Experiences with non-techies

[vanished]

Traditional hard drives can't be sealed because they have a small hole for air.

 

I thought they were sealed... :huh:   I know they are manufactured in a very tightly controlled environment (no dust, etc.) so wouldn't having a hole completely defeat the purpose?

[J. Hammond]

I thought they were sealed... :huh:   I know they are manufactured in a very tightly controlled environment (no dust, etc.) so wouldn't having a hole completely defeat the purpose?

 

The read/write head of a hard drive actually floats on a cushion of air as the platter spins. The hole is there to equalize air pressure so that the flying head doesn't get too close to the drive platter, causing data errors. Also, there's a filter on the hole so no dust gets in.

 

Modern hard drives adjust the pressure inside automatically, so there's no hole. 

 

Here's a picture that shows how harmful dust can be, and how small the flying height is.

 

[soup]

I showed this video I made to my stepdad and he didn't think it was real...

 

Now put it back together so it works.

 

Aside :-

there is a video on YT where a chappy builds an enclosure for taking apart hard drives in .  It is filled with filtered air so as long as he doesn't touch anything the disks are still clean enough to use .

Ah here it is

[Fetzie]

I really think that "Safely removing" a flash drive isn't necessary though.

 

I once nearly lost (thank god that I only copied and didn't "cut+paste") gigabytes of photographs because I unplugged a USB stick without "Safely Removing" it. Next time I plugged it in, the computer refused to read any data off it.

[Jambls]

I recognise the camera in the bottom right corner of the box thingy. I used to have one of those. It was a good camera for before smartphones.

[Wano97]

I once nearly lost (thank god that I only copied and didn't "cut+paste") gigabytes of photographs because I unplugged a USB stick without "Safely Removing" it. Next time I plugged it in, the computer refused to read any data off it.

 

I don't know, I never bother with "safely removing" a flash drive.

[WkdPaul]

this ebay listing goes here ... thanks to @Ophidio for posting this, hilarious!

 

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/281890806574/

 

 

EDIT oups, meant to say thanks to @Comic_Sans_MS ... he's the one that posted it!

[flibberdipper]

The read/write head of a hard drive actually floats on a cushion of air as the platter spins. The hole is there to equalize air pressure so that the flying head doesn't get too close to the drive platter, causing data errors. Also, there's a filter on the hole so no dust gets in.

 

Modern hard drives adjust the pressure inside automatically, so there's no hole. 

 

Here's a picture that shows how harmful dust can be, and how small the flying height is.

 

 

^^^^ PERFECTO

[vanished]

The read/write head of a hard drive actually floats on a cushion of air as the platter spins. The hole is there to equalize air pressure so that the flying head doesn't get too close to the drive platter, causing data errors. Also, there's a filter on the hole so no dust gets in.

 

Modern hard drives adjust the pressure inside automatically, so there's no hole. 

 

Here's a picture that shows how harmful dust can be, and how small the flying height is.

 

 

Yeah saying they're built to very tight tolerances is an understatement  I knew dust would look something like that in terms of being horrifyingly large, and I know the head floats just above the platter.  It should be possible to construct the drive in a way that the minute swelling or squishing of the enclosure due to differences in air pressure (between outside and in a sealed drive) wouldn't affect the distance between the head and the platters, but I bet it would just cost more and be less reliable than how they're doing it now.

[Guest]

Epic fail

Although to give him credit, a Q35 chipset Northbridge does look a lot like a PGA 988b laptop cpu

It probably should have been heatsinked, no?

[GalacticRuler]

It probably should have been heatsinked, no?

It was

[Guest]

It was

then how can they get it mixed up? beats me.

[ZexenPro]

when my highschool gave us 15 year old thinkpads to dev java programs on.

 

Specs:

1.2 GHZ processor

1 gig of ram

80 GB HDD

[MDPS]

when my highschool gave us 15 year old thinkpads to dev java programs on.

 

Specs:

1.2 GHZ processor

1 gig of ram

80 GB HDD

You don't need a super fast processor or a ton of ram for simple java programs.

 

(Java fanboy fallout begins).

[ZexenPro]

check out what I found on the motherboard wiki:

 

Motherboard specifically refers to a PCB with expansion capability and as the name suggests, this board is often referred to as the "mother" of all components attached to it, because of its nature to give birth to them.

[vanished]

check out what I found on the motherboard wiki:

 

Motherboard specifically refers to a PCB with expansion capability and as the name suggests, this board is often referred to as the "mother" of all components attached to it, because of its nature to give birth to them.

Either it's been fixed since then (11 minutes) or that's made up:

 

Motherboard specifically refers to a PCB with expansion capability and as the name suggests, this board is often referred to as the "mother" of all components attached to it, which often include sound cards, video cards,network cards, hard drives, or other forms of persistent storage; TV tuner cards, cards providing extra USB or FireWire slots and a variety of other custom components (the term mainboard is applied to devices with a single board and no additional expansions or capability, such as controlling boards in televisions, washing machines and other embedded systems).

 

Either way that's pretty good that it is currently correct

[vanished]

(Java fanboy...).

wait are those even a thing?

[Akolyte]

when my highschool gave us 15 year old thinkpads to dev java programs on.

 

Specs:

1.2 GHZ processor

1 gig of ram

80 GB HDD

Thats unfortunate.  It's less of a spec issue and more of an age issue, the hard drive must be slow, the ram must be really slow and the processor. 

 

I bought my own laptop for my app-development classes. 

 

You don't need a super fast processor or a ton of ram for simple java programs.

 

(Java fanboy fallout begins).

You know why Java programmers wear glasses? 

 

They can't csharp!

 

It's quite funny because I wear glasses, and I'm a big fan of Java myself except I do use Xamarin for my app development so I'm a csharp guy too but imo it doesn't matter for app development. 

 

Also, I hope you don't take offense to the joke.

[MDPS]

wait are those even a thing?

Yep. I've had one too many run-ins ._.

[ZexenPro]

I like to use the analogy of a kitchen counter and a pantry. Your hard drive is your pantry, where you store the food. Your kitchen counter is your RAM, where you place the food you're working with. The more pantry space you have, the more food you can store; likewise, the more counter space you have, the more food you can work with.

 

I personally like the office analogy. your desk is your RAM and your file cabinet is your HDD/SSD. You could go as far as to say your GPU is your lamp and your soundcard is your ears.

[MDPS]

That was weird. Anyways, meant to say I've been struggling with getting OBS set up for the last hour since I couldn't get it to record from my mic. Turned out I had set up the encoding wrong from the beginning. A simple drop down list with 2 options and I picked the wrong one.

[deWaardt]

That was weird. Anyways, meant to say I've been struggling with getting OBS set up for the last hour since I couldn't get it to record from my mic. Turned out I had set up the encoding wrong from the beginning. A simple drop down list with 2 options and I picked the wrong one.

How many times I've been like "why won't my PC boot?" And I just have my monitor set to the wrong input.

Stupid mistakes are what gets us the most.

[Godlygamer23]

[removed]

The last edit is displayed at the bottom of the page.

[vanished]

The last edit is displayed at the bottom of the page.

I know how to check the revision history  Looks like the page was edited by 75.70.130.152 at 21:44, and it was reverted a minute later.

[Boink]

I'm building a PC for my brother and the motherboard failed to ship (low stock) so we decided to see if there was anything at the local computer shop. I went in and the following exchange happened:

Me: Do you have any Z97 motherboards?

Employee: Why do you want Z97?

Me: I'm using a K series chip

Employee: No, but we might have one in another location

Employee: *checks computer* yes, [REDACTED] location has several, there's an Asus for $189

Me: *leans in to see screen* There's a Gigabyte for only $120

Employee: Gigabyte is durable but not very fast, if you want speed you should buy the Asus.

Me: What? Motherboards don't affect performance anymore.

Employee: Yes they do.

Me: No, they used to but not anymore.

Employee: *gives me a look that screams "You are an idiot" then proceeds to speak in a similar tone* Yes, they do.