Pellet heads!! What's up today?

Never tasted the Stella, will have to try that next run!

Wasn't easy to find a 12 pack, had to 'roost around' (aka: partially disassemble) the huge Point of Sale display in the store, much to the oldest daughter's chagrin.. The ladies shopping were looking puzzled, but one couple was rolling by with their cart, I heard the guy go "Beer Run" and give the Thumbs-Up, that was funny. Pellets and Beer..

 

Feel better Jt!

I stopped at HD today after work and grabbed 25 bags of big heats. My stove loves them and i haven't been able to find em since last year. Depot had a few skids at $5.18bag so i had to grab some

 

Same here Smokey, wearing the network Admin hat here too..

The ladies are sub-netted on their own router (else I wouldn't be able to post here), we have an old Seagate BlackArmor 110 NAS unit here that was upgraded w/ a 1 TB WD Red NAS drive several years ago, works perfectly for what we need. Been using & recommending the Western Digital Red NAS and RE4 Enterprise drives for many years now, they just work well.

In the modern SSD world, Crucial MX100 / 200, and Samsung 850 EVO / PRO are the go-to drives here.

If I was going to do that here, I'd be looking at the Linksys WRT AC1900 router, only because I like Linksys products, and this router is retro-cool, reminds me of the (too many to count) WRT54G routers I've owned, installed, or hacked over the years. ( It's huge, compared to the other routers on market today, but has really cool creature features, like eSATA support for NAS. )

I hear 'ya on the Thumb Drives, got a bunch sitting on the desk here, gets expensive and messy quick. NAS is the way to go for bulk media storage!

 

Dogs enjoying the rest of the tsc mwps buring. 30 here not softy time yet. PBR time though

 

Ive been looking for a few sales this week to update my laptop and tower to SSD. There are some Sandisk's on sale at 60 bucks for 240gb, and 109 for 480 gb. The Crucial and Samsungs are a bit more, are they worth the difference?

 

damm J. I feel for you. Had it 2 years ago at Thanksgiving. Worst part was when someone put a plate of bacon wrapped scallops behind me and I couldnt even think of eating one

I hope it passes and you are fine in the am buddy !

 

The Sandisk Ultra II 480 GB is an excellent value at that price point.

If you plan on storing many files (video, music, etc.) on the drive - go for a 480 / 500 GB drive to start. Windows (7/8/10) takes anywhere from 30GB (minimal) to 60GB+ (fully service packed/patched), so the extra storage is useful at the start.

Drives in the 480/500 GB range also use a more efficient flash memory access method by the controller (more memory = more channels to access & store data = Parallelism / e.g. "More lanes on a highway" ) so there is an immediate, secondary benefit to purchasing the larger SSD drive, regardless of brand.

If your computing activities are primarily general surfing/browsing, email, and occasional office application-based, I would recommend this drive.

If you are performing routine computational-intensive work that requires many reads/writes to the drive (compiling code, video editing, etc.), this drive is still an excellent value - although the other drives I listed have been tested to be slightly faster.

Crucial MX100 / MX200 SSD:
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I like the Crucial drives because they offer advanced enterprise-grade features at a value price point, like RAIN, thermal monitoring and throttling, power loss protection, and deep-sleep mode power conservation.

RAIN is a mechanism, and architecture, that provides a comprehensive redundancy check of data stored, or pending to be written to the drive, simply put, all data is verified before being (stored) written. In the older (platter-based) disk drives, this feature is called RAID. Crucial has adapted that concept and implemented it into their SSDs, which is a huge win for IT folks, looking for that level of data integrity.

* Important Note: -all- SSD drives incorporate some proprietary, comprehensive method of redundancy checking in the drive, to ensure data is written (and read) correctly: I prefer the method that Crucial has implemented. It doesn't mean other manufacturer's drives are "bad", only that I personally prefer the method Crucial employs. It's published, independently reviewed & verified, and rock-solid.

Thermal monitoring and throttling ensures the drive won't get 'cooked' if the internal case temp. exceeds normal limits, e.g. a CPU or case cooling fan fails, or is blocked up on a laptop. Power loss protection means the SSD has an internal capacitor that stores enough voltage where if there's a sudden loss of power, the drive will have enough time to complete immediate pending operations to minimize any file corruption. (You may loose some data, but you won't trash a file that may have pending writes @ time of power loss.) Deep sleep mode extends battery life, again on laptops.

Samsung EVO / Pro series SSD:
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I like the Samsung EVO / Pro series, because the controller Samsung uses is optimized for pending write operations, like you would have in an intensive computing environment (high-end workstation, or Server). Where other SSDs may lag, or struggle handling multiple queued random write operations, measured with the "QD" benchmark, the Samsung drives sail right through - with the Pro series being only slightly faster than the EVO series.

There are different types of NAND memory, and each manufacturer uses various 'tricks' to buffer pending data writes, in conjunction with the controller used, to speed up write (and to some extent read) operations, measured in IOPS, or Input/output Operations Per Second. Depending on (what) controller is used, the (type) of NAND memory, the expected performance, and projected longevity of the drive, are all dictated in the price-point of the SSD.


Now that you are going bleary-eyed from the novel written above, and need to grab another Smoothie bottom line is that -any- SSD drive will be an order of magnitude faster than an older platter-based Disk Drive, like 10x faster or more, even on older equipment.

If your current drive usage is under (120GB), and you don't plan on changing that, you'll be ok with a 240GB SSD.

If your current drive usage is over (120GB), or you plan on storing a large amount of files, opt for a 480/500GB drive to start.

Bottom line is that Sandisk Ultra II 480 GB will work just fine for you. If you are going to be running in a computational-intensive environment, or the features listed above are of value to you, -then- you may want to consider one of those SSDs as an option.

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Just remember that you will need some mechanism to (transfer) the existing Drive data to the new SSD drive: some manufacturers provide "Cloning" software, others do not. You will also need a way to physically connect the new Drive to the existing machine to transfer the data: you can use an external (USB) Hard drive case, or a SATA -> USB adapter cable.

For upgrades here, I use a 1TB external USB drive, install Acronis imaging software on the (old) drive, back up / create an Image, remove the old Drive -> install the SSD, then boot the computer using an Acronis image CD, or Flash Drive, and restore -> the backed up image to the new SSD on the computer.

That's my go-to method here. ( There are other excellent software products (such as Macrium Reflect) that will do the cloning, and are free. )

Sorry for the novel folks, I may need another Beer. Good Question G.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

 

For the past two days, Amazon and Newegg have both had a Sandisk 960GB SSD for $199. That's about the best deal I've seen so far. Price went back up today, but I'm sure over the next week something similar will pop up again, just have to keep an eye out for it.

 

That's an excellent price for that amount of storage TT.

 

Thanks cleanfire and TT. I doubt that I would need 1TB drive, but then again, 20 years ago I thought I would NEVER use a 480 MEGABITE drive

My current laptop has redundant 500gb drives and my PC has a 500gb. None of these drives have even 1/3 of the space used but I like have the space in case its needed. Doubling the space for less than twice the price is a good deal for me. Regarding brands, I have been considering Crucial as a good compromise. My only gripe with SD has been that they fail so much earlier than the old platter based drives-but that has gotten a lot better lately as well.

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone ,don't eat too much

 

Happy Thanksgiving all you pellet heads. Now to let the chooks out to play.

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! Eat drink and go into a food coma!

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Be safe and dont think about the eating too much part just for today !!

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Eat a lot, enjoy the company of your family and friends, have a drink of your favorite beverage, and take a long turkey nap!

 

SmokeyTheBear This is the one I got last winter to back-up my computer.....works like a charm:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...ywords_four_browse-bin:8067150011&s=pc&sr=1-2

 

Want to wish a warm, wonderful, and happy Thanksgiving to all my friends here. Gobble, Gobble,
and don't forget .........ENJOY!!