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Profile meckano
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Message 10535 - Posted: 1 Oct 2005, 6:33:32 UTC
Last modified: 1 Oct 2005, 6:33:44 UTC

In June/July 2005 I lost a harddrive and cd-rom at same time.
It is my 5th complete computer setup since my first comp.
I also had a dvd-rom/cd-rw and another harddrive which I did not lose.
I was not doing Boinc at the time, I don't think, not the point.

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Profile Redshift

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Message 10571 - Posted: 3 Oct 2005, 4:34:23 UTC - in response to Message 10535.  

In 9 years of building my own computers I have only had one hard drive failure--and that was 8.5 years ago.
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Profile Alex

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Message 10572 - Posted: 3 Oct 2005, 5:32:20 UTC
Last modified: 3 Oct 2005, 5:45:40 UTC

My first computer - amstrad 640PPC didn't fail. Just got old.
Following computers were laptops for work.
Texas Instruments Laptop 25mhz, colour, running NT 3.1 Didn't fail, went obsolete, replaced with... a dell 75 mhz. Had a loose connector on the display's ribbon cable. It was pretty much unfixable.
Got a NEC 233 mhz after that - the NEC's would overheat if you left them on a bed, returned it to the IT dept in running condition a few years later.
Got an old ex government 486 pc. Replaced the 25mhz chip with a DX2 chip. Put in some old hard drives and ran Red Hat 5.2 linux on it for a few years.
Had a AMDk6. First day I had it, I pressed the standby button while the modem was connected. System locked up. IBM's tech site had similar issues listed. Natually the online tech support blamed it on software I loaded. Informed IBM that I just got the PC and haven't installed any software yet. Since then I blacklisted IBM.
Ran the craptiva for a while. One of the hard drives started making a squealing noise. replaced the hard drive. Discovered that underneath that rats next of wires and cables, that the heat sink was loose. IBM, you are forever blacklisted.
Got an Emachine a couple years ago. ran great. Hard drive started to make noise. .. didn't fail. Got an IDE drive, put it on the IDE channel (which slows down my DVD write speed.. ) unplugged noisy hard drive.
Used a knoppix disk to move the drive image from one drive to the other, and used NTFS resize to make disk space to create data partitions.
Got a 5 year old laptop at an auction. Used it in 2002 for some university courses. CD drive is acting up now, and a hard drive has failed from overheating/number crunching. Replaced the hard drive, reinstalled win98. Unable to perform updates such as installing wireless card driver because the network setup looks to the CD drive, but the CD is acting up.

Last year, I got a PC from Value Village with WinME on it. Used it to test boinc. It would take a week to complete a work unit, So, I moved the boinc folder to a USB drive, so that work unit was now portable.. and I processed the WU under WinME for a while.. then Win98 on a Pentium2, then ran it on a linux box on a AMDk6 running boinc Under WINE.. then finished the work unit off on my XP Celeron. That work unit validated OK. :)

Worked in a tech company. Have seen service issues with tape libraries (leader in backup tapes sometimes get fouled up. and have to pry out tape. Have seen NT service packs overwrite system drivers which end up having adverse effects such as ignoring the 'automated' part of an automated tape library (driver now treats it as a manual tape drive). Have seen DEC Alpha motherboards have 'issues'. Hve seen DEC raids have firmware issues where all the data on a raid setup disappears and a DEC rep has to come on site to recover data.

I believe in wearing static straps.
In analyzing service history, have noticed that the techs who dont wear static straps end up replacing more electronic components due to 'hardware errors' or 'it was bad memory'. It's a measurable difference in reliability.
Myself, I've never experienced 'bad memory' or a 'bad video card' on the pcs that I updated myself, but have noticed the 'non static strap' techs having frequent memory card issues.

Threw out: govt 486, the ValueVillage pc, and the Amstrad. Still have the Toshiba laptop, the AMDk4 IBM Craptiva, and the emachine. Only run the eMachine as it runs a lot quieter than the Aptiva. Used the aptiva for playing with the distro of the week, and trying out SolarisX86 and FreeBSD.
I'm not the LHC Alex. Just a number cruncher like everyone else here.
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Travis DJ

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Message 10711 - Posted: 12 Oct 2005, 18:48:32 UTC

Building on what Alex had to say.. The first PC I bought on my own is an eMachine with a Celeron 400. Excluding all the upgrades (and a hard drive I electrocuted with a frayed wire, OOPS!), the power supply was replaced by Best Buy 3 times over 3 years, then I replaced it once since then. Oddly enough the PSU I put in has lasted at least 3 years on its own which was 3x longer than any of the parts BBY shipped the inhome techs. I went through not one, not two, but FOUR Iomega CD-RW drives. These were the ones made by Phillips that they rebranded, 4x4x24. The drive quit writing, then quit reading. Was sent a replacement, plugged it in and it was non-functional from the get go. Was sent another replacement, plugged it in and the drive ejected one inch, made an electrical popping sound, and ceased to work. They finally sent an 8x4x32 which worked for about a year, also of Phillips make, and it quit burning, then quit reading. I've never purchased a drive that was manufactured by Phillips since. Since then I've counted probably close to 50 similar drives installed in COMPAQ computers around the same time period.. and none of them work. To date the eMachine is a workhorse running Win2k, 256MB RAM, 20GB HDD, an unknown brand CDRW drive, 10/100 nic and hasn't shown any sign of wearing out other than its obsolesence.

My AthlonXP 3200+ system has worked like a charm.. Biostar M7NCD mobo (nForce3 250), Corsair XMS3200 DDR/400 ram with LED lights (2x512MB), Seagate PATA 120GB 8MB, ATi 9800 Pro 128MB 8x, 52x AOpen CDRW, 8x ASUS DVD, 16x BenQ DVDRW, Creative Audigy2 Pro, Ultra X-Connect 500W Titanium w/ Blue UV PSU, case lit, custom window.. only failure was the original Antec TruePower 450W PSU had ruptured caps and they wouldn't replace the product since I diagnosed it (opened the PSU lid, DOH!).

IBM ThinkPad R50 from this past summer - no failures, works great, pentium-m 1.6, 1.25GB DDR333, 15" 1400x1050, firewire, bluetooth, usb, wifi a/b/g, 60gb, dvd/cdrw, tons of extras (paid $699 for it!).

Overall I've found when you buy quality components which carry a more expensive price tag you tend to get something that lasts longer so there is a positive correlation of quality to price, in my book.

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