Thanks Guys,

What is the machine being used for?

Well I actually want two! Both will replace machines that belong to the company I sold a year ago and which I said I'd return in the fullness of time.

Currently I have a laptop on my desk in my flat. I use it for my daily web browsing and e:mailing. I store my MP3 files on it and transmit them through the flat with a little add-on FM transmitter. I upload pictures to my web server. I do a bit of tinkering on the stock market. I never play games.

I used to take the laptop around with me on hols, etc but now I have a Samsung Ultra Portable the laptop never leaves my desk. It is permanently fed into a 19" flat screen. And it has this problem with lack of plug and play that I was trying to sort out a couple of months ago.

It is often running for twelve hours a day.

It is actually a silly machine to have on a desk so I have decided to replace it with a tower PC.

I need a second tower to replace the one I already have in my photographic studio. That machine is used to store photos and for picture editing. For that work I'll never have enough internal hard disk storeage so I keep the work that I use regularly on the internal hard disk and work accessed less frequently on external hard drives.

It seemed sensible to buy two identical towers so that if either the desk machine or the studio machine died I could swop in the good one whilst getting the dead one sorted. Neither need a monitor. The one replacing my laptop needs a keyboard.

What appealed to me about Computer Doctors is that it sounded like a good solid British business that was not too flashy and more concerned about quality than the ultimate in speed/capacity. Also they offered very little choice - and for me less confusion.

Mesh sounded much more 'trendy' - but is that a bad thing?

In fact, as I live in SW6, Mesh are far more accessible than CD in Northampton so I could easily get to their showroom - and even more importantly return anything that went wrong. So it does seem that if Mesh are really reliable it might be better for me, as a Londoner, to go down that route.

Scussy mentioned Dell - but I'd rather deal with someone more personal.

Thanks to both of you for your input. Ask me anything about cameras and you'll get sound advice - but PC's are a frightening world to me.

TP

TP

If you have such a large storeage requirement, I suggest that you split that you split the storeage from the workstation.

Get a decent spec NAS unit with RAID 5. The entry level units will have four disks, with the data spead accross three of them and the fourth acting as a hot spare. If one disk fails, the unit will carry on working at reduced speed while it rebuilds the lost data on the spare. If you use a 1GB network you will probabley have faster disk access than from your local disk.

For the workstation, as many Intel Quad core processors and as much memory as you can afford. Install a 64bit OS which should be able to use at least 8GB RAM.

Use a couple of very small hard drives in a mirrored RAID, which is not nearly as good as RAID 5 but the smaller drives will enable a quicker recovery of the OS in the event of a problem.

With any fault tolerant disk system, check how long the rebuild time will take as this can vary significantly.

Opt,

To a degree I already have split the data from the workstation in that I only hold my current image files internally and the old stuff is on external hard drive(s).

So I only need a bit more than 100 gig to work on on an every day basis. The rest I only call on once every few weeks.

We had RAID at my old company. For me it seems the problem would be that if I left that big storeage in my studio I'd have no back-up in another location.

I feel that having, say, 250 gig in the workstation and external hard drives that I can back up is safer.

However, the idea of having a way of recovering the OS does appeal. In particular I am of the opinion that every OS gets slower as MS keep forcing us to install Service Packs. It would be lovely to push a clean OS on to the machine without the need to lose all the other third party software and data. Is that not an integral way of keeping the speed?

Is that what you are suggesting with your two small hard drives and mirrored RAID?

Rebuild time is not critical to me. An overnight rebuild would be no hardship if it put back the speed.

TP

TP

You are correct that a RAID drive is not a replacement for a good backup strategy. But a RAID 5 setup will at least give you (almost) seamless recovery in the event of a single disc failure.

If you're serious about having an almost failsafe backup then you should have at least two sets of three external hard disks and keep them in separate locations. As you are backing up a lot of data try to get disks with a firewire connection. Also, invest in some flight cases for when you drop them.

A pair of mirrored disks on the workstation will allow you to recover from a single disc failure but will not help you reinstall a clean system. I've also heard of some cheaper systems where an overnight rebuild could be somewhat optimistic.

If you want to be able to reinstall a clean system, use a disk imaging package to create a copy of your entire disk when the OS is fairly new. But of course you will then have to apply all the latest patches that slow it down again. Some of the better external hard drives also claim to have backup software that can make a good job of a system restore.

Opt,

"Some of the better external hard drives also claim to have backup software that can make a good job of a system restore."

This Maxtor seems to have an add-on bit of software that helps this.

I'd planned to have this as my overflow hard drive. The one that I do not need fast access to - simply to have it available. And when it gets full I'll add another one.

"But of course you will then have to apply all the latest patches that slow it down again. "

Which I guess is now a fact of progress. We get some nice new offering from MS that gets slower each patch - and thus sucks us into the next release.

"A pair of mirrored disks on the workstation will allow you to recover from a single disc failure but will not help you reinstall a clean system."

As long as I am not relying on that internal disk as my sole source of my software and images I'm coming to the conclusion that it ought to last long enough for a generation of MS operating system - if not I reload from the Maxtor and do all the upgrades.

"As you are backing up a lot of data try to get disks with a firewire connection."

I use Replicator so most of the time I am only copying updates to my library.

Thanks again for the ideas. I'm learning a lot.

TP

TP

If your using several external disks then this is worth checking out. Sandberg USB All-In-1 HD link. It will enable you to use standard hard disks rather than buying the external cases.

Opt,

That's an interesting bit of kit. Is the idea that you just buy hard disks and (metaphorically) keep them in the nude?

I suppose people put them in something like jiffy bags. Yes?

I don't care a jot what my back-ups look like as nobody sees them other than myself. (I'd still opt for something like the Maxtor I mentioned above as a permanent external store as that will be on display when clients come to my studio.)

I have a horror about opening up PC's after destroying one hard disk whilst installing a new power unit. Don't ask me how I did it, but I managed.

I suppose that with this Sandberg jobby you/I could clone your boot up disk and provide a bootable substitute that I could run off until I paid someone to put it into the PC case.

Thanks for the ideas.

TP

TP

That's an interesting bit of kit. Is the idea that you just buy hard disks and (metaphorically) keep them in the nude?

Yes.

I suppose people put them in something like jiffy bags. Yes?

Yes although your best bet is to keep them in the antistatic bags that they come in and put those in some purpose built padded flight cases. Hard disks are delicate and sooner or later you will drop one.

I suppose that with this Sandberg jobby you/I could clone your boot up disk and provide a bootable substitute that I could run off until I paid someone to put it into the PC case.

Yes with reduced performance so long as your machine will boot from a USB drive.

Thanks for the idea

You are Welcome.

Opt

"Yes with reduced performance so long as your machine will boot from a USB drive."

Am I right in thinking that is something I'd set up in the BIOS so that it first looked for an internal hard disk and then for one attached to the USB?

TP

TP

Am I right in thinking that is something I'd set up in the BIOS so that it first looked for an internal hard disk and then for one attached to the USB?

You should be able to select the boot devices in the BIOS. Just set the first one to USB Drive.

D'you know, the more I read this thread, the more I wonder whatever was wrong with the mark 1 pencil & paper...............................

Configure your own Desktop PC or Laptop

"With custom desktop computers you can choose from thousands of permutations ranging from the case right through to the processor itself!"

This link above is well worth a look. It starts off with:

eg, Which route should I follow - AMD or INTEL? Click here for help

hew,

My wife is an artist and I can assure you that there are just as many combinations of pencil and paper.

Thanks for that Exec. I am still favouring Mesh as I can get to their showroom - and get back if anything does not work when I get it home.

Just been using my studio PC and noted that it has Intel Pentium (R) 4 CPU 3.20 Ghz and 1.00 GB ram. Am I going to see much improvement in speed with what we have been chatting about?

TP

First off, I'd say, 'Not enough RAM'.

Re: Visiting Mesh, etc. I live in Northampton area. Nevertheless, it would take me 15 to 20 minutes to take my machine to the Computer Doctors down the road.

TP

To some extent, it depends on your software.

Assuming that you go for a machine with one or more Intel Quad core procesors then you should have at least four times the potential processing power. However, you have to have software that can take adantage of multi processors. If your graphics software can only work with one core at a time then you will not see much difference.

The 1GB RAM on your existing machine is on the minimum these days especially for graphics applications. You would see a big performance increase by increasing it to at least 2GB, possibly 3 or 4.

Unfortunately the standard 32bit versions of Windows (and other OS) don't benefit much from going above 2GB RAM. For that you need to use a 64bit OS, the downside of that is that some programs and devices will just not work with it.

Dirty monitor?

Get it cleaned HERE

Opt,

The heaviest work my studio machine does is converting RAW image files into jpgs with this software.

Seems it will handle a Quad core processor so that can be on my shopping list.

TP

TP

That looks like it can use the quad core OK but it looks as though it will be a while before it will run on a 64 bit OS so you will have to keep to a standard 32 bit OS.

BTW have you any experience of video editing software? I want to know the best (cheapish) package to convert my cameras .mov files to .wmv and DVD format

Opt,

"BTW have you any experience of video editing software?"

No, sorry. But I'll put a msg on the forum I use and we ought to have an answer by tomorrow morning.

TP

TP

Thanks.