I've been running my BBS on a dedicated PC since 2012. I replaced its hard drive around 2016 when I noticed its old hard drive started making wierd noises. Now I'll be replacing its hard drive again..
I run Linux Mint on my BBS machine, with the BBS itself running in a virtual machine running a 32-bit edition of Windows. I also use my BBS machine as a Plex media server to stream movies & TV shows to my TVs at home. Lately I had been noticing that PC's hard drive had been a bit slow, taking a few minutes to fully boot up and being generally slow sometimes while running. Yesterday I decided I'd like to have an SSD in it for its boot drive and ordered one from Amazon. I'm just waiting for that to arrive tomorrow.
Last night I also started backing up my Plex media files & things onto an external hard drive so I can re-format and re-organize the hard drive a bit. I noticed that while copying the files to the external HDD, for some of the files, Linux Mint was giving an error saying "error splicing file", though it seemed to copy the whole file. I figured it might be good to replace the HDD in my BBS PC too, so I ordered one from Amazon. So tomorrow, I should have a new SSD for the boot drive and new HDD for storage for my BBS machine.
Hopefully at least the SSD should speed things up a bit. I'm planning to put my BBS VM on the SSD and store my Plex media files etc. on the HDD.
The new HDD I ordered from Amazon is a Seagate and is supposedly designed for "24x7 heavy duty" use.. I'll see how it works out.
My BBS runs on a VPS in Dallas and use burp to back it up nightly to a VPS in Europe so that's all covered, for my personal Linux server I have two
For completeness, I have 2 bluray burners :) Yes, I had to pay extra for a
Re: Re: New drives for BBS machine
By: Nelgin to Nightfox on Mon Dec 30 2019 07:02 pm
My BBS runs on a VPS in Dallas and use burp to back it up nightly to a VPS
in Europe so that's all covered, for my personal Linux server I have two
Does Burp keep multiple backups? The thing about automatic daily backups like that is that something goes wrong one day (suppose some files get deleted), then you'd have a backup with problems in it, which is the opposite of what you'd want.. I like having a known good backup that I can revert to if something goes wrong.
For completeness, I have 2 bluray burners :) Yes, I had to pay extra for a
I built a new desktop PC this past year, and I bought a UHD (4K) blu-ray burner for it. I don't really use optical disks often anymore, but sometimes I still like to burn a backup or something to an optical disc.
Nightfox
---
þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
Does Burp keep multiple backups? The thing about automatic daily backups
Good luck! I almost bought an SSD for my new machine, but the cheap a**hole in me said to just get the HDD. Hope it doesn't bite me there someday.
On 12-30-19 18:05, Grease wrote to Nightfox <=-
Good luck! I almost bought an SSD for my new machine, but the cheap a**hole in me said to just get the HDD. Hope it doesn't bite me there someday.
On 12-30-19 21:25, Nightfox wrote to Grease <=-
Very high-capacity SSDs are still more expensive than HDDs.. It can
still be more cost-effective to have a relatively small SSD for the
boot drive and a HDD for storage.
Very high-capacity SSDs are still more expensive than HDDs..
If you are reviewing tools for backup - I use restic. (I dont know if it works on Windows - as I dont backup any windows systems).
Very high-capacity SSDs are still more expensive than HDDs.. It can
still be more cost-effective to have a relatively small SSD for the
boot drive and a HDD for storage.
That does seem to be the best bang for the buck.
On 12-31-19 10:52, Nightfox wrote to Vk3jed <=-
I put an M.2 SSD in my most recent PC build to use for the boot drive.
I was a bit excited to see that work - I really like that M.2 drives
mount directly to the motherboard, which means they don't need their
own SATA cable or power cable and don't need to be mounted in the PC
case. Also they can potentially be much faster since the M.2 interface
is faster than SATA.
On 12-30-19 21:25, Nightfox wrote to Grease <=-
Very high-capacity SSDs are still more expensive than HDDs.. It can still be more cost-effective to have a relatively small SSD for the boot drive and a HDD for storage.
That does seem to be the best bang for the buck.
I put an M.2 SSD in my most recent PC build to use for the boot
drive. I was a bit excited to see that work - I really like that M.2
drives mount directly to the motherboard, which means they don't
need their own SATA cable or power cable and don't need to be
mounted in the PC case. Also they can potentially be much faster
since the M.2 interface is faster than SATA.
That sounds neat. I haven't seen those, but it has been a few years since I've bought any PCs. :) One day, I should really upgrade this PC to SSD, and repurpose the HDD for storage.
On 12-31-19 22:25, MRO wrote to Vk3jed <=-
i've never used a ssd , but i do have some sshd and those were a big improvement.
i've never used a ssd , but i do have some sshd and those were a
big improvement.
SSHD?
On 12-31-19 22:25, MRO wrote to Vk3jed <=-
i've never used a ssd , but i do have some sshd and those were a big improvement.
SSHD?
Nightfox wrote to Vk3jed <=-
Solid-State hybrid drive - Spinning platter drives that have a bit of solid-state storage that acts as a cache for the files you use most
often.
Solid-State hybrid drive - Spinning platter drives that have a bit
of solid-state storage that acts as a cache for the files you use
most often.
I swore by those for several years - bought close to a hundred of them as replacements for systems at work. Normal boot up time, but once you opened Skype, Outlook and your usual apps, they all ran out of the 4-8GB cache on the side of the spinner. Cheap, too.
I think finally it makes more sense to go for an SSD.
Nightfox wrote to Vk3jed <=-
Solid-State hybrid drive - Spinning platter drives that have a bit of solid-state storage that acts as a cache for the files you use most often.
I swore by those for several years - bought close to a hundred of them as replacements for systems at work. Normal boot up time, but once you opened Skype, Outlook and your usual apps, they all ran out of the 4-8GB cache on the side of the spinner. Cheap, too.
... Dawn crept across the lawn, searching for her car keys.
On 01-01-20 10:25, Nightfox wrote to Vk3jed <=-
@VIA: VERT/DIGDIST
Re: Re: New drives for BBS machine
By: Vk3jed to MRO on Wed Jan 01 2020 07:26 pm
i've never used a ssd , but i do have some sshd and those were a
big improvement.
SSHD?
Solid-State hybrid drive - Spinning platter drives that have a bit of solid-state storage that acts as a cache for the files you use most
often.
On 01-01-20 13:35, MRO wrote to Vk3jed <=-
@VIA: VERT/BBSESINF
Re: Re: New drives for BBS machine
By: Vk3jed to MRO on Wed Jan 01 2020 07:26 pm
On 12-31-19 22:25, MRO wrote to Vk3jed <=-
i've never used a ssd , but i do have some sshd and those were a big improvement.
SSHD?
hybrid between regular and ssd
On 01-02-20 00:38, Denn wrote to Vk3jed <=-
@VIA: VERT/OUTWEST
Re: Re: New drives for BBS machine
By: Vk3jed to MRO on Wed Jan 01 2020 07:26 pm
... Dawn crept across the lawn, searching for her car keys.
Lol, stolen
... Dawn crept across the lawn, searching for her car keys.
Re: New drives for BBS machine
By: Nightfox to All on Mon Dec 30 2019 02:16 pm
The new HDD I ordered from Amazon is a Seagate and is supposedly designed for "24x7 heavy duty" use.. I'll see how it works out.
Good luck! I almost bought an SSD for my new machine, but the cheap a**hole in me said to just get the HDD. Hope it doesn't bite me there someday.
Ahh, OK, could be useful for some things, though separating bulk storage fro the OS with the best tech for each is probably best for most.
All updated/new systems (by me) now have at least one SSD for a boot drive. You can get a 1TB SSD for $99 now and the performance improvement (over any HDD) is very noticeable. A large (multiple-TB) secondary HDD for large file storage is often good to have too.
On 12-31-19 22:25, MRO wrote to Vk3jed <=-
i've never used a ssd , but i do have some sshd and those were a big improvement.
SSHD?
On 01-02-20 06:56, Rampage wrote to Vk3jed <=-
... Dawn crept across the lawn, searching for her car keys.
i have a couple of variants of that one... this one is cute, too...
... April Showers brings May flowers... and she loves them!
On 01-02-20 15:42, MRO wrote to Vk3jed <=-
Ahh, OK, could be useful for some things, though separating bulk storage fro the OS with the best tech for each is probably best for most.
that's all open to opinion, though.
On 01-02-20 12:09, Digital Man wrote to Grease <=-
All updated/new systems (by me) now have at least one SSD for a boot drive. You can get a 1TB SSD for $99 now and the performance
improvement (over any HDD) is very noticeable. A large (multiple-TB) secondary HDD for large file storage is often good to have too.
I upgraded a Linux machine from HDD to SSD, and the performance went through the roof, outperforming my much faster and newer machine that had twice the RAM. SSD is well worth the expense now. And I agree on multi TB storage - you still can't go past spinning disks for that role.
... Windows 3.1: the best $99 solitare game I've ever seen!
On 01-02-20 17:44, Digital Man wrote to Vk3jed <=-
@VIA: VERT
Re: Re: New drives for BBS machine
By: Vk3jed to MRO on Wed Jan 01 2020 07:26 pm
On 12-31-19 22:25, MRO wrote to Vk3jed <=-
i've never used a ssd , but i do have some sshd and those were a big improvement.
SSHD?
Hybrid SSD/HDD.
... Windows 3.1: the best $99 solitare game I've ever seen!
Lol that was about all windows 3.0 and 3.1 had that I used,
windows 3.0 & 3.1 was just a gui DOS shell.
Yeah I hadn't seen those. These days, my preference is SSD for smaller systems and SSD boot/HDD bulk storage when more space is needed.
On 01-02-20 22:26, Nightfox wrote to Vk3jed <=-
I recently had to replace the HDD in my BBS machine since the HDD in it was apparently going bad, and several days ago the host OS (Linux) wouldn't fully boot anymore. I replaced the HDD, and also put an SSD
in it for the boot drive. With the old drive, that PC was taking at
least 3 or 4 minutes to fully boot up (maybe a sign of a HDD going
bad?). I installed Linux fresh on the SSD and set everything up again,
and with the SSD, Linux boots up in seconds. Compared to how it was booting before, it feels like Linux boots up pretty much immediately.
I'm even using a light GUI on it (Xfce) - I know with a server it's
ideal not to have a GUI, but I like having a GUI for some things. I
run the BBS on that machine in a VirtualBox VM (running a 32-bit
Windows), and sometimes it's useful to have the VirtualBox VM window
open on it so I can directly interact with the VM if I need to. I also use that PC as a Plex media server, so I have the Plex server for Linux installed on it, with media on the HDD.
I have my BBS VM on the SSD so that the BBS VM can start up quickly.
On 01-02-20 23:42, Denn wrote to Vk3jed <=-
@VIA: VERT/OUTWEST
Re: Re: New drives for BBS machine
By: Vk3jed to Rampage on Fri Jan 03 2020 11:47 am
... Windows 3.1: the best $99 solitare game I've ever seen!
Lol that was about all windows 3.0 and 3.1 had that I used,
windows 3.0 & 3.1 was just a gui DOS shell.
I recently had to replace the HDD in my BBS machine since the HDD in it was apparently going bad, and several days ago the host OS (Linux) wouldn't full boot anymore. I replaced the HDD, and also put an SSD in it for the boot drive. With the old drive, that PC was taking at least 3 or 4 minutes to fu boot up (maybe a sign of a HDD going bad?). I installed Linux fresh on the and set everything up again, and with the SSD, Linux boots up in seconds. Compared to how it was booting before, it feels like Linux boots up pretty m immediately. I'm even using a light GUI on it (Xfce) - I know with a server it's ideal not to have a GUI, but I like having a GUI for some things. I ru
it was 1TB and I wanted something bigger). I heard the Western Digital Blue drives are 5400rpm and are made for regular desktop use, and I was buying on for my PC that runs Plex & my BBS (it's on 24/7), and I needed a new drive right away so I decided to just buy a WD Blue at Best Buy.
I recently had to replace the HDD in my BBS machine since the HDD in
it was apparently going bad, and several days ago the host OS
(Linux) wouldn't fully boot anymore. I replaced the HDD, and also
put an SSD in it for the boot drive. With the old drive, that PC
was taking at least 3 or 4 minutes to fully boot up (maybe a sign of
a HDD going bad?). I installed Linux fresh on the SSD and set
everything up again,
Sounds like a typical boot time on a HDD for a machine with a lot of daemons/services starting up on Windows or a recent Linux distro with systemd.
I found the same. My Linux machine went from a few minutes to about 20 seconds when I switched to a SSD. I'm sure the old SysV init started quicker on a HDD.
When I first heard systemd was trying to start everything at once, I thought this would happen, because I've seen it on Windows.
I'm even using a light GUI on it (Xfce) - I know with a server it's
ideal not to have a GUI, but I like having a GUI for some things. I
run the BBS on that machine in a VirtualBox VM (running a 32-bit
The Linux machine I upgraded to SSD runs Mint, so there's a bit more of a GUI there.
it was 1TB and I wanted something bigger). I heard the Western
Digital Blue drives are 5400rpm and are made for regular desktop use,
and I was buying on for my PC that runs Plex & my BBS (it's on 24/7),
and I needed a new drive right away so I decided to just buy a WD Blue
at Best Buy.
you're a computer guy and you dont have a closet of 1tb drives?
Windows 3.1 (well at least WFWG 3.11) supported Win32s, which allowed some 32 bit Windows code to run. But then again, DOS had DPMI.
All updated/new systems (by me) now have at least one SSD for a boot drive. You
can get a 1TB SSD for $99 now and the performance improvement (over any HDD) is
very noticeable. A large (multiple-TB) secondary HDD for large file storage is >ften good to have too.
All updated/new systems (by me) now have at least one SSD for a boot drive. You
can get a 1TB SSD for $99 now and the performance improvement (over any HDD) is
very noticeable. A large (multiple-TB) secondary HDD for large file storage is >ften good to have too.
do they make SSD or hybrids which are drop-in replacements for IDE based systems?
On 01-03-20 11:36, Nightfox wrote to Vk3jed <=-
It seems like it's harder to find good high-performing HDDs where I
live. I tend to buy a lot of computer parts online anyway, but it
I also recently put an SSD in my Plex/BBS PC and have the OS and my BBS
on the SSD so that they start up quickly.
On 01-03-20 14:42, Nightfox wrote to Vk3jed <=-
Sounds like a typical boot time on a HDD for a machine with a lot of daemons/services starting up on Windows or a recent Linux distro with systemd.
It seemed like an exceptionally long boot time though..
I had a similar experience years ago when I moved my Windows boot partition to an SSD. That was an existing OS installation. When I put
an SSD in my Linux machine recently, I installed a fresh copy of Linux Mint, and it seems like it's not even taking 20 seconds. Maybe around
4-5 seconds or so to boot to a desktop, I'd say.
The Linux machine I upgraded to SSD runs Mint, so there's a bit more of a GUI there.
Mint is what I'm running on mine too. There are a few different
flavors of Mint though - There's one with their Cinnamon GUI, another
with the MATE GUI, and another with the Xfce GUI.
On 01-03-20 14:49, Nightfox wrote to Vk3jed <=-
Windows 3.1 (well at least WFWG 3.11) supported Win32s, which allowed some 32 bit Windows code to run. But then again, DOS had DPMI.
I remember there being a Win32s installer for Windows 3.1 that would
add Win32s support, so I don't think you had to have WFWG 3.11 for
Win32s support. And as you said, it was only 'some' 32-bit Windows
code. You couldn't just run any Windows 95 app on Windows 3.1 with it.
I'm running Cinnamon on the Linux desktop.
When Windows 95 came out and I realized it also ran like a DOS shell, I was suspicious why Microsoft called Windows 95 an "operating system". You could exit out of Windows 95 to a DOS prompt and even configure it to boot to just a DOS prompt (not running Windows 95 automatically) if you wanted to. Though at the same time, I thought it was kinda cool that Windows 95 was more feature-rich than Windows 3.1 and it was something that could be run from DOS..
And many of the old drives I had were fairly small by today's
standards, like around 200-300GB or so.
Vk3jed wrote to Digital Man <=-
I upgraded a Linux machine from HDD to SSD, and the performance went through the roof, outperforming my much faster and newer machine that
had twice the RAM. SSD is well worth the expense now. And I agree on multi TB storage - you still can't go past spinning disks for that
role.
And many of the old drives I had were fairly small by today's
standards, like around 200-300GB or so.
FWIW: my firewall machine runs on a PATA 12Gig drive and has been on 24x7 for the last 10+ years... before that drive was used for the firewall, it had been one of my BBS drives, also running 24x7 for some years before being upgraded to something larger like a 20Gig or two ;)
On 01-03-20 22:13, Nightfox wrote to Vk3jed <=-
@VIA: VERT/DIGDIST
Re: Re: New drives for BBS machine
By: Vk3jed to Nightfox on Sat Jan 04 2020 12:28 pm
I'm running Cinnamon on the Linux desktop.
I really like Linux Mint with Cinnamon. A while ago, I found that you
can also install Cinnamon on Ubuntu.
On 01-04-20 13:29, Dr. What wrote to Vk3jed <=-
I did the same for an old laptop. I replaced the spinning hard drive
with a larger SSD and it was nearly as fast as my new desktop system.
Dr. What wrote to Vk3jed <=-
I did the same for an old laptop. I replaced the spinning hard drive
with a larger SSD and it was nearly as fast as my new desktop system.
Re: Re: New drives for BBS machine
By: Nightfox to Denn on Fri Jan 03 2020 11:31 am
When Windows 95 came out and I realized it also ran like a DOS shell, I was suspicious why Microsoft called Windows 95 an "operating system". You could exit out of Windows 95 to a DOS prompt and even configure it to boot to just a DOS prompt (not running Windows 95 automatically) if you wanted to. Though at the same time, I thought it was kinda cool that Windows 95 was more feature-rich than Windows 3.1 and it was something that could be run from DOS..
yes it was a fancier DOS shell but still wraped around DOS.
yes it was a fancier DOS shell but still wraped around DOS.
It was a lot more than just a "DOS shell": https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20071224-00/?p=24063
Dr. What wrote to Vk3jed <=-
I did the same for an old laptop. I replaced the spinning hard drive with a larger SSD and it was nearly as fast as my new desktop system.
I have an old IBM Thinkpad T42 - 4:3 screen, 1.8 ghz single core pentium, and slow 5400 RPM OEM PATA drive. I found an oddball manufacturer that made PATA SSDs, and despite going through a parallel ATA interface, gave the system a shot in the arm that made a 15 year old laptop usable. It got some thumbs up at the local working coffee shop.
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