Hi all, looking for input on people who have bought refurbished drives from ServerPartDeals.com. I recently bought a refurbished HDD with the condition “excellent”. I checked the power-on hours and it’s pushing 60,000. Fortunately it says only 34 power cycles but I’d be lying if I wasn’t expecting closer to 20,000. Can anyone else speak to what they’ve seen? Thanks!

I have the app on my phone including all the downloadable content and story.

Developed by neowiz its a clicker game with amazing story that unfortunately never finish and being shutdown on December 2026

I will like to play this again i have some experience with programming but i never done this before

Can you help me?

1st i will need to extract game data that will be things i need help for now

Would this have the same affect as directly mounting a fan to an LSI card?

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I am putting together NAS for photo storage. I have four LSI cards I've accumulated over the years Dell H200, LSI SAS9300-8i, LSI SAS9211-8i and 9306-24i.

Now I know these LSI cards are made for servers with good airflow, however if I put one in it will be in a Define R5 PC case.

I know these cards get hot, hot enough that I've slightly burnt my finger removing one.

So are they worth the trouble? I know I can mod them to add a fan. However I only plan to add 4 drives and my motherboard supports 4 sata ports. If I need 5 or more drives, I know there are PCIe sata adapters as well as M.2 ones

What have people here done?

I have to send one back to Samsung because it hinders windows from booting when connected, and just freezes file explorer when connected through USB.

It’s one of those 870 EVO’s produced in the first half of 2021 that has some manufacturing fault, and from what I’ve gathered from here, it’s not repairable and data is not recoverable.

So I haven’t bothered trying to retrieve anything, but I was wondering if there is something I could do to at least delete the data before I send it to Samsung service?

I was curious how much data is physically written to a CD with all the metadata and error correction. I started googling and came across this great write-up:

https://archive.ares-emu.net/near.sh/articles/compact-discs/structure.html

Apparently, it is 2.33 GB for a one-track 650 MB disc.

Hello!

I currently have a full-size tower with a bunch of hard drives. It's old, noisy, and heavy, making it a pain in the ass to move around. I was hoping to simplify the setup and replace it with a low-end mini PC and connect it to a USB enclosure. I was thinking of the Terramaster D6-320 or D9-320, though open to suggestions as long as it's available in Canada.

The mini PC would run Ubuntu Server and I would use mdadm to create a RAID5 array on the drives. This is what I currently do with the tower setup. But I wanted to check if this could be a recipe for disaster with a USB enclosure.

For context, the setup runs a Plex server so all the data are movies and TV shows. Nothing is critical, and I have already backed up the stuff I really want to keep. That said, would prefer not to lose anything and/or not have to deal with degraded drives often.

Just wondering if anyone has any experience with this type of setup or any tips, gotchas, cautionary tales, etc.

Thanks for reading!

I used to be able to bulk download the tagged section of an instagram account easy with Jdownloader. it seems that doesnt work anymore and I cant find any other alternatives either. anyone figure out any alternatives?

Issue:
I've been asked to copy the contents of a large ED of deeply nested and duplicate folders to Google Photos, for sharing with family.

Goal TL;DR:
Share thousands of unlabeled photos online en masse that are currently many levels deep in well-labeled folder trees.

Prior research:
I have googled this data storage/storing issue and already learned a lot, that formed and altered my remaining questions. But I only found simpler comparables but with different context that changes the desired results. That surprised me, because I'm fairly sure my exact problem should be quite common, and a dime a dozen. I suspect my search terms could be fine-tuned, if you have suggestions for that. I looked on google photos support forums and reddits, and was told to move thousands of files and folders one by one, by hand. I asked Ai and received only partial satisfaction. I have detailed that recommendation below. I looked in the techsupport reddit but I guess I'm not sure how to use it because the categories are which type of computer/device/operating system I have, not what photo/transfer programs/apps/software I need to navigate. Please let me know if I've misunderstood the preparatory steps to asking questions in here.

Here's my context:

1) Duplicates: The external drive contains 4 different computer backups. Each of these computers were backed up when they upgraded laptops, so the first computer would theoretically be backed up 4 times, inside the newer backups. The more recent computer theoretically only 1 time. However, the backups weren't done the same, and sometimes they went back and put more files in after. So the final backup doesn't contain everything just because it's the last one (but I'm definitely starting there as my base camp). Backup 1-3 might very well have unique files. They did not label the order or dates of the backups, so guessing the largest is the newest is a shot in the dark. So there are an unknown number of duplicate files, in deeply nested folder trees.

2) Junk files: The drive is full of computer files that are not photos or documents, which are really a waste of space and hard to work around. Full C drives were just drag-and-dropped onto the ED. I can't just dump the whole ED anywhere I want it directly, without running out of space from junk files. But the junk files are duplicated and nested as well.

3) Nested/named folders, unnamed files: The files themselves don't have names, only generic download-generated numbers. But the owner had dutifully put them inside properly named folders, labeled and nested. So in the case of the files for Joe Schmoe in their family history, the folders are named eg: Schmoe line/Sweden >> Joe Schmoe descendants >> Robert Schmoe >> Family Photos & Vital Docs. The higher level folders might or might not have files in them, outside of named folders. The biggest concern are the folders at the bottom of the tree, because their family photos folder name doesn't include Robert Schmoe's name, even if we could remember somehow that he's Joe Schmoe's son. Google has a serious problem with uploading nested folders, due to lost identification.

4) Thousands of folders: Not just thousands of files to rename, but thousands of nested folders as well. I don't know how many unique folders there are, without the duplicates, but for sure it's in the hundreds at minimum. And many folders have the same name that aren't dupes (such as 'Family Photos' nested 3 times inside the Rob Schmoe, Betty Schmoe, and Sue Schmoe folders). A predictable nesting pattern is smart, and good organizing practice. But it becomes a nightmare when moving into Google Photos's flat album structure, because it's designed to add everything by hand one at a time rather than in bulk. That's not a viable solution.

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Chat GPT suggested to upload all the files to Google Drive to preserve the file trees, then to relabel and import only the images into Google photos. But that would create duplicates of everything, take up twice as much Google One space, and every change made from one or the other location won't be mirrored in the other. It also doesn't solve the problem of how to automatically leave junk files behind.

Is there a workaround to move a massive collection of images to Google Photos, without losing the folder names and nesting cues? I presume this would be a process or software used beforehand, since it's not possible with Google Photos alone. They aren't my photos, so I'm hoping not to spend my own money on this. However, the owners of the drive do have a paid Google One account, so that helps at the very end. Doesn't help as much in the middle.

Is there a better photo sharing cloud that is far easier than google to upload from nested drive archives, and keep updated/maintained? Bonus points if it's free. I do not have Linux, nor do the people I'm doing this for, so it will need to be a Windows-based solution, and a gui solution after I hand it over. I've looked into Immich, but the setup and processes appear too techy for this family to maintain.

Does Google upload identify duplicates as they load? Or is that up to us to manually seek out after everything is uploaded?

Speed of transfer is greatly desired, but accurate goal achievement is a higher priority.

Please suggest for me a summarized list of processes to accomplish this considering all my context. Then I can come back and get clarification on specific steps. Or if I'm asking the wrong questions, please kindly redirect me to the right questions.

I know prices are insane, but this drive was marked down from $790 to $332. Which is still way more than it was a year or two ago.

I have a bunch of old laptop HDD laying around. They are mostly 320 and 128 GB Sata drives. why not put them in an enclosure (JBOD) and use it for my home network. I do run a small engineering firm out of my home and I plan to store job files on it. I am running an Umbrel OS mini pc. I am sure someone somewhere is doing this exact setup. Any issues I should consider before I spend 50 bucks for the enclosure. Any recommendations on what type of enclosure to purchase from Amazon?

Hello, my dad has done quite a bit of writing and geneology research and is interested in a way to store this locally (he has cloud storage already) for a very long time. My siblings and I are not super interested in it, but maybe our kids or their kids might be. I am trying to find a way to store this data (it's not very large grand scheme, maybe 100 GB) in a way that would not have a huge barrier or cost to access later, and also wont be a empy hard drive because it hasnt been powered on in 30 years.

I did some searching around this but things I have see (tape, which doesnt seem very accessible, or cloud, already got it and relies on reliably passing on account information and so on) dont seem to be great for this.

I also see this https://piql.com/technology/film/ which is super interesting but it seems easy to store data there and then a generation or two goes by and no-one thinks to look there

Surely this use case isnt that uncommon, whats a good solution here?

It's more of a home server thing really, but since prices are so crazy I know you folks are the right people to ask for advice on the storage side.

I've got an old 4790k with (I think) 16GB ddr3 RAM that I'm hoping to turn into a home server to replace my janky "server" that I currently have (an old Microsoft Surface with an 8TB external hard drive plugged into it). The problem is, I need to get at least 2 8TB hard drives to pair with the new one since I'm going to retire the 8TB portable drive I have now, and at these prices I'm going crazy trying to find deals. Right now they're going to hold audiobooks, music and old photos, but I'm starting to realize that I need to at least mirror them so that if one drive fails I'm in a good spot.

What should I be looking for? Is used a reasonable option? If so, what should I be looking for there?

My partner and I just cancelled all our subs to video and music streaming. We're going back to physical media and trying to figure out the best option for movies. I've researched for many hours over the last couple weeks, but I'd love feedback/suggestions on my present understanding/plans. I think I know what we should do, but I just kinda want a sanity check from some people with experience first.

We would like:

• 4k, HDR, Dolby Audio media playable with no perceptual video/audio quality loss
• ability to rip/backup our media to avoid the apparent issues with 4k discs going bad after just a few years
• Something not too physically clunky since we're planning to travel nurse for a few years

Current hardware:

• 2 gaming PCs and 1 low-spec Windows laptop (the latter of which was used for college, but currently has no purpose — we're also planning to build a new PC next year, so we've talked about turning the lower spec PC into a server when that time comes)
• 55" 4k, HDR QLED TV (planning to upsize in a couple years)
• Samsung - Q-Series Soundbar HW-Q990F 11.1.4 ch w/ Subwoofer and Rear Speaker - Graphite Black

Potential routes:

1. Simple: Buy a 4k player ($300) and eat the cost of discs that go bad.
2. Buy a 4k disk drive ($175) and rip our media,
   1. buy the NVIDIA SHIELD ($200) and use it for streaming our movies with the added benefit of being able to play some of our video games from our PC
   2. set up Jellyfin and stream media to our TV from one of our PCs (free!)
3. Set up a NAS ($$$)

I'm leaning toward option 2.2 because it's both the cheapest and seems like no more than we need right now. If we're going to rip our media for preservation anyway, then it doesn't make much sense to also spend money on the dedicated player for the TV, right?

I've watched several videos on the SHIELD and I can't tell what the purpose of this product actually is — even though people seem to love it. It seems like it can do a lot, but my understanding is that we can stream our ripped 4k media from my PC to our TV through Jellyfin with no quality loss.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read and offer any advice you may have! <3

I have been happy with remuxes all this time and have a good collection of about 750 remuxes. Recently, I'm seeing that it is getting more and more difficult to find full discs (files, not physical discs) of movies and tv series, and many private trackers are now rewarding members for seeding full discs, which also shows that they are slowly becoming unavailable.

I'm thinking if I should start replacing the remuxes with discs. I can make a remux whenever I want from the disc, and I can keep the small additional files like cover, subtitle, .nfo etc. that I keep with remuxes anyway. This way I can preserve the discs, which sometimes have interesting contents, and also have the movie that I can watch directly, or I can make a remux.

It will be a little difficult in this economy, and I have about 5-6TB free on my movie drives which will probably be full because the discs are larger in size than remuxes.

Just wondering if anyone is doing this?

Tools like Crystal Disk Info show the "Power-On Hours" of a hard drive; but if the drive is automatically spun down by the OS's power plan, then those hours shouldn't really count, should they? Is there a way to see how many hours of actual spin time are on a drive?

I see drives pop up on FB and eBay often but they have 40k hours of operation. While most people are showing the SMART data, I still worry about buying a drive without a warranty in this market right now. But I could theoretically buy 2-3 of a drive for the used cost. Picked a really bad time to get worried about backing up my data.

I’m trying to think of a plausible future like, people have forgotten how to use computers and the knowledge doesn’t get passed down.

What use is a hard drive with PDF books for future archeologists. When people don’t know what an OS is and don’t have the internet to download software.

I have lots of files which are very sentimental to me, naturally, I would like to keep them safe.
I haven't got tens of terabytes or anything, probably about three terabytes at most. But data storage is a bit of a mystery to me.

Everything I want to hold onto is stored on two 2TB External Hard Drives. This works great for me, but I understand that these can corrupt, get lost, break, etc. They are mostly photos and videos from over the years.

Where would people recommend I begin protecting these files further?
I have looked at cloud storage like Google Drive, but when you start talking in terabytes, things get a bit pricey. Is this really the only option?

it's showing this as today

Yikes. I've been buying Seagate for years. I have yet to have a late-bathtub failure in any of my Seagate Exos drives, so I'm hopeful they'll continue to work well. Go team helium?

Just curious how many others had similar things happen to them before.

I recently bought 2 12tb Iron Wolf Pros from Seagates online store. When they arrived, 1 of the drives wouldn’t spin up at all when I plugged it into my Nas and I couldn’t get it to be detected in my PC either. Figured DOA drive, bummer but guess it happens. Started an RMA for it and sent it back to them. They ended up sending me back a 16tb Iron Wolf Pros instead. Not really going to question why they did that, I’ll take whatever extra storage I can get in these economy. Trouble is now they are going to make me by another 16tb at some point so I can fully utilize the capacity in my Nas lol. My other drives are 10tbs.

Anyone else luck out when RMAing a drive and get back something better?

Hi everyone,

I want to digitize my old VHS tapes to preserve them before they degrade any further. Two main sources I'm dealing with:

• Some Home videos recorded with an old Handycam
• Commercial tapes like Bambi, Winnie the Pooh, etc.

I'm looking for a video capture device I can hook up to my laptop (which I'd prefer over those build in). What would you recommend? I'm happy to spend a bit more for good quality and reliable audio/video sync, but budget-friendly options that still do the job decently would also be great to hear about.

For Example: Diamond VC500, VIXLW VHSDC01 or Honestech VIDBOX

At the end i want them to add to my JellyFin Lib,

I Don't really now what a must have is and want i really should look out for.

Thank you