New Setup :D

No SSD?

Mmmmmmm

I think these days a geek will go SSD over HDD.

 

Ned

SSD is superb I will never now go back to normal HDD for anything apart from storage, I gave a SSD 120GB raid 0 array and backing that up a 3TB HDD amount of drive space in my main desktop PC, it does get used as a server also.

 

Powered build Augie but its a zimmer frame compared to my last build in an i7 DDR3 and SSDs in Raid0 with a GTX 570 GFX card.

Nah but all PC builds are good as they serve a purpose and if it meets your usage criteria then great its a winner.

My SSDs powered desktop boots in seconds and apps load zippy quick, SSDs have a downside of longevity but that's not going to be an issue with general PD users I feel at present.

 

Ahhhh I see that argument and piffle as I'm personally likely to change PCs and hardware before its MTBF rate.... I used two Raptors in raid0 before and the SSDs in Raid0 are well worth it if you dont mind the cost, cutting edge tech does come at a price and not for all yet! I would say the SSD is more robust these days as HDDs are prone in laptops and netbooks at least to vibration as SSD are not.

I tested SSDs out when they where new and it was not a great experience with XP/Vista (compared to W7) and one of the SSDs is sitting next to me now as a spare drive, great for a backup disk as its small, but 64GB in size is not bad for a data disk.

 

WOW neat on the 2 500GB drives as they will make superb storage, I actually think that some PCs like that built out of donated and spare bits make for a great Home Server, you can do great things with them, not only still use your general software etc, but the streaming capabilities are now getting much better.

Mmmm yes and no, but we will never know what was in my mind at the time of posting

 

There you go now talking like a true geek

for silent fans, Noctua are good, I run these in my desktop.

 

I agree HS/F quiet fan is a needed one, a basic GFX card or onboard is fine in most cases or a basic cheap one that is capable of decent video playback, SSDs are perfect as they add very very little or no heat and are silent.

But dont really need to keep a server as in a home one on 24/7 can just use it to backup multiple PCs and stream media when you want, I dont have mine on all day or if at all, all week, just when i need it, its not the best way to use a server but it suits me and its a test machine anyways, just needing to this week link it to my phone as theres an app for that!!

 

Yes in the days now of TB+ drives its a worry on loosing data, so what you do, copy stuff to DVD (wooooo lots of DVDs) do you just pray to the PC Gods! or do you buy another TB+ drive/s to backup your stuff too again, now that adds cost to your computing experience.

Just a small thing I do is when I swap drives for new ones even if they are old IDE ones, I tend to format them and do an Acronis and for pure data just a normal copy and paste to these older unused drives and pop them in a metal lock box in some original HDD boxes with the foam surrounds. May randomly at times wipe and update various of the drives,

I tend to have ones with clone installs of XP, Vista and Win7 installs on them default vanilla installs, as well as one with a image of my current C drive, as well as two with copies of my important files (docs, images, installers to apps I like, especially the apps I get on MSDN and Technet) and two with copies of my MP3 and any videos I have bought, ripped ones off my CDs I'm not fussed about as they are easily done again.

Plus as you rightly say Augie and a good idea is an inventory of my core installed apps (you know the ones you just need around or you feel as if you have a finger missing), this you can export from the likes of CCleaner into a text file, I also use this free app HERE to export the folder trees of my APPS folder of installer, which are all in categories, but using this app you can sent to text file the file/folder tree.

A bit anal perhaps but like many here I will have collected a lot of files (many typed up tech support and fix docs/boilerplates) and installer to various apps, but as these drives are surplus they come in handy of offline backup drives, and seems to have worked for me in the past 5 or so years ok.