On Sep 18, 2012, at 1:28 AM, Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe@semitwist.com> wrote:
> 
> One important thing to keep on mind (that I've learned from Tom's Hardware and Sharky Extreme) is that power supply manufacturer apparently lie about their wattages as a regular matter of course. Ie, if it says "X Watts", then you're never going to get it to even about 0.9*X without the stupid thing blowing up. So keep that in mind when shopping.

They are probably advertising their peak voltage. One of the most valuable lessons I've learned about electrical equipment is that everything is built with an intended usage pattern and if you exceed that the part will fail. The really frustrating thing is that it can be very hard to find a version of something rated for continuous use, and when you do, they're incredibly more expensive than the off the shelf version of that thing. I've gone through countless paper shredders because of this, and melted more than one popcorn popper (I roast my own coffee).

> Regarding HDDs, I've sworn I will *never* run a main system again
> without a GOOD always-on SMART monitor like Hard Disk Sentinel
> <http://www.hdsentinel.com/>. In fact, that's one of the main reasons I
> haven't switched my primary OS from Win to Linux yet, because I can't
> find a good Linux SMART monitor. (Manually running a CLI program
> - or writing a script to do it - doesn't even remotely count.) Oooh!
> Actually, now that I've looked up that link, it looks like they do
> have an early Linux version now. Awesome, I'm gonna have to try that
> out.

And I've learned that I will never again run a striped RAID off a mainboard controller, because when the mainboard dies you're SOL.

On Tuesday, 18 September 2012 at 15:47:30 UTC, Sean Kelly wrote:
> And I've learned that I will never again run a striped RAID off a mainboard controller, because when the mainboard dies you're SOL.

Migrate to ZFS! :D

On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 08:36:26AM -0700, Sean Kelly wrote:
> On Sep 18, 2012, at 12:48 AM, Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote:
> > The most common failure I've had are the power supplies, they're still as bad today as in the 80's.
> 
> There are good power supplies, they just don't come in pre-built computers because they're expensive.  I think the same could be said of products from any era.

Yeah, I've learned the hard way not to trust pre-assembled PCs.  They may have one or two good components listed in the ad just to hook you, but usually many other parts (that people don't usually pay attention to) are crap. PSUs are one of them. Nowadays I only ever buy parts, and assemble my own PCs. Things tend to last much longer this way.

(Same thing goes for software... one thing I really like about Linux is that you can replace parts freely without voiding warranties or violating EULAs or wrestling with straitjacketed software licenses or fighting with gratuitous incompatibilities between software not written by the same people, that sorta thing. And usually OSS software comes with alternatives for everything, should the default one turn out to be crap. (Well OK, sometimes all the alternatives are crap too, but that's another story.))


T

-- 
Doubtless it is a good thing to have an open mind, but a truly open mind should be open at both ends, like the food-pipe, with the capacity for excretion as well as absorption. -- Northrop Frye

On Tuesday, 18 September 2012 at 08:27:31 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Regarding HDDs, I've sworn I will *never* run a main system again
> without a GOOD always-on SMART monitor like Hard Disk Sentinel
> <http://www.hdsentinel.com/>. In fact, that's one of the main reasons I
> haven't switched my primary OS from Win to Linux yet, because I can't
> find a good Linux SMART monitor. (Manually running a CLI program
> - or writing a script to do it - doesn't even remotely count.) Oooh!
> Actually, now that I've looked up that link, it looks like they do
> have an early Linux version now. Awesome, I'm gonna have to try that
> out.

I do believe conky can provide SMART monitoring.
http://conky.sourceforge.net/

Although periodically running GSmartCtl (GUI front-end to the command line tool) isn't a bad idea, either, to see the specific details (spin-ups, heat stress, etc) and/or execute the drive's self-test.

On 18-Sep-12 02:39, Xinok wrote:
> On Monday, 17 September 2012 at 07:16:15 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>> On Monday, September 17, 2012 09:05:48 David Nadlinger wrote:
>>> On Sunday, 16 September 2012 at 21:59:30 UTC, Jøn wrote:
>>> > The best idea I had today: rename D into :D
>>> > > * Easier to google
>>>
>>> You might be surprised to see that D is the number 1 result for
>>> ":D" even today.
>>
>> The search results seem to be identical whether you search for D or
>> :D, so the
>> colon seems to be ignored. Of course, the fact that dlang.org comes up
>> first
>> could just be because google taylors its results to you, and we're
>> both people
>> who deal with D (and presumably search for it from time to time) already.
>>
>> - Jonathan M Davis
>
> It's the second result on DuckDuckGo, which *doesn't* tailor it's search
> results.
>
> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=d

Nowhere to be found for me. Obviously they also do tailor the results.
(it's first time I see duckduckgo, and I followed your exact link)

-- 
Dmitry Olshansky

On 9/18/12 11:10 AM, Dmitry Olshansky wrote:
> On 18-Sep-12 02:39, Xinok wrote:
>> It's the second result on DuckDuckGo, which *doesn't* tailor it's search
>> results.
>>
>> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=d
>
> Nowhere to be found for me. Obviously they also do tailor the results.
> (it's first time I see duckduckgo, and I followed your exact link)

It must have changed overnight--yesterday I saw it as the second result; today I don't see it either (except when I expand the Computing section).

On 09/18/2012 03:48 AM, Walter Bright wrote:
> ?? I don't have such problems with my computers, and I tend to run them
> for 5 years before upgrading. The HD failure rate is about the same as
> in the 80's. Of course, we no longer have to deal with floppies that get
> corrupted often.
>
> The most common failure I've had are the power supplies, they're still
> as bad today as in the 80's.
>

Never had a power supply failure... But all my power supplies can handle a lot more than they are used for.

The #0 failure I see is HD... :-( I have had the necessary disks die on me in the last 20 years...

On Tuesday, 18 September 2012 at 19:03:40 UTC, Jan Knepper wrote:
> On 09/18/2012 03:48 AM, Walter Bright wrote:
>> ?? I don't have such problems with my computers, and I tend to run them
>> for 5 years before upgrading. The HD failure rate is about the same as
>> in the 80's. Of course, we no longer have to deal with floppies that get
>> corrupted often.
>>
>> The most common failure I've had are the power supplies, they're still
>> as bad today as in the 80's.
>>
>
> Never had a power supply failure... But all my power supplies can handle a lot more than they are used for.
>
> The #0 failure I see is HD... :-( I have had the necessary disks die on me in the last 20 years...

Neither have I... in the past 10 years (young dev here).

However, I've had 3 SSDs crap out on me in less than a month... out of 3... on 3 different computers. I'm on my fourth now. 4 months running.

The worst part about an SSD failure is the utter and total lack of warning. One day, everything is green. The next day, the bios can't see it. Game over.

I've had friends ask me to "investigate" blue screens and intermittent errors. The HDD was dye-ING, but the data/os still salvageable. Not so with an SSD.

On Tuesday, September 18, 2012 21:37:06 monarch_dodra wrote:
> On Tuesday, 18 September 2012 at 19:03:40 UTC, Jan Knepper wrote:
> > On 09/18/2012 03:48 AM, Walter Bright wrote:
> >> ?? I don't have such problems with my computers, and I tend to
> >> run them
> >> for 5 years before upgrading. The HD failure rate is about the
> >> same as
> >> in the 80's. Of course, we no longer have to deal with
> >> floppies that get
> >> corrupted often.
> >> 
> >> The most common failure I've had are the power supplies,
> >> they're still
> >> as bad today as in the 80's.
> > 
> > Never had a power supply failure... But all my power supplies can handle a lot more than they are used for.
> > 
> > The #0 failure I see is HD... :-( I have had the necessary disks die on me in the last 20 years...
> 
> Neither have I... in the past 10 years (young dev here).
> 
> However, I've had 3 SSDs crap out on me in less than a month... out of 3... on 3 different computers. I'm on my fourth now. 4 months running.
> 
> The worst part about an SSD failure is the utter and total lack of warning. One day, everything is green. The next day, the bios can't see it. Game over.
> 
> I've had friends ask me to "investigate" blue screens and intermittent errors. The HDD was dye-ING, but the data/os still salvageable. Not so with an SSD.

I have an rsync cronjob back up my home partition nightly so that the chances of losing that data are slim (though I don't back up all the rest of my data from my many hard drives unfortunately - it would take up too much space). It's saved me on a number of occasions from corrupted or lost data even _without_ hard drive failures. Regular backups are a must IMHO, though I think that most people consider it too much of a hassle to bother with unfortunately.

- Jonathan M Davis

On 9/18/2012 2:16 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 01:10:07 -0700
> Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote:
>
>> On 9/18/2012 12:37 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> Heh, actually, my 10-year-old 32-bit single-core XP desktop is still
>>> going strong,
>>
>> I upgraded to a 6 core 64 bit machine. It really does improve the
>> usability of my computer.
>>
>
> I avoid bloatware, so extra silicon doesn't do nearly as much for me.
>

Yeah, well, OCRing a book on my laptop takes an hour, but 5 minutes on my desktop. Also, my laptop takes several minutes to boot, my desktop is under 30 seconds.

Running the D test suite on the laptop is no longer practical - takes way too long.