Tag: hitachi

Categories
Hardware

Best laptop HD ever

It’s seems amazing. The Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 is an amazing hard drive. It’s blazing fast, and 7200 RPM (that’s the same as most desktops). Unlike the 4200 drives that ship in most laptops.

It’s given me a giant improvement on my system. I really feel the difference. On boot, my computer used to hang for 20 seconds, while the drive would spin like it was about to fly to the moon. Now it doesn’t do that at all. It’s speeds along. Very, very fast. And runs surprisingly cool. Oh, and it’s quiet. It’s a great drive.

I took my old 40GB IBM Travelstar (IBM’s storage unit joined with Hitachi’s, hence the name for the new drive is also Travelstar), and got an IBM Ultrabay Adapter for it. I keep my floppy drive out now, and put a 2nd HD in there. I haven’t used a floppy drive in ages, so it’s no loss. And if I need it, I can take that drive, or the CD-ROM out. So I don’t really loose any functionality.

I’ll be putting Linux on that other drive soon. A few other things need to get done first. That’s not priority #1.

Great product. Good for the geek you need to get a Christmas present for ;-).

Categories
Software

I’ll be doing Linux soon.. help me

In the ongoing laptop saga…

Windows XP is trashed. No networking at all. So I need to backup. My best solution has been to move up the plans I had for a summer upgrade to a Thanksgiving upgrade (who says only your tummy gets full on the holiday?)

Here’s the plan:
Get a much faster HD. Specs include 7200 RPM Drive, and 60 GB. Fastest 2.5″ drive on the market. By far.

Put current drive in UltraBay, with 2nd Hard Drive Adapter for Thinkpad, Take new Drive, and put in HD bay.

Copy my data over, with a fresh install of XP.

Use Rapid Restore as backup software (included with Thinkpad).

Format old 40 GB Drive, and install Linux.

Now my question for all is:

What distro?

Fedora, Gentoo, Mandrake, Debinan, SuSe, SlackWare

I’m looking to use it as an alternative desktop. I’m an OS X Lover, so you want to impress me 😆 Want it all, the absolute best. Some UNIX experience, and want more. So tell me what you like/don’t like. Your opinions are more than welcome, feel free to email, or use comments. Make your case.

I’ll tell what I choose, why, and the status as I go. Should be fun.

Categories
Software

I blew up Windows

I seem to have blown up Windows… here’s my tale:

Got a message this morning, that my USB Hub had a short or overload (no reason to believe that). All devices hooked to that hub, stopped responding (bad news).

Later today, had several programs just crash on me. Typical of Windows. So I reboot.

No network connection. Most startup programs no longer startup. Lots of screwy things. Tried system restore… no success. No difference, no matter how far back I go.

Can’t restore until at least Thanksgiving, as that’s the first time I can afford to spend the time (as I said earlier, I’m strapped for time this week).

So here I am in Knoppix, with my USB Keychain Drive (512MB) as my HD. My XP drive is using NTFS, hence it’s good as dead in Knoppix. This is a laptop, so no 2nd drive.

I’m considering a 2nd HD. That new Hitachi 7200 RPM drive looks great (60GB). I wanted to get one of those… but wanted to wait a while. So now I’m debating when to upgrade (do it now, or just use my old one for now, and do it later)?

So my XP installation is useless (even worse than when it “worked”). Knoppix is dead slow off the CD ROM. It’s not good around here as far as computing goes.

Thank you Bill Gates. Your technology is just wonderful.

Everyone help make the new MacVillage.net relaunch a success, that way I can afford to have an Apple laptop next to this PC junk.

I’m pissed.