OT, had a little Comp panic.

Well my PC stays on most of the time, due to laziness (Dell Optiplex slimline jobbie), and the CPU fan's been noisy for ages - making a clicking sound as if there's a wire semi-catching in the fan (which there isn't - obviously something else causing it). Anyway, one morning I went to it and noticed it was very quiet - thought "ooh good, fan's quietened down", and on rebooting it (in a vain attempt to get the s**te-ternet to work - ntl bb with a belkin router) I noticed the fan's dead (it tells me) - I managed to give it a flick (cover is off) and it worked for a bit, then stopped. Thankfully I've got 2 other spares PCs sitting about - hopefully a fan from one of them should fit.

Peter

my cousin ran an old AMD CPU, forget which of the 200 versions it was but it was a 1Ghz one i think, the CPU fan stopped working and he couldn't be arsed to replace it. used to run at around 80-85 degrees never broke and the tosser used to leave it on all the time like that!

Oh the fans on mine are fine. But the CPU fan did start to die a few weeks back. Swapped it for a decent one, and dropped 10 degrees from the CPU temp.

I've had a hard disc announce its death this weekend too. Must be the weather.

I'me gonna get a 250GB Seagate thing. I've been told Seagate are reliable at the minute, if it's of any help?

(Then sees your list with two seagates dying. Oh well.)

Sounds like it's overkill absolutely avoiding using the thing then!

Just as it was probably overkill avoiding using the A6 at all when it was coming up for 60k since the cambelt was last done (even though the official recommendation is 80k - planned to get it done at 60k though).

Peter

And I haven't a clue what temp mine's running at, as I can't get any software that'll tell me - it's one of these weird mad crazy proprietary Dell motherboards.

Peter

Oh I hate those. The Compaq that I use as a server is the same. Dual pentium pro. Hot as f*ck because one is passively cooled with just a heatsink, because the motherboard doesn't allow a fan to be fitted as one processor is under a riser card.

And it doesn't have any conventional readable sensors, but it does have over temperature alarms.

One Seagate is 7 years old, the other is at least 4, both get run 24-7, and the 30 gig used to be my main download and burn to disk partition until I got the 120gig.

I don't know if my machine (bios and windows install) supports LBA48, so rather than mess arround with flashes and shit like, I may just stick with replacing the three small drives with 120gig ones. that will give me 480 gig of HDD in the machine, and a DVD burner. For now I shouldn't need anymore. The Mobo will get upgraded before then.

These drives aren't exactly brand spanking new, it has to be pointed out...

They're the only ones that offer a 5 year warranty. So they're obviously reasonably confident they won't die.

I have 480gb of space.... and i want more :)

Or reasonably confident that their buyers will not have retained their receipts after that length of time... :)

If its anything like Western Digital's warranty, you don't need them. Enter serial number onto wbesite, it tells you if drive is still in warranty, they post you a new drive, you then have 30 days to send the borked one back, and if you don't, they charge you (although the prices they threaten to charge are VERY resonable...)

Have you tried your system bios on start up, some times you can get a reading there. Some after market heat sinks come with a thermal gauge/pad/thing.

Get Western Digital. Best hard discs on the market at the moment.

Fraser

Had a brief look in the BIOS setup yesterday, but no luck. If I'm being blind, then could someone kindly point me to what section it's in, but I've looked in all the obvious places.

Peter

They've been good. they have worked, and while the system drive is constanly running short of space, I'm a tight wad. If it ain't broke don't fix it. I don't want to go to the hassle of re- installing a whole system, but I've found some decent cloning and pertitioning stuff that makes partition magic and ghost look awkward.

I think the oldest drive is from about 1998.

It has been fine since. We already have PC with a case panel off, and another with a 60watt desk fan blowing into it, but mine has more internal fans, and cables in it.

We have a cat to likes to get into boxes.

I've had 3 of them fail in the past 2 years if that helps...