FYI, consider that your RAID only protects against one single type of failure: a single drive failure. That's it. Power surges, system problems, data corruption, viruses, all of those things are still a threat. To answer your question, though, right click on My Computer, select Manage, choose Disk Management, right click on your partition and select "Shrink" - once you have shrunk it, you can add a new partition in the unpartitioned space.
Then it is the same as without a raid set up. Thanks I understand it only protects against physical failures, but that is more than he has right now (aka a single 4 year old laptop with EVERYTHING on it) The whole virus, data corruption issues are another ball of wax I am working on right now....
This is my price range in Canadian $$, used for a buch of gaming but old machine is about sone for keeping up so it's shopping time. I know there is better than these, but this is the range I am currently hunting in. IF you had to choose, which machine do you think is better? Yes yes they are off the dell site. And the second one is a deal of the day, so part of it is wait for better deals till the 24th, or is this maybe pretty decent? Thanks #1 For $1,149.00 Processor Intel® Core™ i5-750 processor(8MB Cache, 2.66GHz) Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English Security Software McAfee SecurityCenter, 15-Months Office Software Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 Memory 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz - 4 DIMMs Hard Drive 750GB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache Monitor 23.0" Dell ST2310 Full HD Monitor with VGA cable Graphics Card ATI Radeon HD 5670 1GB GDDR5 Optical Drive 16X DVD+/-RW Drive Keyboard Dell Studio Consumer Multimedia Keyboard Mouse Dell Studio Optical Mouse Speakers No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system) #2 For $1,074.00 Processor AMD Athlon™ II X4 630 + ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English Security Software McAfee SecurityCenter, 15-Months Office Software Microsoft® Works 9.0 Memory 6GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz - 4 DIMMS Hard Drive 1TB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache Monitor 23.0" Dell ST2310 Full HD Monitor with VGA cable Optical Drive Blu-ray Disc (BD) Combo (Reads BD and Writes to DVD/CD) Modem and Wireless No Modem Option Keyboard Dell USB Entry Keyboard Mouse Dell Studio Optical Mouse Speakers No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system)
So my computer died on me the other day. Couldn't even get into the BIOS, let alone boot from a disk. After bringing it in I get informed that the RAID controller on my motherboard broke. My setup consisted of a SSD for the OS, a RAID0 for programs, and a RAID1 for data. I'm being told that in any event my RAIDs need to be rebuilt, which will wipe all the data on them. Is that really the only solution? I have my data backed up on an external, but reinstalling all the programs on my RAID0 is a pain in the ass. My computer isn't even a year old. More to the point I'm sick of this crap. On the computer I had previous to this one my motherboard died before its time. What the fuck do I have to do to get some decent reliability? Seriously, if there was a motherboard out there that cost $1000 but had guaranteed (or as close to it as you can get) reliabilty for at least 4 years I'd give it serious consideration. I'm just tired of rebuilding my computers all the time.
We have a desktop computer that the motherboard overheated on. We had a guy repair it, but since then, it's run basically like shit. I'd like to build a decent desktop. All I need is the computer itself, we have the monitor, keyboard, mouse and all that, so basically just the new black box. It will be used mostly for surfing the internet, some kids games (I spy, educational stuff, nothing too graphics intensive), burning CDs/DVDs, and storage of pictures and documents and stuff. I'd like to have a decent amount of memory, and I'd like it to be fast, but it doesn't need to be blazingly, earth-shakingly fast. And I'd like to do it cheaply. Ideas?
Do you have a rough price range? Also have you built a computer before, I only ask because there are plenty decently cheap pre-assembled rigs right now.
The Dell Outlet has scratch-and-dent machines that have a warranty and are typically just as good as new. I've purchased several and a couple have come that couldn't be distinguished from new, and a couple came with just a ding in the side of the case or a scratch on a side panel. I think they're generally a good deal and you can often get things like their Precision business line, which are higher quality components, for little money.
I hate my Samsung all-in-one. It's a piece of shit, I've replaced twice, and Samsung's customer service is laughable at best. They wanted me to ship it to them and they'd send a replacement in 2-3 weeks. I'm looking for an all-in-one laser black and white for around $500 with good customer service. Is this even possible? I print roughly 2 reams a day.
I have used a lot of AIO printer/scanner/copier/faxes. They all suck, IMO. I did use one really great AIO machine. It was a $55,000 laser business model that stood about 5' tall. So I recommend that. It was a Canon, I can get you the model number if you want. Buy a scanner and a printer, and be happy. Plus you don't have to replace them both when one dies.
With that workload? No. The HP all in one's around the price point can cope with low volume use (printing a ream a week) and be worthwhile at $500. But you're talking about adding an extra zero to the price for a decent multi function that will cope with that work load and not be shit.
So I just got a wicked deal on some 1TB drives ($50 a peice, I <3 Boxing day sales) I am planning on replacing my current HDD (a ancient 230gb drive, 5 years old or damn close to it), and I have a question regarding this. I already have a 3rd 1TB drive in the computer and I am looking to maximize my storage and get some form of redundant backup. I was looking at setting it up as a RAID5, but the bit of research I have done makes it seem like this is a bad idea (not clear why though). Anyone know anything about this?
It's all a compromise. If you want maximum usable space, with minimal drives, and redundancy, but at the cost of some speed, then RAID 5 is good. There are various RAID configs you can use that will provide you maximum read speed, maximum write speed, but at the cost of usable space. (In other words, you might need 4 drives but only have the use of 2 drives worth of space). RAID 5 should be good for you. If you want to help out with the performance thing, don't rely on the OS-based RAID setup, and get a RAID controller with some sort of built-in cache. Not only will the cache help with performance, but they usually do a better job of parallelizing the drive read/writes. Makes a big difference, and RAID cards aren't that expensive any more. I assume that all the drives are the exact same physical drives... you really don't want to start mixing and matching in a RAID set.
I just don't think RAID is a good idea for the average user. RAID5 will substantially slow your write speeds without a decent amount of cache, and you don't get even 128mb, which I'd consider the minimum, until around the $200 mark for cards. 256mb is better but you're approaching $300 then. Once you have the RAID, you have to make sure you monitor it for problems since some cards/drivers aren't that good about letting you know about a drive failure, which could make you lose all of your data. If something fails, you need to be quick about replacing the drive and it should really be replaced by the same drive brand/model/type, so availability can be a problem. Then, forget about upgrading. Most consumer cards have no provision for migrating your RAID so it becomes an intensive process of moving ALL of your data off, destroying the RAID, rebuilding the new one and moving all of the data back. All in all, I think most people would be better served with three drives, and then using Windows Backup or another scheduling backup app to make regular backups of critical data to the other drive(s). Every Sunday, my critical data is copied across to another drive to protect against a drive failure. This means upgrading is never an issue, I don't have ANY wasted space on the drives since I am not duplicating non-critical data, and I get maximum usable drive space. And I didn't spend $200+ on a RAID card. ...and of course, it should NEVER be your only backup. You are backing everything up off-site with a service like Backblaze, right?
Just remember they call RAID 0 that because it's how much data you'll recover if it fails Seconding just use a second drive for backups. Put it in a Firewire/ESATA caddy and keep it in a fireproof safe or something.
I'm in the market for a new pc for the first time in about 8 years, been running on a G5. I really have no idea what i'm doing anymore as lots of things have changed. I've priced this one out to right over $1k, and was wondering if i should make any changes for better value/performance. I'm mainly gonna use it for illustrator/photoshop/video stuff but will also do some gaming, Civ 5, Diablo 3 for the most part. Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB MSI R6850 Cyclone PE/OC Radeon HD 6850 1GB CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V S G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Intel BOXDX58OG LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Have at it. I want to stay around $1k.
If I were building a budget machine right now, I'd sit tight for the new Sandy Bridge processors and the revised Cougar Point chipsets. The new processors have revised memory controllers which makes the memory access faster. The Sandy Bridge processors were absolute overclocking beasts if you buy one of the processor part numbers ending in "K". The new i5-2500K is going to be a hell of a bargain at just over $200. The machine you specified is fine, but if you go that route you should have three memory chips since the CPU and motherboard support tri-channel memory. You could go with 3x2gb if you don't want to fork out for 3x4gb. Read up on Sandy Bridge if you want: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the- ... 0-tested/1</a>
I was hoping to build a server and a torrent box. I'm not sure if these should be two things or one. If separate, I have 3 storage hdd's I want in the server and another one for the torrent box. I have two old winxp machines with maybe pentium4 and 512mb ram in each of them that I was hoping to use for this. What is my next step to set it up? The server, I guess I'll need windows home server installed on it? Then plug it into a monitor to set it up to share and have it plugged into the router with no screen when it's up and running. The torrent box, Im thinking I leave xp and just set up utorrent on it. Whenever I d/l a torrent on my main machine, send the file to the torrent box to get started on it. This one would be plugged in with no screen as well. I am just guessing at the steps above. I am hoping someone can set me straight and give me a clue about using Remote Desktop so they won't need a monitor. Thanks a lot.
"Server" is kind of a vague role. My experience is about 90% of the people who think they want a server, have no reason to actually need one. If you want a dedicated torrenting box that you can also use as a central repository for all of your files, you only need one machine, and you only need Windows XP, and you don't need to do anything special. Right click on the storage drive and share it. Install UltraVNC for remote control capabilities. Install a torrent client. Done. Frankly, this does not require a dedicated machine unless you don't have another desktop in the house. If you have a primary use desktop, you can simply add the drives to it as a network share. This has the advantage of being only one computer to manage and only one computer consuming electricity. What happens if the dedicated "server" breaks? Are you going to repair/replace it? Why spend that money when your existing system works fine? Servers are great for substantial multi-user environments but most peoples' homes don't qualify. If there is already a desktop running somewhere, you already have a server. If you're a laptop house, then there's a good reason for a server like that.
THANKS FOR TAKING THE AIR OUT OF MY BALLOON!! No, really, thanks for your reply. The way you put it made me realize that sharing the drives from this machine has worked fine and it would be wasteful to make another box for that purpose. I don't like leaving it on all night seeding because it's a big machine and I feel using more energy than the task requires. I think that was the main reason I wanted another machine for torrents/file sharing. And since I had two spare low powered machines it wouldn't cost anything as far as I can see, even if it broke the next machine can step up. Your line about substantial multi-user does make sense, my server wouldn't have more than one or 2 occasional users. Now I'm off to d/l UltraVNC, thanks again.