Comments on: Less one … and a half http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/less-one-and-a-half/ K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:19:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: skralljt http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/less-one-and-a-half/#comment-48454 Wed, 09 Mar 2011 02:05:29 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/less-one-and-a-half/#comment-48454 I just saw your post about the cf cards. I will give that a whirl. Here in Seattle, most of the old hardware being sold on craigslist is without spinning disk which I assume is because the drive failed and not because of paranoia about data loss. With an alternative to hard drives one can take their pick of sub $50 hardware. Hope the cf card looks like a hdd to the notebook’s bios or else it won’t boot!

]]> By: K.Mandla http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/less-one-and-a-half/#comment-48448 Tue, 08 Mar 2011 22:25:38 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/less-one-and-a-half/#comment-48448 To be honest, I generally have an overabundance of hard drives lying around. Some of them aren’t very strong performers (like the 2.2Gb 4200rpm clattering machine in the weather clock), but it seems any time I get a computer I can swap out the drive for something at least a little better.

Part of that though, to be honest, is because I’ve regularly bought CF cards for anything small enough and flexible enough to use them.

Beyond that though, my local computer recycling shop sells secondhand drives, blanked and reformatted, for reasonable prices. A little high for what they’re really worth, but I suppose if I needed a small, slow, noisy hard drive, I could spend a few dollars for one. … :)

]]> By: skralljt http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/less-one-and-a-half/#comment-48446 Tue, 08 Mar 2011 21:45:31 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/less-one-and-a-half/#comment-48446 Hi, I have been stopping by your blog every now and then for a few years now due to our shared interest in using what to conventional wisdom is throwaway computer hardware and thought of a question for you:
Where do you buy hard drives for your old laptops? I have plenty of great old laptops but the pata hard drive usually dies and it is now the same cost to buy an old working laptop as it is to just buy the used hard drive. I don’t want to revive an old p3m if it costs $50 for the hard drive. Of course, these problems could all be sidestepped if manufacturers like Dell would stop writing shit bioses that require you to have a hard drive installed before it will boot from cd or usb drive.
I would actually prefer a laptop that had no spinning disk at all to avoid the power costs for an always-on rtorrent client and ftp/ssh server.
Anyway, to round it out: what is your strategy for maintaining your old laptop farm’s hard drive supply? Is there some solution like getting an ide to compactflash adapter to avoid the need for a hard drive in the bootup sequence?

]]> By: darkduck http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/less-one-and-a-half/#comment-48439 Tue, 08 Mar 2011 11:38:58 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/less-one-and-a-half/#comment-48439 So, you have minus one and a half computer, but PLUS one clock! Nice exchange rate! 8-)

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