V.T. Eric Layton Posted September 16, 2023 Share Posted September 16, 2023 NOTE: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. I'm a professional. A little while ago, I noticed a faint clicking noise happening in my tower box next to me here on this desk. UH-OH, I thought. I had just recently done drive testing and all four of my mechanical drives came through the tests with flying colors. Hmm... I fdisk'd to find that my sdb drive (rsnyc backup mirror) was not showing up. That's interesting. I rebooted and booted to Porteus to use the Disk Health utility on there. Cannot find Disk! I rebooted again, but this time, I WHACKED the side of the case rather hard. It booted up normally and sdb is present and accounted for. A test with the disk utility shows no issues with the drive. I guess the drive head arm was just stuck or something. You can't WHACK solid state drives to fix 'em. HA-HA-HA! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted September 16, 2023 Share Posted September 16, 2023 Great you fixed it professionally! Percussive maintenance FTW. Apparently putting them in the freezer for a while can help sometimes. Gotta say I never had to whack any SSDs. I've only ever bought 3 and the oldest one, 12 years and counting, still works fine. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted September 17, 2023 Share Posted September 17, 2023 9 hours ago, sunrat said: Great you fixed it professionally! Percussive maintenance FTW. Apparently putting them in the freezer for a while can help sometimes. Gotta say I never had to whack any SSDs. I've only ever bought 3 and the oldest one, 12 years and counting, still works fine. Can not track down when I bought my first ssd. Bought my nvme in 2015 and it is still running just fine and dandy though.Mind you my Samsung F3 hdd's which are older are still running ok too. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted September 17, 2023 Author Share Posted September 17, 2023 Well, if I ever get the means (read as $$$) to build another system. I will definitely be using SS drives. However, unless some unforeseen universal force blesses me with gold, I don't see this happening any time soon. I'll just continue to utilize the "chewing gum/baling wire" to keep this ol' box going for as long as possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted September 17, 2023 Share Posted September 17, 2023 31 minutes ago, V.T. Eric Layton said: I will definitely be using SS drives. So what is stopping you from cloning your old hdd to that ssd you have sat on a shelf collecting dust then mate. It would only take you about an hour to do that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted September 17, 2023 Author Share Posted September 17, 2023 Lack of knowledge and lazy. I don't know how to utilize SS and mechanical drives in one machine? Do I have to do something to the SCSI interfaces? Will my operating system recognize/understand the SS interface? And so on... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted September 18, 2023 Share Posted September 18, 2023 Weird coincidence? Today I went out for most of the day and turned the computer off as I left, which I rarely do. On return the damn thing wouldn't even POST although the power light came on. Gave it a firm whack on both sides, hit the switch, and away it went. Gotta discipline these infernal gadgets sometimes. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted September 19, 2023 Share Posted September 19, 2023 It's not difficult to run an HDD and SSD in the same box. One thing I do is have a file to set up process schedulers for the disks. Gksudo gedit/etc/udev/rules.d/60-schedulers.rules # set noop scheduler for non-rotating disks ACTION=="add|change", KERNEL=="sd[a-z]", ATTR{queue/rotational}=="0", ATTR{queue/scheduler}="noop" # set cfq scheduler for rotating disks ACTION=="add|change", KERNEL=="sd[a-z]", ATTR{queue/rotational}=="1", ATTR{queue/scheduler}="cfq" 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted September 19, 2023 Author Share Posted September 19, 2023 I do believe that ericsbane07 is dying a slow death (as we all are). Every morning at power up, I have to wiggle the vid card in the socket to get vid display working. My last system (ericsshop02 - previously ericsbane06) developed the same issue before it got demoted to "onboard vid use" and tossed out in the shop. Seems that GIGAByte mobos have a tendency for the cheap-crappy vid sockets to wear out over time; probably due to heat and the weight of these BIG darn vid cards. ericsbane07 has developed "old man" issues; much like Eric himself these days. Well, I have a good supply of whacks, baling wire, and chewing gum. I'll keep it going as long as I can. A further note about the failing drive: when I first boot up in the morning, the POST does not see the /dev/sdb drive. Yet, when I am booted into the OS, I can use parted in the command line to "see" and access the drive with no issues. My Thunar also "sees" the drive once booted in to graphical mode. Weird that POST doesn't sense it. Meh... who knows? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted September 19, 2023 Share Posted September 19, 2023 I have a Gigabyte mobo in my main Linux desktop but it seems to be OK so far. The video card is not too large and heavy though. It's an AMD R7 360. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted September 19, 2023 Author Share Posted September 19, 2023 The last three GIGAbyte mobos I've had all developed issues with the vid card socket. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crp Posted September 20, 2023 Share Posted September 20, 2023 (edited) Whacking to fix brings back so many memories ... Ever do the 4" drop for a harddrive? Edited September 20, 2023 by crp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crp Posted September 20, 2023 Share Posted September 20, 2023 On 9/17/2023 at 2:14 PM, V.T. Eric Layton said: Lack of knowledge and lazy. I don't know how to utilize SS and mechanical drives in one machine? Do I have to do something to the SCSI interfaces? Will my operating system recognize/understand the SS interface? And so on... SCSI ??? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted September 20, 2023 Author Share Posted September 20, 2023 9 hours ago, crp said: SCSI??? Er... slip of the fingers (or old brain). I probably meant SATA. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crp Posted September 20, 2023 Share Posted September 20, 2023 1 hour ago, V.T. Eric Layton said: Er... slip of the fingers (or old brain). I probably meant SATA. whew. In that case, SATA is SATA for practical purposes. A SATA3 will work with the original SATA. You should definitely go to SSD for at least the troublesome harddrive. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted September 20, 2023 Author Share Posted September 20, 2023 Hmm... 'puter getting buggier and buggier. Wouldn't wake from Suspend earlier. Rebooted -> no POST beeps at all, just spinning fans. Wiggled vid card, power supply connections, RAM sticks, etc. No joy. Smacked the side of the case again and POOF! Booted up fine. I definitely have a bad connection somewhere in this box... or worse, a bad solder joint on the mobo or somewhere. Much more of this aggravation and there's a good chance I might shoot it with my .357. It would be noisy, but satisfying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted September 24, 2023 Share Posted September 24, 2023 On 9/17/2023 at 10:14 PM, V.T. Eric Layton said: Lack of knowledge and lazy. I don't know how to utilize SS and mechanical drives in one machine? Do I have to do something to the SCSI interfaces? Will my operating system recognize/understand the SS interface? And so on.. Quote How Do You Upgrade to an SSD? Does your computer use a regular off-the-shelf SATA HDD? If so, you can upgrade it with an SSD. If you answer YES to the above then you are good to go for a cloning experience. As I have used several of the tools mentioned in these links I would use FoxClone as my preferred way to clone a disk. https://foxclone.org/uguide.html https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/2-methods-to-clone-your-linux-hard-drive/ https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/disk_cloning Hope yer ailing pc survives an lets you keep on posting here. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted September 24, 2023 Author Share Posted September 24, 2023 Speaking of this buggy computer of mine. Even though the /dev/sdb (rsync backups) drive is still not being recognized by my computer's POST message at boot-up, Slackware sees it with no issues at all. I also just did my "Sunday" backups onto it with Porteus/Grsync a few minutes ago. All went fine and dandy. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crp Posted September 24, 2023 Share Posted September 24, 2023 55 minutes ago, V.T. Eric Layton said: Speaking of this buggy computer of mine. Even though the /dev/sdb (rsync backups) drive is still not being recognized by my computer's POST message at boot-up, Slackware sees it with no issues at all. I also just did my "Sunday" backups onto it with Porteus/Grsync a few minutes ago. All went fine and dandy. I still think you should get an SSD replacement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted September 25, 2023 Share Posted September 25, 2023 16 hours ago, crp said: I still think you should get an SSD replacement. He has had one gathering dust on a shelf for the last couple of years. For some reason will not upgrade. Maybe as he is getting older he is afraid the old grey cell will not be able to cope with the speed of the ssd's operation. If that is the case I get it. As I miss having the time to make a cup of tea whilst the pc boots up. An the speed of games reloading after yet another death just do not give you time to think of why you died. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted September 25, 2023 Author Share Posted September 25, 2023 4 hours ago, abarbarian said: He has had one gathering dust on a shelf for the last couple of years. For some reason will not upgrade. It's in a drawer at this desk and is not collecting dust (still in original package). I haven't upgraded because I need to have 3 more matching SSDs to go with this one in order to have my usual primary and mirrored drive set up. Also, since there are other issues (video, intermittent connections, possible mobo problems, etc.) with this system, I'm not going to putz around and "upgrade" anything in there. One day down the road, when I have the disposable income necessary to purchase new components, I will build another system. In the meantime, this one serves my minimal needs for now. If it blows up tomorrow, I'll be gone... I may or may not ever return. The Internet is NOT a super-dooper priority to me. It's just a convenient and sometimes fun distraction from my Real Life™. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted September 25, 2023 Share Posted September 25, 2023 3 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said: It's in a drawer at this desk and is not collecting dust (still in original package). Ah ha righty ho. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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