SiG Lady Posted April 19, 2004 Share Posted April 19, 2004 In conjunction with my ongoing graphic art (software) activity, I'm making moves to enhance my ability to deal with the hardware aspect of desktop computers. I'm enrolled in the A+ Certification review course at a local college. So, don't be surprised if I either: 1.) Ask dumb questions about obscure parts of a computer, or 2.) Spout weird, ill-timed jargon about same. I also just (FINALLY!!!) resigned my doofy office position with the sewer engineers, so... I'll have more time to deal with ramping up my other business ventures. Yay! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoNsTeR Posted April 19, 2004 Share Posted April 19, 2004 If you want to learn about hardware, build a computer from scratch by shopping for and purchasing each necessary part. Even though this isn't as hard as it used to be, it's still the best way to learn. The A+ stuff is good, but insufficient by itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted April 19, 2004 Author Share Posted April 19, 2004 We've already done two class exercises in 'shopping for a full system of components' over the past two weeks. The second time at it was 10x as easy as the first. It's a matter of (among other things) getting to know the available sites out there that sell (or auction) components and related items. Not to mention all the links to interesting sidelines like water-cooling components for high-powered systems...... It's easy to see that the A+ coverage is just the tip of the iceberg. But that's OK. One has to start somewhere. There are essentially only two (sometimes three) of us in the class. The teacher knows his stuff and, with such low enrollment, it's essentially a private tutorial. I had my system upgraded pretty thoroughly in December. I can see that I'll be doing the next upgrade myself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricW Posted April 19, 2004 Share Posted April 19, 2004 SL, Does this mean you're doing graphics full-time now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nik Habicht Posted April 19, 2004 Share Posted April 19, 2004 I keep right on learning about computers by trying to fix my own problems. Mostly, I'm successful. Occasionally there are glitches. When I bought my last desktop, I doubled the RAM and installed a second hard drive before even powering it up for the first time. I just finished a harddrive replacement on a friend's computer; by this time next year I should be building my own box.... Gotta learn about RAID before then.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nik Habicht Posted April 19, 2004 Share Posted April 19, 2004 SL, Congrats on the move! Hopefully that'll leave you with some time to shoot... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skywalker Posted April 19, 2004 Share Posted April 19, 2004 SL, what can I say? I've been assembling my own desktops and performing my own HW upgrades since 1995, and this (IMHO) saved me from lots of PITA dealing with systems hang-ups and smarta**#s trying to sell me something not suited for what I needed. Congrats on the move (both business and HW)! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted April 19, 2004 Author Share Posted April 19, 2004 Eric-- I would've been doing the graphics as much as possible in any event. The answer to your question is a sorta-yes. With the change in direction (meant to do it over a year ago but the hip replacement, at the time, intervened for a while) I'll ultimately have MORE TIME for graphics and be able to produce even more sophisticated graphics as time progresses... which was the original idea. The 'hardware' focus was intended to BALANCE out the software orientation... and eventually save money on tech fees... AND maybe help out some other people who need upgrades or new systems built. It seemed a natural evolution--and that was the whole point. Nik-- As I (for the moment) understand it, RAID is recommended as a good way to insure against HD data loss without an external backup system component. 'Mirroring' uses just one controller card and is slower than 'Duplexing' (using two controller cards, which is faster and safer). For some reason my tech (I think) 'striped' my hard drives (the whole point of which I still don't understand) and I think I'd just better put some data to CD-RW on a regular basis pretty soon and use that external backup for safety's sake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted April 19, 2004 Share Posted April 19, 2004 RAID can be done to improve access speed and/or data reliability in the event of a drive crash. Striping does the former (writing different data to multiple drives at once so you wait less for each drive) while mirroring does the latter (copying the same data to different drives for redundancy). There are dozens of combinations possible depending on the number of drives you've got and how fancy your controller is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoNsTeR Posted April 19, 2004 Share Posted April 19, 2004 RAID 0 = "striping", interleaves data across all drives in the raidset, somewhat slower on writing but potentially much faster on reading, not fault tolerant (losing one drive loses the entire array) RAID 1 = "mirroring", writes data to both drives in the raidset (or both RAID 0 subsets, this arrangement is often called 1+0), somewhat slow on write and fast on read, very fault tolerant (can tolerate the loss of half its drives), very expensive RAID 5, requires at least 3 drives, stripes data across all drives but one, writes parity to the last drive, again slow write fast read. A RAID 5 array can tolerate and recover from the loss of one drive JBOD = "just a bunch of disks", lumps a number of disks together as one volume, but doesn't spread data across them, somewhat more fault tolerant than RAID 0, performance identical to single drives, requires basically zero software or hardware overhead levels 2, 3, and 4 are complicated and rarely used One important thing to remember about ALL RAID levels is that the mean-time-between-failure (MTBF) for an array is the MTBF for a single drive divided by the number of drives in the array. So if a drive has an MTBF of 500,000 power-on hours, an array of 10 drives has an MTBF of 50,000 power-on hours. This isn't of much consequence to home users, but for enterprises with huge arrays it's very important to keep spares on hand. (Y'know, in case anyone cared ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yeahyeah Posted April 19, 2004 Share Posted April 19, 2004 Do you suppose to wash your hands after touching the "SCSI" port? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted April 19, 2004 Author Share Posted April 19, 2004 Wow, that RAID rundown looks like the definitions straight out of Mike Meyers book.. No, you wash your hands BEFORE you get involved with SCSI stuff.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted April 19, 2004 Share Posted April 19, 2004 Check into Serial ATA hard drives if you're building a new box-- faster, easier to wire and much more future-proof than the old IDE interface. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ErikW Posted April 19, 2004 Share Posted April 19, 2004 Am I the only person who thinks SCSI should be pronounced "sexy?" To everybody else, it's "scuzzy." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kdj Posted April 19, 2004 Share Posted April 19, 2004 Am I the only person who thinks SCSI should be pronounced "sexy?" To everybody else, it's "scuzzy." Clearly, you are ... if you look at SCSI in detail, the latter pronounciation makes much more sense Kevin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted April 19, 2004 Author Share Posted April 19, 2004 ---"sexy'...!! Gah, that's GREAT!!!! I will bring it up in class, you damn' betcha!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted April 19, 2004 Author Share Posted April 19, 2004 Hmmm... maybe should think about next upgrade already: Tactical components... yesssss... And I've seen some outrageous video cards that DEFINITELY look tactical...!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoNsTeR Posted April 20, 2004 Share Posted April 20, 2004 You should see my tactical 570g copper heat sink with hi-speed/lo-drag 92mm adjustable-speed fan My CPU runs at 17 degrees Celsius Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted April 20, 2004 Author Share Posted April 20, 2004 Whoa... (got pictures??!!) And you should SEE some of those water-cooling systems for the TRULY tactically-overclocked system! NASA should take note!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted April 20, 2004 Author Share Posted April 20, 2004 Hmmm... I just found the CMS Velocity SATA (80GB+) automatic external backup system... supposedly blows Firewire away for performance...? Comes with disaster recovery internal program, needs no slot (Windows recognizes the card automatically once plugged in......)(card sold separately from drive). Hmmm... Might be more sensible than CDs for backup. As long as the wallet holds out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GRD Posted April 20, 2004 Share Posted April 20, 2004 The single most important characteristic a backup device can have is: you have to be able to have it finish without changing the media. If you have to babysit it and put another CD in, you'll never do it. I'm serious. Get something big enough to do it all in one big chunk, and then make it automatic. - Gabe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D.Hayden Posted April 20, 2004 Share Posted April 20, 2004 I have a couple 200GBs... work pretty well, and I think they take USB 2.0 or Firewire, so whatever you have. 80GB seems a little small by current standards.. but way better than nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted April 20, 2004 Author Share Posted April 20, 2004 The CMS Velocity External Backup comes in at least two higher capacities: 120GB and 200GB. 200GB is higher price than the 80GB but that's logical. OTOH, Western Digital has a fancy little multi-featured external number for less with 250GB... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D.Hayden Posted April 20, 2004 Share Posted April 20, 2004 fwiw - I use the MaxTor's... Speed wasn't important to me, capacity was. Backups run overnight. The important thing is it's backed up, and recoverable. 200GB will give most systems a number of generations of data, just in case you wanted that copy of a document, 3 verisons ago, that's where all the space goes. And to be really fair, work pays for them, I don't generally look into price, if it's close enough to the average. It's often easier getting something more expensive, if people are used to dealing with a vendor. BTW - I can't believe the Software vs Hardware RAID never came up! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted April 20, 2004 Author Share Posted April 20, 2004 The CMS device aforementioned seems to be a Maxtor product in terms of the guts of the device... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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