Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by everling

All About Harddisk Thread V4

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 07:30:00 +0800

Multiple posts not combining

everling — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:53:48 +0800

My multiple posts in All About Harddisk Thread V4 are not combining by default. The "Do not combine with previous post?" is unticked before posting.

[WTA] Multimedia creation desktop

everling — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 21:56:48 +0800

Would like to ask for a full desktop spec recommendation. The budget is RM3,000, for the rig, a monitor (preferably a Dell UltraSharp) and the OS. Intended for multimedia creation work, using Photoshop and Autodesk Maya. No overclocking.

Thank you for your time.

Mystery Hardware Problem

everling — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:40:37 +0800

A while ago, I got the following new hardware:

AMD FX-6300
ASUS M5A97 LE R2.0
1x Kingston DDR3 8GB 1600MHz
BitFenix Ghost case

and reused all my other old components. Then I started getting the following symptoms:

Random hardware resets, ONLY while playing games. No BSODs, just straight reboot.
During a random reset, on occasion, the BIOS was unable to detect my SSD boot drive. Fixed by power down and up.
During a random reset, one time, even the Power button was not responsive - the system will not turn off. Nor did the Reset button worked. The mainboard's green LED light was on. Fixed by turning the PSU itself off.

Things that I did to figure out the cause of the problem:

Checked Windows logs (nothing).
Memtest86, and simultaneous FurMark and Prime95 stress test for an hour. No problems.
Checked for loose wires.
Secure erased my SSD boot drive with zeros.
Multiple clean reinstall of Windows.
Installed Catalyst 12.6 and Catalyst 13.1 on different Windows reinstalls.

Nothing helped and my desktop will still randomly crash (sometimes within the first minute, sometimes an hour later) while playing games (Diablo 3, Minecraft, Medieval 2: Total War). It hasn't yet crashed while not gaming.

I have no idea what else I can do to figure out the problem and fix it.

WTBuild an AMD Mini-ITX system

everling — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 10:57:23 +0800

I want to build an AMD Trinity rig with the Bitfenix Prodigy, but I have two problems:
1. Finding the Prodigy casing. It seems that I can order via StarTec, but does anyone have them on hand?
2. Finding a mini-ITX motherboard to go with it. Most of the FM2 motherboards at Lowyat are microATX. The ASRock FM2A75M-ITX seems particularly attractive but it is not listed anywhere.

Find Post bug

everling — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 09:57:00 +0800

I had wanted to link to a particular post, so I used the provided post # link. But when I tested the link myself, I got shown another post instead.

For example,

I used: https://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopi...post&p=53482373
But was redirected to: https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/2186620/+2200#entry53487017
Instead of the expected: https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/2186620/+2200#entry53482373

Where can we get Seasonic 620W PSU?

everling — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:29:44 +0800

There seems to be a lot of users recommending Seasonic's 620W PSU. Is there another shop asides from C-Zone that carries this product? Because whenever I call up C-Zone and inquire, they always inform me that this model has been out of stock for weeks; I have been asking for months.

Incorrect [URL] handling

everling — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:45:26 +0800

The forum handles the following URL wrongly by rejecting the last period as part of the URL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

CODE

Actual link: [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.[/url]

All About Harddisk Thread V4

everling — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:56:13 +0800

Previous discussion threads

All About Harddisk Thread V3, Discussion for Good Harddisk (Jun 2010 - Jan 2012)
All About Harddisk Thread V2, Discussion for Good Harddisk (Oct 2008 - Jun 2010)
Discussion for Good Harddisk, Harddisk Discussion (Oct 2005 - Oct 2008)

Check HDD Warranty

Utilities

Benchmarking
- CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1c
- ATTO Disk Benchmark
Information
- Comparison of S.M.A.R.T tools (Wikipedia)
- CrystalDiskInfo 5.0.4
- SpeedFan
Testing
- Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows (by Western Digital) (Seagate compatible)
- Drive Fitness Test (by Hitachi)
- HDDScan 3.3
- Seatools for Windows (by Seagate)

Informative Forumer Posts

Information about Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test by dkk.
Information about Seagate's Seatools for Windows and Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows by dkk.
QUOTE(wildwestgoh @ Jan 17 2013, 07:56 AM)
Western Digital laptop (2.5") drives' thickness chart.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/mobile/ (Z-height)

Seagate laptop (2.5") drives' thickness chart.
(Click Specifications below the chart.)
http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drive...op-hard-drives/ (Height)[right][snapback]57626123[/snapback][/right]

Terminology

PATA
Maximum transfer speed: 16, 33, 66, 100, 133 MB/s
SATA
- SATA 1.5 Gbps aka SATA 1 aka SATA I
  Maximum transfer speed: 150 MB/s
- SATA 3.0 Gbps aka SATA 2 aka SATA II
  Maximum transfer speed: 300 MB/s
- SATA 6.0 Gbps aka SATA 3 aka SATA III
  Maximum transfer speed: 600 MB/s
S.M.A.R.T.
"S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART) is a monitoring system for computer hard disk drives to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating failures."

Capacity

4.0 TB = 3,725.29 GiB
3.0 TB = 2,793.96 GiB
2.0 TB = 1,862.65 GiB
1.5 TB = 1,396.98 GiB
1.0 TB = 931.32 GiB
750 GB = 698.49 GiB
640 GB = 596.05 GiB
500 GB = 465.66 GiB
320 GB = 298.02 GiB

Further Reading

Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population
"In this paper we present one such study by examining the population of hard drives under deployment within Google's computing infrastructure."

Standby Problem with Asus M5A97 & Dell Ultrasharp

everling — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 11:50:51 +0800

Prior to the problem, my keyboard and mouse is attached to the Ultrasharp's USB ports and I could place my Windows 7 in standby and recover from it without a problem.

Then recently I replaced my motherboard to the Asus M5A97 and the keyboard and mouse is no longer responsive after I recover from a standby. I could replug the keyboard and mouse into the desktop itself and they would work, but replacing them back to the Ultrasharp would render them unusable again, until I restart the computer.

I have tried a clean reinstall of Windows 7 to resolve this problem, but unfortunately the problem persists.

Is the motherboard faulty and should I RMA it? Would any fellow forumer with a M5A97 and an Ultrasharp kindly test if they face the same problem? Thank you very much.

[WTA] Intel desktop recommendation

everling — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 23:32:59 +0800

Would like to ask for a full desktop spec recommendation. The budget is RM2K, for the rig AND a monitor (preferably 1080p). Speakers, keyboard and mouse already have. Intended for home and gaming use.

Would an Intel rig be acceptable with such a low budget? If that is the case, I have little idea on how to create such a spec. Also noob about cheap displays.

Thanks for your time.

Hardware section layout width problem

everling — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:21:43 +0800

Both "Hardware" and "Hardware Questions & Answers" sections won't fit a 1024x768 screen and nor will it expand to fit a browser with a widescreen resolution. And considering there are occasionally larger images, a more flexible layout (the older design) would be very welcomed.

Despite in HTTPS, replies still not secured

everling — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 02:08:09 +0800

When at https://forum.lowyat.net/, replying takes us outside of the HTTPS session.

The code that does that is:

CODE

Would somebody fix this, please? With sugar and strawberry on top?

forum.lowyat.net SSL cert expired...

everling — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 12:34:03 +0800

today.

Will Win7 Pro be enough for a web server?

everling — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:38:26 +0800

The web server will be using Apache and its sole task would be for web serving on the Internet. For remote management, if Windows' Remote Desktop won't work, I plan to use UltraVNC. The existing OS that we're using is Windows Server 2003, and the only Microsoft technology that we're using is the OS itself.

Will Windows 7 Professional be sufficient for our needs? Is there any limitation that makes Win7 inappropriate for Internet web serving?

TIA.

Where can I buy cheap but good HDMI cables?

everling — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 01:54:18 +0800

Came across some 1.8m HDMI cable going for RM20 at Sri Computers. Is this the cheapest?

Need desktop server rig suggestions

everling — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:30:15 +0800

I need suggestions for a web application server, with a maximum budget limit of RM2,000. Only the rig, as the existing keyboard, mouse and display will be reused. No graphics hardware required.

I would like to buy Kingston's RM599 128GB SSD as it's sole secondary storage, so the remaining budget with the SSD would be RM1,400. Is that workable? I don't need a powerful number cruncher. The existing server is a Pentium 4 with only 1GB DDR. Almost anything today would be more powerful.

Unexpected "Puchong" image below avatar

everling — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 01:19:56 +0800

Is it just me or is there a bug adding the following image below some of the user's avatar?

http://s.lowyat.net/html/team_icons/keranamu.gif

It's messing up the topic layout.

4:3 for old games and 16:10 for new games

everling — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 17:37:31 +0800

When playing a mix of very old and new games in fullscreen mode, how can I preserve the aspect ratio so that 4:3 games don't get stretched on my 16:10 monitor? I'm using an AMD HD 5670 and I don't really want to fiddle with my monitor every time I play such games.

Are you using your new RAM?

everling — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:29:32 +0800

It has been a while since RAM has been cheap enough for people to buy up to or more than 8GB of RAM, so I have a question to ask.

8GB of RAM! Worth it or not worth it?!

And don't just say that you can use more than 4GB of RAM. Prove it to yourself that you can actually use that much!

The point of this poll is to reveal how many people regret buying 8GB of RAM only to discover that they can't even use more than 4GB. I'm expecting a lot of gamer victims.