My slave drive.....

[Phuzzy4242]

I've never seen the freezer trick in a book or manual, but sometimes it's the only thing left to try. It's saved my bacon more than once.

Almost any PC can be left on 24/7 for years on end as long as they have clean power and enough cooling - in fact, it's probably easier on them because startup puts alot of stress on the hardware. My last PC was on continuously for 8 years except for power outages and it's still working.

I'm still not comfortable with solid state storage - cost and speed are still not quite there. Give it another year or two for the price comes down. You should also be aware that flash has a specific number of times it can be written to - the manufacturers give you the average MTBF for the entire drive, but some areas of the drive get written to almost continuously.

Instant obsolescence is unavoidable - whatever you buy today is obsolete tomorrow. The best you can do is get the hottest machine you can afford to make it worth something as long as possible.

Base specs - 3 GHz or better, Intel or AMD is no longer significant, 2 GB RAM mimimum, 4 GB or more preferred, decent graphics card with at least 256 MB RAM - if possible, get one that does not need a cooling fan (I've seen too many fail because the fan failed). Big case fans, front and back, good processor fan, power supply more than adequate, lots of drive bays, SATA controller and drives, IDE controller for older drives is sometimes handy. It's nice to have lots of USB ports, especially on the front of the case. Firewire ports only if you think you need them - the only time I've used one was to control a CD Duplicator that cranked out 100 copies at a time.

Many people are mirroring their hard drives or using RAID arrays so a drive failure doesn't mean everything's gone - you might want to look up RAID on Wikipedia. This is not a backup solution - your data is still on hard drives that can die. If you can afford it, tape may be the way to go (because of capacity). Blu-Ray or similar for backups may be better, DVD if that's all you have. Most home users don't back up at all, but most home users don't have terabytes of data on their hard drives like we do.

Hard drives are cheap - around $80 to $90 for 500 GB. I'd get several smaller drives instead of one very large one - don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Is your PC less than 3 years old? Maybe you don't need a new PC, just a revamp of the mechanical stuff like hard drives and fans, and add more RAM. RAM and a good video card can speed things up more than you might think. If you do opt for a new PC, think about buying the parts and putting it together yourself - you can get a lot more PC for the same money and it's not that difficult.

[emuler]

freezer trick: avoid doing this in a humid environment. The condensation that will form on the HDD the moment you take it out of the freezer will cause major problems, especially if the printed circuit boards are exposed. You could try leaving the wires connected and sealing up the whole thing in a plastic bag, with just the wires coming out, before ptting it in the freezer.

DB, when was the last time you defragmented your hard disks?

BTW, I have had very irritating problems with SATA drives like DB has described, that turned out to be a bad/loose SATA power cable. The power cables (4 pin molex to sata power connector) are often supplied free with the hard drive, and your local computer guy will probably have lots of spare ones which he'll give you free if you ask nicely, or charge you a few pence (ask him for one that came with a reputed hard drive). In my case the problem was at the 4 pin connector - just squeezing the terminals inside with a small screwdriver, to make sure there was a good electrical contact, fixed things.

[Phuzzy4242]

If you're using the freezer trick at all, the drive has already failed and you're doing the only thing left to rescue whatever data from it you can. It's the last thing you do before throwing the drive in the trash after whacking it a couple times with a sledgehammer to ensure nobody else can recover data from it somehow. The ziploc bag helps. Getting the drive cold helps with bad bearings and putting it on its side helps with stiction and/or a weak head stepper.

I'm glad you mentioned cables. I assumed db had already checked those and the rest of the obvious stuff already because I would have, but you're right, it could be cables. It could be the power supply, the SATA controller, or drivers, though those are less likely. Thanks for reminding me I should never assume anything - sorry.

[Debaser]

Thanks to all of you for putting the effort in to explaining things to me in plain English.

Iv not defragged in ages, and im a little apprehensive in case the drives fail during the process.
I checked the cables today and they appear fine.
I am just going to keep the thing running for as long as possible.

I think ill go down the new PC road. Apart from the failing hard drives, the case has had a really annoying vibrating noise ever since iv had it and no one could find the exact point of origin.

I don’t need a new monitor or peripherals so all im going to need to splash out on is the main unit.

In regards to backing up data, thats not really a problem. As I have mentioned before I back up data regularly to DVDR's.
My main concern is losing everything else.
Frustratingly everyone has a different solution. I’m sure at some point in this thread it was even suggested that I don’t need a separate partition for an OS.

[emuler]

It is just general housekeeping stuff. How you like to put away stuff is very largely a matter of personal chice. Some people like arranging things neatly, others not.

IMHO partitioning is highly recommended when all you've got is the one hard drive. If you have several physical hard drives, each drive has its own partition anyway, so why bother. The servers I have at work have 8 hard drives each, so that gives me 8 partitions to play with (I'm not using RAID (if you want to know, RAID is a technology that allows you to treat several hard drives as a single entity, giving you additional performance and/or reliability options)).

If it is not too much trouble, replace the HDD power cable anyway. It is very cheap, and I kicked myself several times for not changing it earlier when I had the trouble I mentioned.

I also think you need to muster up the nerve to format your main drive and do a clean install. It is long overdue - Windows rarely lasts more than a year under normal home use; after that, performance starts degrading noticeably. Fortunately, you backup regularly, so the biggest, most critical and most time consuming step in the clean install process has already been covered.

[Phuzzy4242]

I also think you need to muster up the nerve to format your main drive and do a clean install. It is long overdue - Windows rarely lasts more than a year under normal home use; after that, performance starts degrading noticeably. Fortunately, you backup regularly, so the biggest, most critical and most time consuming step in the clean install process has already been covered.

The actual WinXP install takes about 25 minutes - all the updates take alot longer. Then installing all your software, then configuring everything the way you like it... Plan on at least 4 to 6 hours for the whole job.

[Debaser]

Iv got it in my head that I want a new PC (Yes I will be putting sledge hammer to hard drives).
I will try replacing the HDD power cable first though!

I’m not finding much in the 3 GHz or better area.
2.66 appears to be the easiest to find.

[Debaser]

I have handed in the specs that you guys have recommended to a small highly regarded local independent computer shop.

* Servicing & Repairs
* Custom Built PC's & Laptops
* High Quality Peripherals & Accessories
* Cartridge Refilling Service Onsite
* Software Purchasing

The chap didn’t think 64bit was such a great idea due to compatibility issues unless I am a professional user that must use 64bit.

He recommends the sonata range of cases by Antec
http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?Family=ODM=

I await the quote

Oh, the chap also told me that Seagate’s budget HDD's are labelled Maxtor lol

[emuler]

On a new PC with known hardware, there should not be any issues with 64 bit except maybe for video capture and tv tuner cards. If you want a rock solid system (as opposed to living on the bleeding edge) get an Intel original motherboard and CPU.

I recommend Windows 7.

If you want to know the temperatures and fan speeds in your computer, check out SpeedFan (freeware). It is really good at letting you see exactly what is going on with the cooling system. Everest is even better, but you have to pay.

Maybe Phuzzy will recommend a SMART disk utility that will let you gauge the condition of your hard drives. If your drives really are on the verge, SMART should tell you something.

[FLL]

I also think you need to muster up the nerve to format your main drive and do a clean install. It is long overdue - Windows rarely lasts more than a year under normal home use; after that, performance starts degrading noticeably.

It all depends on your tolerance and how you use the PC. If you spend much time using a new fast PC, at work for example, then going back to an older slower PC will be irritating and the considerable effort and risk involved in redoing your system is justified. I think that could be your case, possibly, emuler. In my case, I am still using my 1.6GHz Pentium Dell laptop I got in April 2004, and have never done a reinstall, still running XP SP2. Sometimes it gets a little slow when I have Firefox open with 10+ windows and 100+ total tabs (which is about average for me), and I generally have to reboot weekly, but I am careful about what I use and install and don't demand ultra performance. It can be done. I will be getting a new PC sometime this year (this one is no longer eligible for a Dell service contract, which was worth the money as the motherboard has been replaced three times) and I would rather spend the considerable time involved in setting up a new machine than dicking around with an old one.