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Nephtys wrote:...why on Earth do you have a floppy drive on that thing? I haven't touched one of those in six years, and you shouldn't either with such an Ungodly DeathBox.

Mostly because they're cheap as dirt- my friend suggested one, I said "do we need it?" and he says "it's only 15 bucks."

"Fine, whatever".

Sometimes I've needed a floppy disk- on my old PC my floppy drive never worked, which was an inconvenience at times.

As far as the HD issue goes, I wait with baited breath to get home today and see what's doing. I'm sweaty with anticipation at just what's going to happen with this. I'm very annoyed they didn't test the machine first though, they should've picked this up before delivery. I've already started playing Prey and F.E.A.R. I don't want to start again Oh well, I get a replacement one automatically (they're coming in on Monday, my friend tells me), but it's still damn inconvenient.

Thanks for the input...but exactly what didn't you understand about anedoctal evidence? However, customer experience = worthless? What world do you live in?

If I'm wrong about Seagate, great. More power to you, but customer experience is hardly worthless, and I have a feeling you're guilty of the same thing. Unless you never give your opinion about a certain brand of product?

Kamakazie Sith wrote:Thanks for the input...but exactly what didn't you understand about anedoctal evidence? However, customer experience = worthless? What world do you live in?

Are you fucking retarded? Do you understand why anecdotal evidence is considered worthless? With hundreds of thousands of hard drives being sold, you know a couple of people and you've got a compelling case? Do the words "hasty generalization" mean anything to you?

Quick update, I got home, and it gave me the same message- this time I recorded it:


---------------------------------------
[American Megatrends logo]

3rd Master Hard Disk S.M.A.R.T. Status BAD. Backup and Replace.

Press F1 to Resume
---------------------------------------

I called my friend and asked him if I should leave it for the weekend, he said fuck it, just muck around with it anyway and if the HD fails it fails, he'll fix it as soon as the replacemenet HD comes in.

Pfft, time to dick around!

The event viewer message, one, in relation to "disk"

The driver has detected that device \Device\Harddisk0\DR0 has predicted that it will fail. Immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent.

Looks like it's the main one. Fuck.

Now I can't do anyhting on this system until Tuesday.

Beowulf wrote:

Uraniun235 wrote:

Nephtys wrote:...why on Earth do you have a floppy drive on that thing? I haven't touched one of those in six years, and you shouldn't either with such an Ungodly DeathBox.

They're pretty handy when you need to flash the BIOS.

Some BIOSes allow flashing from a flashdrive. The ASUS board he has I believe is one of them. I know mine does.

And the new Asus boards also support flashing from Windows. I've only used it once, but I love that feature.

Somewhat off-topic, but regarding floppy drives, some of us keep those beautiful old DOS games lying around.

The day I part with floppies is the day of the zombie apocalypse.

Listen up kiddies, having a floppy drive is useful from time to time.

Heck, I still have an ISA linked 5.25 FLOPPY drive from 94 running in Windows XP along with my standard floppy, a Zip drive and my two DVD(One just a player, one a writer bunner drives)

You never know..

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:Somewhat off-topic, but regarding floppy drives, some of us keep those beautiful old DOS games lying around.

The day I part with floppies is the day of the zombie apocalypse.

You know you could simply store those on some other form of media...

Arrow wrote:

Beowulf wrote:Some BIOSes allow flashing from a flashdrive. The ASUS board he has I believe is one of them. I know mine does.

And the new Asus boards also support flashing from Windows. I've only used it once, but I love that feature.

Lots of boards support flashing from Windows. Some people don't like it because it's a bit more likely to cause your board to brick.

Arrow wrote:

Beowulf wrote:Some BIOSes allow flashing from a flashdrive. The ASUS board he has I believe is one of them. I know mine does.

And the new Asus boards also support flashing from Windows. I've only used it once, but I love that feature.

Motherboards have had flash from windows for years now. In fact, I haven't had to use a disk to flash a motherboard in 6 or 7 years.

InnocentBystander wrote:

Arrow wrote:

Beowulf wrote:Some BIOSes allow flashing from a flashdrive. The ASUS board he has I believe is one of them. I know mine does.

And the new Asus boards also support flashing from Windows. I've only used it once, but I love that feature.

Motherboards have had flash from windows for years now. In fact, I haven't had to use a disk to flash a motherboard in 6 or 7 years.

My previous Asus mobo (AN8-SLI Premium), which is a little over a year old, wouldn't flash from Windows (the Asus flash program wouldn't even reconogize the board). My new one (P5W DH Deluxe) is the first board I've own that has this feature, which is why I'm a little pysched about it.

Let's put it this way: the floppy drive doesn't do any harm, so what's the problem? I guess a more practical solution, however, would be to have a portable USB floppy drive somewhere. Then you could be guaranteed of being able to BIOS flash any computer without having to actually install floppy drives in the cases.

Darth Wong wrote:Let's put it this way: the floppy drive doesn't do any harm, so what's the problem? I guess a more practical solution, however, would be to have a portable USB floppy drive somewhere. Then you could be guaranteed of being able to BIOS flash any computer without having to actually install floppy drives in the cases.

The only real harm is that it takes up a molex. Depending on your PSU, and how many harddrives you plan on adding, you may find yourself in need of one.

Floppy drives take a different-sized power connector than hard drives do.

Uraniun235 wrote:Floppy drives take a different-sized power connector than hard drives do.

My new PSU didn't have a floppy molex. It had an adapter from the standard molex.

Arrow wrote:

InnocentBystander wrote:

Arrow wrote: And the new Asus boards also support flashing from Windows. I've only used it once, but I love that feature.

Motherboards have had flash from windows for years now. In fact, I haven't had to use a disk to flash a motherboard in 6 or 7 years.

My previous Asus mobo (AN8-SLI Premium), which is a little over a year old, wouldn't flash from Windows (the Asus flash program wouldn't even reconogize the board). My new one (P5W DH Deluxe) is the first board I've own that has this feature, which is why I'm a little pysched about it.

My AN8-SLI Deluxe worked from windows, thats rather weird.

Darth Wong wrote:

Kamakazie Sith wrote:Thanks for the input...but exactly what didn't you understand about anedoctal evidence? However, customer experience = worthless? What world do you live in?

Are you fucking retarded? Do you understand why anecdotal evidence is considered worthless? With hundreds of thousands of hard drives being sold, you know a couple of people and you've got a compelling case? Do the words "hasty generalization" mean anything to you?

You consider customer experience completely worthless? When someone tells you they've experienced the same problem you're having with the same brand it doesn't make you consider looking into another brand?

Anyway, I've allowed my bias to cloud my objectivity here. I've looked through several consumer reports, and Seagate is actually ranked at #1 on more than a few.

The models of Seagate that myself, and my clients were using must have been part of that lemon tree because we had replacement after replacement fail on us. It was a really bad experience with a huge client of ours.

I apologize to Uranium235, and Vympel for my hasting generalization.

Ace Pace wrote:
My AN8-SLI Deluxe worked from windows, thats rather weird.

I thought so too. The flash program told me that my Asus board wasn't an Asus. WTF? Not like I'm going to use that particular board again...

Arrow wrote:

Ace Pace wrote:
My AN8-SLI Deluxe worked from windows, thats rather weird.

I thought so too. The flash program told me that my Asus board wasn't an Asus. WTF? Not like I'm going to use that particular board again...

Do you have a Creative Sound card?

If so, then this is the fix...

Goto HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\
Find the "Wow6432Node" folder
Rename "Wow6432Node" folder to aWow5432Node

Does that make sense?

Reboot, and then install ASUS update.

*EDIT* I've heard that the latest creative drivers, and the latest version of ASUS update also fix this problem.

Kamakazie Sith wrote:You consider customer experience completely worthless? When someone tells you they've experienced the same problem you're having with the same brand it doesn't make you consider looking into another brand?

What I do with most parts is I search the internet and ask around on forums to see if this is a common issue with a defective computer part. I also try not to jump to the conclusion that this is a problem with the entire brand; it's possible, for instance, that it's a problem with a particular model (again for example, the IBM 60 and 75GXP Deskstar hard drives).

With hard drives, though, I just shrug, send it in for warranty (or buy a replacement) and accept that hard drives die. Every manufacturer produces hard drives that die. This is an inescapable reality of owning a computer. (well, almost; if you're hell-bent, you can buy a solid-state drive, but they're godawful expensive and small)

Personal experience can be useful for issues like whether or not a local restaurant is any good, or whether someone had success in getting a particular computer component to work properly by some means. It's not useful for issues of assessing the quality control of an entire manufacturer.

Arrow wrote:

Ace Pace wrote:
My AN8-SLI Deluxe worked from windows, thats rather weird.

I thought so too. The flash program told me that my Asus board wasn't an Asus. WTF? Not like I'm going to use that particular board again...

Since you seem to go through parts quickly, have you thought about selling or giving away the old parts here on SDN?

Ace Pace wrote:Since you seem to go through parts quickly, have you thought about selling or giving away the old parts here on SDN?

I haven't thought of selling on SDN, but I have sold most of my old parts to friends and coworkers (a coworker is getting my 7800s, for example). But I guest if anyone interested in 2GB of DDR-400 (Corsair XMS) or an A64 X2 4800+ socket 939, PM me an offer (if the mods and admin approve, I know many forums frown on this kind of thing).

Kamakazie Sith wrote:You consider customer experience completely worthless? When someone tells you they've experienced the same problem you're having with the same brand it doesn't make you consider looking into another brand?

If I have other information clearly indicating that the problem is less endemic to the brand I'm using than to other brands making identical products, then no.

Anyway, I've allowed my bias to cloud my objectivity here. I've looked through several consumer reports, and Seagate is actually ranked at #1 on more than a few.

Yes. Seagate's 5-year warranty is also tangible evidence of their superior quality control.

Arrow wrote:I haven't thought of selling on SDN, but I have sold most of my old parts to friends and coworkers (a coworker is getting my 7800s, for example). But I guest if anyone interested in 2GB of DDR-400 (Corsair XMS) or an A64 X2 4800+ socket 939, PM me an offer (if the mods and admin approve, I know many forums frown on this kind of thing).

Selling stuff is only really a problem if that's all you do, IIRC.