Not to hijack this thread but my PC suddenly went from really quick after I spent a bundle on SSD, RAM and GPU upgrades to positively snappy after a Windows 10 update a couple of nights ago. I don't know if anyone else noticed any difference.
Do you mean this site, or your PC, Graham?

This site's been slow loading images for about a week now, at my end.
 
Sloppy writing on my part. I meant to refer to the update to see if anyone noticed an improvement on their PCs after downloading it.
Never been guilty of that myself, Graham ... :rofl: .

SWMBO's downloaded one a day or so ago, but can't say I noticed much difference. Maybe slightly faster startup. Hower, bear in mind its specifications:

CPU: Core2Duo clocking at 2.8 GHz
Graphics: 512 MB PCIe1 (2/4 channels??).
RAM: 8 GB DDR2
Boot disk: 256 GB Kingston HyperFuryX running off a SATA2 header.

Not exactly a speed machine!

Mine's so fast, I wouldn't expect to notice any difference ...
 
Some extra bits I'd ordered showed up for my new computer today.
  • Seagate Ironwolf 4 TB server edition HDD
  • 2x 16 GB DDR4 Kingston RAM sticks (same part number as existing)
  • PCIe5 network card
  • 2x PS2 to USB adapters for my "professional grade" old keyboards and mice.
I've now installed everything. Currently doing a full format of the new HDD. A lot can happen to a HDD between manufacture and installation ...

Once the format is complete, I will set about reorganising my HDDs with the two 4 TB Seagate enterprise level drives in a mirror, or similar. Will keep the existing 3 TB HDD as a housekeeping HDD. Remove and reformat the 2 TB HDD that has a faulty copy of the $MFT file on it. Probably rehome it in either SWMBO's workstation, or my old workstation.

Of course, after receiving the two PS2 to USB keyboard/mouse adapters, I immediately discovered where I had put the two I already had ...

The new PCIe5 NIC was immediately recognised and used by the previously installed drivers. ALWAYS install NIC drivers prior to physically installing the card. Saves a world of pain. I now have gigabit Ethernet again on my main workstation.

The RAM was also immediately recognised. I did not expect otherwise, as the same part number as my existing RAM. Now 64 GB DDR4 Kingston RAM, all slots occupied. If I want/need to go to 128 GB RAM, I will need to sell these 4 chips and buy a matching set of 4x 32 GB DDR4 sticks. I cannot see that ever being necessary in my remaining lifetime.

There is still a vacant PCIe5 slot, for unforeseen future needs.

The Telstra technician replaced my Smartmodem2 with a Smartmodem3 yesterday, for free. This has fixed the flakey WiFi in parts of the house.
No charge ... According to the tech, the Smartmodem2 was not fit for purpose. The replacement only occurred after I contacted the TIO (Telecommunications industry ombudsman). I've been with Telstra since 1969 ... The later model uses WiFi-6, which uses different communication protocols that are considerably more robust.

Depending on further talks with Telstra on Monday, we might upgrade from a 100/18 Mbps plan to a 250/22 Mbps plan. We shall see ...
 
I am running 64 gigs of 3600 ram, and its runs Divinci Resolve Studio, Presonus Studio 1 PRO, and PS/LR well. If you were running a machine with multiple GPU's and perhaps lots and lots of TB storage (I have 30 TB of various types) then perhaps 128 gig might be necessary. But probably only doing a full length feature would you need that kind of ram IMHO. I went with a 1000 watt power with it only line out of junction box as well as six fans and liquid cooling. Good luck with your new machine.
 
I am running 64 gigs of 3600 ram, and its runs Divinci Resolve Studio, Presonus Studio 1 PRO, and PS/LR well.
Good to know, thanks. The RAM I've used is 3200 MHz DDR4, but with heatsinks, and like all the other components, will overclock momentarily if needs be. That seems to happen very rarely though.
If you were running a machine with multiple GPU's and perhaps lots and lots of TB storage (I have 30 TB of various types) then perhaps 128 gig might be necessary. But probably only doing a full length feature would you need that kind of ram IMHO. I went with a 1000 watt power with it only line out of junction box as well as six fans and liquid cooling. Good luck with your new machine.
My study, where my main PC lives, has its own power circuit (#5 of 10-12), so shouldn't have any problems there. All the power and light circuits have individual RCDs/ELCBs.

The graphics card is not a really high spec model, but does have 6 GB of on board RAM and some 1500+ CUDA cores to service its GPUs. Seems decently quick. It has a huge heat sink, plus two fans with sealed, high quality bearings. It does not appear to use system RAM at all, even though it can.

I have used a 750W Coolermaster PSU, as the PC is highly unlikely to ever use more than about half that.

A big, well ventilated box, with 4 main 120mm fans. Plenty of places for additional fans, but seemingly unnecessary. Just standard Intel heat sink and CPU fan. It all seems to run cool.

The new HDD reduces the SATA3 devices to four, three HDDs and a Blu-ray burner. That means I can add another three NVME.2 SSDs in the unlikely event that they are needed.

All working extremely well at this stage. Everything has gone according to plan.
 
It occurred to me that it's ridiculous that I don't know how many power circuits there are in our main switch board!

So I just went and counted them.

15 power circuits, 1 lighting circuit (3 circuits tied into one circuit breaker) and 1x 40 amp sub-mains circuit to the kiln shed.
There is a further circuit to the solar panel inverter system.

There. Now I know ...

I've never actually counted the number of power points/outlets in the house, as quite a few are in not obvious positions. Let's just say "lots".

We have made a lot of modifications to this house in the 17+ years we've owned it, particularly the switch board and electrical systems.

As for the computer, I'm currently copying nearly 2 TB of data from the faulty HDD to the new one.

It took 7 hours to format the new 4 TB HDD. It will take around that to copy the data over, another 3-4 hours to reformat the 2 TB HDD, then another 5-7 hours to copy the data back to the original HDD.
 
Progress report.

On checking the old 2 TB HDD, there were three $xxxx files (basic disk operating system files) that were corrupt or unusable. With any file system other than NTFS, this type of error would have caused the loss of all data on the disk. NTFS is very, very robust, and fully recoverable from almost any form of corruption, other than physical failure of the drive.

The data all copied to the new 4 TB HDD OK, with verification. Took about 4 hours for ~1.7 TB.

Set the long format of the old 2 TB HDD to run overnight. That completed successfully, with no errors now in three $xxxx system files.

Converted the old HDD from MBR to GPT on the way past.

Currently restoring the original files to the 2 TB HDD. This will take around 9 hours. The old HDD is much slower than the new 4 TB one, and has a much smaller cache.

Moving large quantities of data around is not a speedy process!
 
The Telstra technician replaced my Smartmodem2 with a Smartmodem3 yesterday, for free. This has fixed the flakey WiFi in parts of the house.
No charge ... According to the tech, the Smartmodem2 was not fit for purpose. The replacement only occurred after I contacted the TIO (Telecommunications industry ombudsman). I've been with Telstra since 1969 ... The later model uses WiFi-6, which uses different communication protocols that are considerably more robust.
The Smartmodem3 appears to have fixed our periodic WiFi problems, after using it over the last three days.
Depending on further talks with Telstra on Monday, we might upgrade from a 100/18 Mbps plan to a 250/22 Mbps plan. We shall see ...
Just got off the phone to Telstra. They have upgraded our connection to a nominal 250/22 Mbps plan, at no extra charge for the first six months. Then AUD $30 pm extra after that.

Tested from my tablet, it's actually a bit faster than that - around 255/25 Mbps.

They also confirmed that there will be no charge for the new modem (normally AUD $288).

So, a win all around.
 
So, John linked me to this thread from another,
but I'll add this much:

I had nightmare situations with AMD processors and chipsets
way back in the early x486 days, due to truly crappy support drivers.
It was also the time of the substandard Trident video cards,
so that's an age indication in itself. (Think: Windows 95)

Component-buying was flea-market style back then.
I went to the seller's shop to describe my troubles, and without hesitation,
he recommended ATI graphics(now AMD). Hesitantly, I went with ATI,
and it's been all good since. Interestingly, I feel it's worth adding
that I have been building with Intel CPUs and AMD video since.

I feel ATI(AMD) graphics combined with Intel CPUs provide the best
cost-vs-performance ratio. The Intel CPUs may not give the most
in benchmarking and other largely useless testing procedures,
and ATI may be considered lowly to NVIDIA, but they really do
combine to make a solid, real-world, useful PC.
 
Don't want to hijack the thread, but can anyone recommend software for recovering data from a HD with the MBR corrupted by an accidental format that was stopped as soon as I realized the error? I can plug in the drive and see the files and file structure, but cannot directly access the files any more. I tried EaseUS, but the pics it recovered were badly pixelated. Google searches bring up loads of options, none of which seem any better than any other. Something that runs under Ubuntu would be great, but Win 11 software would work, too.
 
Don't want to hijack the thread, but can anyone recommend software for recovering data from a HD with the MBR corrupted by an accidental format that was stopped as soon as I realized the error? I can plug in the drive and see the files and file structure, but cannot directly access the files any more. I tried EaseUS, but the pics it recovered were badly pixelated. Google searches bring up loads of options, none of which seem any better than any other. Something that runs under Ubuntu would be great, but Win 11 software would work, too.
I had exactly that problem, Tony.

You need to certify copy all the files to another HDD, also formatted with NTFS.
Reformat the original bad HDD.
Certified copy the files back.

Even though Easeus is reporting a bad $MFT file, it is probably one of the other hidden system files ($xxx) files that is bad. They cannot be repaired, other than by a full format.

It is the one problem that NTFS cannot self-repair, even using a boot time CHKDSK.

All my files are now fine, and back on the original corrupted HDD. Just took about 3-4 days to copy, reformat and recopy the files on an almost full 2 TB drive.
 
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