digital?


Thanks,
Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
I should have just tried it before
posting. The icon appeared and I
was able to safely remove the
Patriot key. So all is good.

I forgot to ask you though is it
OK to delete the Rescue.ISO file
or should I keep it?


In passing, the WD is a Western
Digital?


Thanks,
Robert

You put the rescue.ISO on there for
a reason. Perhaps you wanted to burn a
CD on one of your two machines, and wanted
to carry that file from one machine to the
other ? If you've burned the CD, you don't
need the file any more. The file is probably
200-300MB or so, a WinPE CD boot image.

WD is short for Western Digital. You have a
WD Black, and that's a drive made by Western
Digital. The FDB motor is affixed at the top and
bottom on that drive. Some other drives, only
one end of the motor is fixed, and the other end
floats in lubricant ot something. I expect in
fact, that all drives have to shift to a stiffer
motor design, because the amount of allowed
bearing runout is extremely small now. (The
drive has to track any wobbles in order to
read the data. The voice coil can move the
heads in real time if necessary.)

You will see descriptive terms used to announce
new technology used inside the drive, but the
stuff is never explained. Only HGST (the IBM lab
that Hitachi bought) used to post informative web
pages about how modern hard drives work. and that's
because the web pages formerly were written by IBM
people, and when the lab was bought, the IBM people
went with it. Nobody else in the industry bothered...
As far as I know, WD acquired HGST, but HGST is
still shipping "Hitachi" brand drives for things
like the helium filled drives (6TB, $700 each).

So while you can see a bunch of brand names on
Newegg, from a corporate point of view there
are few separate companies left.

Paul

At present I'm set up OK but I think
down the line I'll have to select
the 2TB Seagate because of the quiet
that I would need.

Not now though,..

As usual you've given great links and
information.


Many thanks,
Happy Halloween,
Robert

I'll let you know when I have the
new HD and case by posting it on
here just in case I need help
walking me through setting it up
like the WD.



Thanks,
Robert

You know, I just went back and looked
at the reviews again and boy there
sure are allot of negative reviews with
DOA or sudden failures etc.

Yet the flip side says they're great
which is what I've experienced. It's
literally 50/50.

I wish I didn't have the noise issue
otherwise the WD is just fine.

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
I'll let you know when I have the
new HD and case by posting it on
here just in case I need help
walking me through setting it up
like the WD.



Thanks,
Robert

Well, unlike an SSD, I expect this thing
to work right away :-)

Paul