Burky

I've just got to university, so I really want something which is going to work on all the computer I may use (As I may buy a laptop sometime as well, which would be Apple), so USB 2.0 seems the most ideal option. I will take I closer look at the two brands mentioned in the previous posts. Thanks a lot, Burky.

I'm wanting to buy an external hard drive bay, but I don't know anything about which brands are good and which not. I will be putting one of my 250gb SATA disks in there, and I would like it to have a USB 2.0 interface. I would like to buy something which is of reasonable quality, whilst keeping the price as low as possible. Thanks for any advice or recommendations, Burky.

Hi. I re-installed Windows on my IDE disk after reformatting and then plugged in my SATA disk, and so far windows is continuing to boot up with no problems. However, many files are still corrupted, so I am looking into what I can do to solve that right now. I have a quote from a professional data recoverer, but it was £75 = $115, but I will probably have to do that I guess.

I don't see why that would make any difference, but I'll try it soon. I have a really big problem now though. My parents wedding photos, etc, of which I had the only copy were on my hard disks, and only 130/300+ are still intact. I really need to know about some good software recovery software. So far I've run chkdsk and tried recovering using command prompt, but I couldn't make any progress. If someone knows some good software then please tell me, thanks a lot.

I haven't run any tools. Is there any way I can do that without having to do it in windows? I could try running such a tool in Linux, but last time I tried it wasn't recognising the disks with the problems. I don't have an other computers which are SATA compatible, so I can't test them that way. I don't have a spare PSU to try out instead. I could put it in another computer, but it would be an old socket A computer, so it wouldn't be pushing the PSU hard. I also wouldn't want to ruin that computer as well. Is there another way I could test it? Perhaps it might be worth taking the PSU or my entire rig to a computer shop. Thanks for all your help so far.

I have only two SATA disks, both were connected at all times during the windows installations. No. I assume you mean floppy drive: I don't have one so no. Yes, right now it's set as cd-rom, hard disk... I'll try that tomorrow, if there are no other suggestions first. I'd sooner put that off though as my case is small and it's awkward to do.

Hi, I have a serious problem with my computer I think. The whole story (below) is very long, but the summary is that my Windows keeps refusing to boot, and every time I re-install, I find that an increasing number of my files are being corrupted. After 3 installations in two days I have made no progress and lost many files and have given up, so I’m asking here. My settings are stable, and I am memtesting my ram right now at stock settings. I idle at around 33 degrees and load (dual) at 48 degrees. All the cables are plugged in correctly. I am almost certain I have no viruses: a month ago my computer was clean, and since then I haven’t had the internet. I run Windows XP Home. The settings I was running are as shown in my sig, only that the ram is running 237mhz @ 3-4-4-8 (sorry, but I've not had the internet in a month so I couldn't update my sig.) ******* Yesterday I was interesting in trying out Linux, so I put in my old 80gb IDE hard disk, and unplugged my SATA ones (shown in my sig). (The point in using a different disk was that I would have no operating system clashes and all my data would be safe on my SATA disks if anything went wrong.) So I installed it onto my IDE disk, and Linux worked fine, so I shut it down, and plugged back in my two SATA disks as well and booted into Linux again. When it loaded, and I went to look at my disk drives, it told me that all 4 partitions on my two SATA disks were unmountable. This worried me, so I shut down, and tried to get into Windows. Now for some reason, it wasn’t dual-booting – I was obliged to boot Linux. So I unplugged my IDE hard disk, with Linux on, and booted up again with just the two SATA disks plugged in, only now I get an error (after verifying dmi pool data) saying it cannot boot off the disk. I cleared the CMOS as shown on this site. Fortunately (I thought), I have a 10gb OS partition on my hard, so I just decided to re-install windows as it’s not too much hassle. I reformatted the partition to NTFS. When in Windows, it requested to a checkdsk scan, and when it did this, it said on the screen “repairing orphanned file” many times, and the files listed were all the files I had in my computer. I immediately installed the latest motherboard and vga drivers, and started to re-install all my old programs. I quickly checked my files and they all seemed to be intact. However, after I rebooted several times, after finishing various installations, I got the message (after verifying dmi pool data) saying “error no operating system”. I left it overnight and continued again today. The same message still appeared, so again I cleared the CMOS and tried – no luck still. So I proceeded to install windows again. This time during the partitioning, the partition that I installed onto before was completely blank. I installed onto the other SATA hard disks 10gb OS partition, just in case the other hard disk was faulty. When I loaded windows, it didn’t do the checkdsk scan again, it just loaded windows up straight away. I went to look at my files, some were ok, but many were corrupted and would not open properly, and some videos files had even merged with others, so that when I played them, I got some strange 7 hour long mix of various films and tv shows. I started copying all the files, which were intact onto my second hard disk, so I would have a backup in case any more got corrupted. In the middle of copying – no more than 15minutes after the windows installation had been completed – it suddenly rebooted (I did not tell it to) and again, (after verifying dmi pool data) I got the message saying it couldn’t boot off the disk. Because of the reboot, I was suspicious about my overclocking settings, so I cleared the CMOS and loaded the optimised defaults, and proceeded to reinstall windows. Again, the 10gb OS partition was completely blank, and for some reason Windows made me reformat it to NTFS twice. When I finished and got into windows, most of my files had been corrupted. I did an hours worth of dual-prime at stock settings just to see if it was very unstable, but there were no problems so I assumed it was ok. After installing the drivers and rebooting, I could not boot up windows again. ******** So what is going wrong? Since Windows is getting corrupted on both hard disks, I doubt my hard disks are faulty. My processor is running at stock speeds and the problem is still occurring. My ram is being tested right now (at stock speeds), and after an hour there are no problems yet – I will leave it to run another 5 hours or so just to really be sure. I doubt it's my power supply since I've been using this for 9 months now (with SLI at one point) with no problems. It has 34A on the +12v rail which is adequate. This leaves me thinking, could it be my motherboard which is doing something wrong? Please give your suggestions or advice on what I can do now, I am stuck for ideas. Also if anyone knows of any good software which could help recover the files I lost (~120gb), I would appreciate it. Thanks a lot, Burky

Thanks for the quick response. I did mean Linksys; it was the same model as was posted in the other thread. I chose that network card as it was the only one under 20 pounds which had a good review on ebuyer.co.uk, although I did see some people had problems with it. The card is ebuyer's own product, so I'm sure I can get some advice from them, or at worst return it if necessary. I'll go through those links when I get round to setting it up, thanks for your help.

A while ago I was talking about getting a wireless network. Well now I'm getting round to buying it. The router I think should be fine as it was recommended in another thread. However I have less confidence in the network card. Router (Dlink) 3xNetwork card (generic) Please suggest any improvements to my list. Also if anyone knows any better site to buy off than ebuyer.co.uk could you tell me? Thanks, Burky.

I'm not sure, as I only visited the house briefly. I'd say 5m though at most, as the rooms are fairly close. I drew a quick sketch if that helps. I don't know how thick the walls are though. Brackets mean the location is undecided. We will have one or two cordless phones in the house I think, though we haven't bought the phone(s) yet (we've been using some cheap one with no answer machine up to now). Is there any recommendations on what frequencies to buy so that it doesn't interfere? I haven't had chance to read the wiki posted above yet, as it's late, but I will take a closer look at the phone frequency thing.

Ok, thanks for your help. I might post back in a bit with my final choice.

Well we got a cabled connection now, but we're moving to Sheffield in two weeks, and my parents are extremely keen on wireless. They're paying too, but I'd like to try and get the cost down a little. I guess 100 pounds could be a target. I use a dlink right now, and it's served us fine for two years, although the cabling is a real mess. I don't want to go cheaping out on it, as I'm going away to university half the year, so leaving them with an unreliable network wouldn't be good.

I'm wanting to set up a wireless network with three computers too soon. Is there no cheaper option than that though? For me that would cost $115 after rebates, so then in Europe you'd better make that more like $180 as you have no chance of rebates and prices are generally higher. It's getting pretty expensive... I know little about decent networking hardware, so this is why I'm asking. I'd still like to be able to get a good ping though whilst gaming online...is that still possible on a lower budget?

I never heard of a opteron 170 or 175 that would clock as well as a good opteron 165. See if you can get an opteron 165, CCBBE 0610, 0615, 0617. There are some good CCB1Es as well, but CCBBE is the best stepping to get; 2.8ghz-3.0ghz most of the time. Those chips will outclock any opteron 170 or 175, guarenteed. Remember the most expensive chip is not necessarily the best.

Heh, that happened with my XP Barton 3000+. I used it for 18 months then sold it for $10 more than I paid new for it. (Sold in November/December 2005). I actually paid less for my A64 3200+ Venice at the same time than my barton was worth. I have no idea why people would possibly choose Socket A over Socket 939 when the prices are the same.