An SSD is essentially a hard drive that uses flash memory instead of magnetic platters to store your data. In terms of speed, there's nothing for home users that tops it. My home computer goes from a cold start to having Windows booted up and all of my applications running inside of 20 seconds. Whereas with a regular 7200 RPM drive it may take over a minute. A centralized storage device on a network is called Network Attached Storage or NAS device. You can set it up as a shared drive across your network if that's what you so desire. NAS devices have some kind of software built into them to allow different apps to access them, aside from PC/Macs.
Holy fuck, I just got wood. I must have that. I am the most impatient motherfucker on the planet. I want to slam my head into my keyboard while waiting for boot up. Add SSD to the "necessity" list. Right now, my wife and I both have Android smartphones (Galaxy S2 and Optimus L9), we have a wireless inkjet/scanner/etc, a wireless laserjet, a wireless laptop, and a hardwired tower. We have another tower that is currently collecting dust, but will eventually become a limited access homework computer for the kids. Basically, I would like to have some sort of central storage that we can access pictures/movies/music from on all devices. My laptop has 250GB with another 250GB portable HD, and they are both almost completely full. If I could have some ridiculous central storage (instead of my wife wanting to copy everything onto 3 or 4 devices) life would be far easier.
A good network attached storage device is going to be expensive. A cheap one is going to be slow. The easiest and cleanest solution is just to use the desktop as a means of sharing everything - you can share folders over your network for other devices to use, and the easiest thing for the smartphones/tablets is often a service like Google Drive or Dropbox. Also, make sure you're backing stuff up. Crashplan or Backblaze or a similar service will do wonders to make sure you don't need to retain duplicate copies of things, or worry about burning CDs, or lose everything with an electrical problem.
A few weeks ago, I got an error message for one of the front USB ports on my desktop, with a "device not recognized" type error. Eventually, that message kept popping up several times a day, even if nothing was plugged in. I couldn't repair it, and I didn't really need it, so I disabled it. Then, early week, the other front USB port just stopped working. All four rear ports were working. Then, last Thursday, only two of th rear USB ports worked. Fortunately, one of those was where the keyboard was plugged in, so I plugged a port hub into a good one, so I could use my mouse and printer. This morning I was down to one working USB hub, and set out to try and get everything working. I read some information that something got screwed during a Windows update, and to try an going back to a previous restore point. (Also, read to uncheck the power management box on the USB ports, which I did.) When my computer rebooted, I now have no functioning USB ports. I have no idea what to do. I have tried turning the power off, unplugging the cord and waiting five minutes - no luck. When boot first begins, my keyboard will flash a light briefly, and at that moment, I can successfully press escape to enter setup and try to get to the BIOS screen. But, then, no response - no more keyboard after I get to the setup screen. The keyboard connection doesn't survive long enough to try and run in safe mode, run windows normally, or anything. WTF? Windows 7 HP Pavilion p7-1110 Desktop PC - about 18 months old 2gen Intel i3-2120 6GB RAM 1TB Hard drive I don't think it's a hardware issue - so how in the heck do I work on software, OS or firmware issues if I don't have a keyboard or mouse? And, there's no PS/2 port or whatever they used to be called. Is it possible to add a board with a PS/2 port, and have the computer recognize it? Edit: I forgot to add, that I have tried turning the computer on with nothing plugged in other than the monitor, with just the keyboard plugged in, etc. When I have it all unplugged, the first screen will read "keyboard error" - so, the USB port works long enough to recognize it's not there or let me press escape.
Ouch. Fortunately, the keyboard not functioning in the BIOS eliminates the vast majority of the troubleshooting steps. It's not a Windows update. - Have you tried another keyboard? - You could try a USB card that plugs into your PCI slots (or a PS2 card that plugs into your PCI slots), in case it's an issue with your on-board USB ports. Past that, you'll have to at least open up the case. Blow out the dust, try disconnecting some of the peripherals, make sure nothing is shorted out, the capacitors on the board aren't leaking, etc. The latter you may not have a good feel for - but you can always look for oddities on the board that don't look normal.
Thanks. Yes, I did try another keyboard (and mouse) one at a time, just in case there was a specif port causing the conflict. Going to try the card idea. I already opened her up, to see what I could see, and don't see anything strange. Although, of freaking course, I have no PCI slots - just PCI express. So, I can't find a card here locally, and will have to wait on one overnight.
All the USB ports are still providing power - I can charge devices, but not communicate with them. Another help forum I read suggested pulling the battery for 5 minutes instead of just shutting off the power. I know the battery keeps the date and time current. But what else do I lose if I pull the battery?
Well, typically that will also reset the BIOS to its defaults, which is not a bad idea if you're still getting power from the USB ports (which means they likely aren't shorted out. You won't lose any data - in the worst case, you might have to go into the BIOS and fiddle with a setting or two in order to get the machine to boot (for instance, if your hard drive is listed as AHCI in the BIOS and removing the battery resets it to IDE or something). That's unlikely and we could probably work it out here if it did happen. Some machines have capacitors that store a small trickle charge for maintaining BIOS settings, so you might have to hold the power button down for ~60 seconds after you unplug the machine and remove the battery. That's the reset process for HP servers.
Okay, I am posting an update here, in case BV or anybody else ever runs into this . . . I have installed a four port USB card (PCI express) with success! I powered down, unplugged, pulled the cover, removed the slot blank, installed the card (a cheap one from TigerDirect by Ultra, $10), and fired everything back up. I waited a few minutes, then plugged in a mouse and keyboard, and it worked. So, what I have to do first is finish some work that needs to go out. Then, I'm not sure which step to try next - I was trying to return to a restore point prior to the USB failures, when I lost all USB's. So, I don't know if I should finish that restore process choosing one from several weeks ago; or, if I should try the battery pull BIOS reset thing. And, I'm actually not sure if I should do any of that - I can get by using the new 4 ports. I have a port hub that I can plug into one port, so I can just leave it alone. But, I'm concerned if there's somekind of software / OS issue, will it also effect the ports working on the PCIE slot? (I know nothing about hardware interface.) There were four ports on the back that were part of the large component that is soldered right onto the motherboard - USB's, ethernet, monitor, speakers, etc. Then there were two on the front that had a jumper wire connecting them to another part of the mb. They all "went bad."
You probably don't have to pull the battery. Go into the BIOS and see if there's an option to "Reset to Factory Defaults" or "Reset to Optimized Configuration" or something like that. See if that fixes your ports. If not, try the battery pull trick. If it's still not working, go ahead and get by with your new card but expect problems in the future. Since the USB ports did not function in the BIOS, I would say what you do in Windows is irrelevant - as long as you've booted and everything is working, Windows is okay.
Incidentally, all of the motherboard components like USB / Ethernet / etc. typically run through the same express chipset. I believe they typically all use PCI Express lanes, which your new card is also using. So it's interesting that just the USB ports seemed to all go bad, since they're sharing system architecture with the other components. There's no conclusive answer as to whether you should expect other failures. It's good that this was isolated to USB, since it may just be those dedicated USB lanes that are not functioning. It's bad, though, that they all run through the same chipset since it could indicate a motherboard on the way out. I would have a contingency plan - backups and maybe a little cash set aside in case you need to replace it.
This about the only place I can get advice / help where the options aren't "Is your computer plugged in?" "Try these 643 steps first, then copy the log here!" or "First, reinstall your operating system." Anyway, I don't know if there's something easy I can try for this: My computer is running Win 7 Home Premium. I have another computer running Win XP Home. I have a basic 4 port router that successfully lets both computers connect to the internet through my cable modem and I can print to my large format plotter across the "network." I only add that to indicate the router is functional. I have a folder on the XP machine that I want to share, to view from my Win7 machine. I have tried about a thousand different things, but cannot seem to make it work. I have rebooted a number of times after changing various settings, but still can't make it work. I have downloaded the Link-layer Topology Discovery Responder on the XP machine. I have shared the folder on the XP machine. Both machines are in the Workgroup named WORKGROUP. I have tried setting up a Homegroup and not, I have tried using the Home Network setting and the Work Network setting. If I open select "See Full Map" in the Network & Sharing Center, I see the icon and name for both my computer and the XP one. But, if I right click mine, I get a dialog box with such options as "map network drive" which is what I want to do. But, if I right click the XP, I get no options. Also, I can mouse hover over the XP icon and display the IP address. If I got to the CMD prompt, I can successfully ping that IP address. But, I cannot connect to the damn drive. I am sure I am doing something simply stupid, but I am at a loss. I tried manually connecting with \\machinename\folder, but cannot. Despite the fact it shows up in the "map," the error indicates that machinename cannot be found. Any suggestions?
Turn off home group, first. Can you ping the remote computer by name? What happens if you open a Windows Explorer window, and put \\ipaddress\ into the title bar (whatever the IP is of the remote computer) - does it fail to connect, or does it seem to show you as connected but with no shared folders?
Are you using an account with the same username/password on both machines? In my experience, trying to use the guest account for network sharing is hit or miss across versions of Windows.
Ok, I think I am putting this question in the correct place... Please note that I am not certified/trained in anything, I just have a touch more experience than the average joe. I am trying to set up an LDAP accessible address book in Windows Server 2008 r2 so my network users can have a standard company-wide address book. I have my OUs set up in AD, and the contacts contained therein. From what I understand (and I might be way, way wrong) this type of LDAP setup is a basic part of AD, and I don't need to configure LDAP services. In Outlook, I can attach to the appropriate server, but even with the "Enable Browsing" box selected, the address book shows up blank, and I have to type in the name of whoever I want for it to show. Is there any way for the whole list to show when I select the appropriate address book? I am assuming it is something at the server level I need to change, but I am either googling the wrong stuff, or, as I refuse to believe, I am the first person with this problem. Thanks in advance for whatever help you can give!
I am thinking of getting either an Eee box, or building something similiar. I want it for my TV so i can stream to it instead of my ps3 or just copy from a media server, or stick in a usb key. The ps3 cant play any of the new h264 high def rips. I really dont plan on doing any game if i do it is generally isn't anything that is graphic intensive, so that isn't a concern. Any of you guys have something similar, and do you like it? Thanks
Got a rackmount server question. I am looking to start a huge file sever, i want to rip all my blurays and dvd. Yes I know i can go out and get something like a drobo box(500+ for a 4 bay), but at the price for how much storage i will eventually need those will become way more expensive then starting a small rackmount, plus i also want to play with one. Now to the question. With a 3U or a 4U with 16 or 20 hard drive slots(even seen some with 40 2.5"), how do you connect them all to your mother board? The highest amound of slots on a mother boards i have found is 6 SATA connections(and most of those only have 2 sata3(6Gb/s) and 4 sata 2(3Gb/s) and 8 SAS connections(6Gb/s). From what i under stand you can hook a SATA hdd into the SAS connections, but not the other way around. Even most of the server mother boards I have found dont have onboard raid controllers, only software. How much CPU does software raid take up? I know you can get SATA raid cards, but most of them are only 4 slot, but you can get 8 slot SAS raid controllers. So how do you connect them all to the motherboard? Do you just get a bunch of SAS controllers? Thanks.
You're going to spend a lot of money on this, no matter what. What you need to do for these boxes is buy a bunch of SATA PCI or PCI Express cards. You can either buy RAID cards, and configure hardware RAID, or you can buy regular SATA expansion cards, install something like FreeNAS on the server, and create a ZFS array (a software RAID). This last option is probably your cheapest option. This is going to be very slow, though. Also, by the time you've gotten done buying a rackmount server, motherboard with enough PCI slots, a bunch of decent SATA expansion cards, big power supply/CPU/etc., I doubt you're going to come out much ahead. Backblaze has some interesting articles on what they use for their storage chassis. Check out their v2.0 and 3.0 chassis too: <a class="postlink" href="http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/pe ... d-storage/</a> I'd lean towards something like a Synology who has a thriving development community with lots of great apps to run on the boxes. For less than $1000, you can get an empty 8-bay chassis, and with RAID5 and 4TB drives you'll come out at ~28TB of storage. If you're doing a straight rip of your Blu-rays, you might eat up that storage pretty quickly but there's no great reason to do so; rip it with a high quality x264 encoding and you'll cut the size in half. Honestly, one of the biggest problems with this kind of project is what you do with so many terabytes. It's in your best interest to reduce the amount of stuff you store, because inevitably you'll need to migrate it, or when a drive fails your rebuild time is going to extend into many days (putting you at risk for a second drive failure), or what about backups for protection - doubling your storage requirements and copy times?
Help me upgrade my gaming PC. Here's what I'm working with currently. <a class="postlink" href="http://pcpartpicker.com/user/evanmayo/saved/1Itd" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://pcpartpicker.com/user/evanmayo/saved/1Itd</a> I mainly play MoBa's and RTS, w/ some FPS games like Battlefield and other random stuff I find on Steam. Got about $400 bucks to spend. Only game in 1080p. Option 1 - Cooler Master Hyper 212, OC my CPU to 3.7 or 3.8 hopefully and buy an r9 280x. ~320ish Option 2 - New ASUS & Haswell CPU, probably a i5-4670k - probably ~375ish Option 3 - wait until february for the AMD steamroller CPU's, probably 350ish I think with the new FM2+ mobos. I can plug computer things into sockets but I'm not really knowledgeable enough to tell whether my current configuration is being bottlenecked. I can run things at ultra settings on almost all games, but I'm wondering if my Phenom II is about to start sucking badly on the next generation of games. I know Battlefield 4, in particular, is optimized for multi-threading and a quad-core may start to show its age on that. I posted this on Tom's Hardware a few months ago and the mouthbreathers there recommended I got a 27 inch 1440p monitor from Korea, which is a neat idea, but not really something I'm interested in based on the games I play. I guess my real question is, how much better are intel CPU's compared to what I have, like a night and day difference in going from HDD to SSD for OS, or just a nice upgrade, and whether there is any reason to buy AMD processors anymore once you get past the budget options around $100. Thanks!
Couple things - AMD has basically lost. Except for budget machines, Intel is just wiping the floor with them - their dev cycle is so much faster, it's almost not even fair. It won't be some kind of revelation like the SSD was, but there's little reason to go with AMD when you do decide to upgrade. That said, there's very little to be gained by proactively upgrading your machine. If everything is running fast, just sit tight. Prices will drop, clock cycles will increase, and when you start running into games that you can't run on max settings, you'll get more for your money. Also, the multithreading concern is overblown. Your quad core has plenty of threads to work with, and so much is getting processed in the video card anyway, your CPU is becoming less important.