Computer hardware issue

[cstone]

Get an external drive and backup your data. Hard drives are cheap and they all eventually fail.

The case fans are cheap and easy to replace. Power supply is not very expensive and easy to replace.

If you like most of the hardware and have no need for anything better, it is usually simple and cheap to keep it running. At 6.5 years old, you could buy a motherboard/CPU/RAM deal off the Internet or MicroCenter as long as the motherboard form factor will fit into your case. Like getting a new engine in an old car, it only works if you like everything else about the old car.

First thing is knowing what your primary uses will be for the computer. I am very cheap and tend to run Linux on old computers until something significant fails, but I always keep backups of all of my data. It isn't "if" but "when" your hard drive/computer will fail.

[Gman]

Get an external drive and backup your data. Hard drives are cheap and they all eventually fail.

The case fans are cheap and easy to replace. Power supply is not very expensive and easy to replace.

If you like most of the hardware and have no need for anything better, it is usually simple and cheap to keep it running. At 6.5 years old, you could buy a motherboard/CPU/RAM deal off the Internet or MicroCenter as long as the motherboard form factor will fit into your case. Like getting a new engine in an old car, it only works if you like everything else about the old car.

First thing is knowing what your primary uses will be for the computer. I am very cheap and tend to run Linux on old computers until something significant fails, but I always keep backups of all of my data. It isn't "if" but "when" your hard drive/computer will fail.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I'll let you know what I find, maybe with pictures. I can buy another computer, may do that and keep this one for storage backup. We did a backup to a seagate external drive last week.

[Hummer]

Well, it seems that the cleaning has taken care of the fan surging.

Initially I had problems with it booting up but not going to the log in screen. Neither the Logitech keyboard nor the mouse worked. I replaced them last year because the last ones acted up too. Today I moved the receiving units to other USB ports and it it all worked properly. Funny though, I plugged another device into the USB ports the receiving units had been in and the USB port worked. I have had problems with the key stroke delays and skips and only rebooting the computer fixes it. Had the same problem with the previous Logitech keyboard. Goofy. Maybe I need to go wired instead of wireless.

[Hummer]

Get an external drive and backup your data. Hard drives are cheap and they all eventually fail.

The case fans are cheap and easy to replace. Power supply is not very expensive and easy to replace.

If you like most of the hardware and have no need for anything better, it is usually simple and cheap to keep it running. At 6.5 years old, you could buy a motherboard/CPU/RAM deal off the Internet or MicroCenter as long as the motherboard form factor will fit into your case. Like getting a new engine in an old car, it only works if you like everything else about the old car.

First thing is knowing what your primary uses will be for the computer. I am very cheap and tend to run Linux on old computers until something significant fails, but I always keep backups of all of my data. It isn't "if" but "when" your hard drive/computer will fail.

We use two external drives for backup but it's time to get another one. I can't afford to lose anything. Critical databases, multiple businesses and Quicken financial records over 35 years, plus countless thousands of photos and correspondence. Still, the computer has 1.4 TB free of 1.8 TB total. I'm happy enough with the computer as is so long as it works, pretty much like my '03 Tundra which ticks on trouble free. I have opened and cleaned other computers but never this one. It's actually the first home PC we've had in 30+ years that isn't government owned, which is an incentive to keep it working.

Again, I appreciate all the suggestions. It kept me focused and helped me avoid problems.

[Circuits]

we're setting ourselves up for this

I love my SSDs - wouldn't want to live without them after making the switch, but they're mostly doomed to failure through write cycle fatigue after five or six years (depending on usage). Always be multiply backing up, always be looking to upgrade or replace your storage.

On the plus side, storage is cheaper and faster and better than ever, now, than it has ever been before.

[Gman]

I have SSDs that are about 5 years old and they have plenty of life left in them. Mechanical drives are cheaper per GB, but SSDs are pretty tough to wear out unless you're doing a ridiculous amount of writes. If you're really concerned about losing data, setup regular backups to an on-prem NAS or to 'the cloud'.

[brutal]

We use two external drives for backup but it's time to get another one. I can't afford to lose anything. Critical databases, multiple businesses and Quicken financial records over 35 years, plus countless thousands of photos and correspondence. Still, the computer has 1.4 TB free of 1.8 TB total. I'm happy enough with the computer as is so long as it works, pretty much like my '03 Tundra which ticks on trouble free. I have opened and cleaned other computers but never this one. It's actually the first home PC we've had in 30+ years that isn't government owned, which is an incentive to keep it working.

Again, I appreciate all the suggestions. It kept me focused and helped me avoid problems.

$99/year for O365 with 6x1TB accounts (there's a way to nest them together for a larger namespace if needed).

You get all the standard O365 desktop apps, O365 apps for the mobile devices. I tried to get by with OpenOffice and just couldn't stand the lack of real Excel formula/vb code support. Having Excel and word on my personal PC is great.

The sync and versioning is great. Easiest one I've found since Sugarsync (which went pay) to put the Onedrive local folder location where *I* want it, etc.

I back up local and everything critical goes to the cloud as well. I can get to it from anywhere and selectively get data/folders on my work PC, etc.

[Gman]

$99/year for O365 with 6x1TB accounts (there's a way to nest them together for a larger namespace if needed).

You get all the standard O365 desktop apps, O365 apps for the mobile devices. I tried to get by with OpenOffice and just couldn't stand the lack of real Excel formula/vb code support. Having Excel and word on my personal PC is great.

The sync and versioning is great. Easiest one I've found since Sugarsync (which went pay) to put the Onedrive local folder location where *I* want it, etc.

I back up local and everything critical goes to the cloud as well. I can get to it from anywhere and selectively get data/folders on my work PC, etc.

I have O365 as well. My Synology NAS also supports synchronization of files to OneDrive. Even if the house burns down, I can still get to the important stuff.

[brutal]

we're setting ourselves up for this

I love my SSDs - wouldn't want to live without them after making the switch, but they're mostly doomed to failure through write cycle fatigue after five or six years (depending on usage). Always be multiply backing up, always be looking to upgrade or replace your storage.

On the plus side, storage is cheaper and faster and better than ever, now, than it has ever been before.

I have SSDs that are about 5 years old and they have plenty of life left in them. Mechanical drives are cheaper per GB, but SSDs are pretty tough to wear out unless you're doing a ridiculous amount of writes. If you're really concerned about losing data, setup regular backups to an on-prem NAS or to 'the cloud'.

Run the utilities to keep an eye on the wear rates - but of course backups are essential.

We're putting read intensive (= cheap) enterprise SSD with 1 DWPD specs in moderately high transactional server environments and for secondary storage behind traditional backup systems (Commvault, Netbackup, IBM's ProtectTier [which is EOL] etc.) and not seeing wear rates that are cause for concern and fall well outside typical replacement cycles. These are not used in mission critical/healthcare/Fortune 100 of course; those get high end (IBM) FlashCore modules anyway (no drive interface to slow things down) with petabytes of <100us latency systems.

That said, nothing is unbreakable. We had a higher end system go sideways due to crap Samsung RI drive firmware and some half-assed DRAID6 code and spent 2 weeks making the server environment whole again. DR site to the rescue.

[brutal]

I have O365 as well. My Synology NAS also supports synchronization of files to OneDrive. Even if the house burns down, I can still get to the important stuff.

NAS sync - that's cool.

Since losing access to free enterprise "cloud" storage through work changes (company acquisitions), I had been chasing free storage for years and constantly moving platforms. With O365 it just works and the $99/year is so worth it.

With the NAS sync, if you have more than a single account data set, are you able to either nest accounts or use multiple accounts? We're nesting accounts now by sharing 2 other logins to the base account.