laptop for music storage

[-Jim-]

Not really into Refurbs for Hard Drives. They are cheap enough to buy new, and get a full warranty (Not that I've ever had one fail. I always retire them before that.) But if you need to keep the costs down and are willing to take a bit of a risk, it's your call.

I hope your Dell works out for you. Good luck with the Tunes!

 

[Dude#1279435]

Not really into Refurbs for Hard Drives. They are cheap enough to buy new, and get a full warranty (Not that I've ever had one fail. I always retire them before that.) But if you need to keep the costs down and are willing to take a bit of a risk, it's your call.

I hope your Dell works out for you. Good luck with the Tunes!

About how long would you say external hard drives last? 3-5 years?

 

[panteragstk]

About how long would you say external hard drives last? 3-5 years?

That depends on usage and how hot they get. If they sit spinning, but not being used, they'll last a good while. Off is even better, but some say the power up cycle is hard on them. All of this is assuming it's not getting very hot. Heat is what will kill a hard drive faster than anything.

I've got drives that are at almost 68000 hours. That's almost 8 years of uptime. The drive is older than that though. Those are just usage numbers.

 

[haraldo]

About how long would you say external hard drives last? 3-5 years?

My take: I would say there is no such lifetime, there is a MTBF (Mean time between failure) so if one buy 10.000 disks there is a pretty good chance one of them will fail the first week, it is a statistical metric and a hard drive can last two days or 10 years, there is no guarantee unfortunately. The only way to secure yourself is to make multiple copies and/or use a RAID setup. Some laptops will do that but then you need to go upscale, way better with a NAS that has this inbuilt.

RAID 5 is pretty good, here one of the disks is used for parity/redundancy so you may lose one of the disks and still be OK, the failed disk may be rebuilt from the info on the other disks. If two disks fails at the same time you are stuffed. If you have 4 5TB disks you have total capacity of 20TB and you get 15TB you can use.... but many NAS systems require those disks to be exactly the same model with same capacity and geometry.

I read a story about company with 20.000 hard drives, and they had several failures the first month....
I keep triple copies of what I have as well as a secure cloud backup (unlimited storage space), passed 8TB of cloud backup now; I have a separate 12TB disk only for cloud backup, being shadowed towards a cloud backup provider. (You cannot rely on being safe by only having the data on one disk, or even two or three disks in your home.... backups must be stored off-site)

 

[-Jim-]

My take is more about data security. I punt my portables into lighter transitional duty at 5 years. I just don't trust hard drives for any archive duty beyond than. Now if you had 2 of them with all the same data, I'd push that out a bit until say 8 years or when the sign of any trouble for either drive. Then I'd rush to start over as I hate losing data (tunes!) as it takes a lot of effort to compile them.

 

[renansur]

Anyone familiar with 3.2 usb? Looks like a standard a vs c input. Not sure though. Does the 3.0 and 3.2 have different inputs or are they the same? dickssportinggoods feedback www.lowes.com survey

 

[-Jim-]

"Here's the short answer… USB 3.0 is 5Gb/s, USB 3.1 is 10Gb/s, and USB 3.2 is the fastest at 20Gb/s. You may have seen them branded as SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps/10Gbps/20Gbps"

They all use the same connectors as the original USB.

But things will be changing for USB 4. It’ll offer 40Gbit/s data transfer speeds, Thunderbolt 3 compatibility and will only use the USB-C connector.

More details here:

Kingston - What's the Difference.

 

[fmw]

I have some advice. I spend my day doing website maintenance with my laptop on my lap as I sit on my sofa. I have to recharge the battery 3 or 4 times daily. I go through a laptop every couple of years because the charging aperture wears out before anything else on the computer. I tried most brands and all of them had weak charging connection. Enter the Acer laptop which has large diameter plug that lasts the distance. If you have SSD memory in it you are good to go for quite a while. You can use an external drive (SSD of course) or a NAS for the large scale storage.

 

[lovinthehd]

I have some advice. I spend my day doing website maintenance with my laptop on my lap as I sit on my sofa. I have to recharge the battery 3 or 4 times daily. I go through a laptop every couple of years because the charging aperture wears out before anything else on the computer. I tried most brands and all of them had weak charging connection. Enter the Acer laptop which has large diameter plug that lasts the distance. If you have SSD memory in it you are good to go for quite a while. You can use an external drive (SSD of course) or a NAS for the large scale storage.

Why don't you just keep an AC connection on the laptop instead of so many charging sessions?

 

[-Jim-]

Why don't you just keep an AC connection on the laptop instead of so many charging sessions?

@fmw I'd suggest you remove the Battery from the Laptop too before putting it on AC during these sessions. And just leave the AC Adapter plugged into the Laptop when you shut down for the day, and unplug it at the wall. Next day, plug it back in the wall and you are ready to go. If you want to use the Laptop as a portable , then plug in the battery just for that use, and recharge it before removing for your work day, so it's ready to go.

 

[fmw]

@fmw I'd suggest you remove the Battery from the Laptop too before putting it on AC during these sessions. And just leave the AC Adapter plugged into the Laptop when you shut down for the day, and unplug it at the wall. Next day, plug it back in the wall and you are ready to go. If you want to use the Laptop as a portable , then plug in the battery just for that use, and recharge it before removing for your work day, so it's ready to go.

The battery doesn't last a day. I have to recharge it 3 or 5 times daily. What problem do you see from using the computer while it charges? I've never experienced a problem.

 

[fmw]

Why don't you just keep an AC connection on the laptop instead of so many charging sessions?

Because it shortens battery life. By that I mean how long the battery can endure recharging before it has to be replaced.

 

[lovinthehd]

Because it shortens battery life. By that I mean how long the battery can endure recharging before it has to be replaced.

Wouldn't all the extra charging cycles also reduce battery life? It would be nice for the AC to not keep the charging cycle going, and fwiw the last coupla HP laptops I've had I've used primarily on the AC, but battery life hasn't been a particular issue when I do use it off the AC. I just like the portability and lap option vs a desktop....the battery itself I don't use on its own very often.

 

[fmw]

Wouldn't all the extra charging cycles also reduce battery life? It would be nice for the AC to not keep the charging cycle going, and fwiw the last coupla HP laptops I've had I've used primarily on the AC, but battery life hasn't been a particular issue when I do use it off the AC. I just like the portability and lap option vs a desktop....the battery itself I don't use on its own very often.

You are defining battery life as how long the computer runs on a charge. I am defining it as the overall life span of the battery itself. Yes batteries have a finite limit to the number of times they can be recharged. But I am told that keeping them on full charge for long periods of time reduces that finite limit. Removing the battery to make it into an AC product is fine but a serious hassle if you want to use the computer both ways. I suspect none of these things are all that important. I was just just expressing my indignation over the poor quality of charging connections on most laptops.

I've owned three HP laptops. The first one was pretty good. I bought it about 15 years ago and used it for many years. The second one literally fell apart within a year. The case came apart and disconnected the screen from the main board. The third one lasted a year and a half and finally couldn't operate because of a worn out charging connector. The same thing happened with an ASUS laptop. My Lenovo laptop did not fail at the computer's charging port. It failed at the power supply. After replacing the power supply I can use it but I need to twist the power supply connection from time to time to keep it connected. The beefier connectors on the Acer unit run like the Energizer bunny. They are just tools, after all. Whatever works reliably is what I appreciate.

I have several desktop computers as well that we use in the business. I do site maintenance on them from time to time but I prefer putting my legs up on the sofa and working on the laptop with the TV running in the background.

 

[Trebdp83]

My old HP laptop had similar issues. Battery was especially hot, didn’t keep charge very long and eventually failed. Used it plugged in without a battery for awhile and had to make sure not to even breath near the power port or it would cut out.

 

[-Jim-]

Gents,

The type of duty described does age the battery and the power connection point of the Laptop. Assuming you start out with a new Laptop, and the this duty, you will get these results almost every time. I build and repair computers for friends and family as a hobby (laptops are repair / rebuild only), and see this quite often. Not only do power connections fail but so do USB, Headphones, etc., from repeated in/out cycling.

Running on solely battery power only lasts a few hours. Hence the multiple recharges per day. The operational life of the battery diminishes a little bit with each full charge (Quicker with incomplete charging.) The battery does have a limited amount of recharging cycles to it's life. Similarly, the plug has only a certain lifecycle. To avoid this, go to AC power and leave the battery out. And don't cycle the power connection point more than absolutely necessary. Taking the battery out of most laptops takes less than 10 seconds, and popping it back in less.

The hardware in today's laptops are lighter built to hit certain price points (and profit margins) so after the warranty is expired, long before the motherboard, CPU, or Ram fail, the periphery goes. Even doing this, you will need to replace the battery every few years - but you won't recycle the laptop for a long time. IMHO, working off a laptop on a couch is not good ergonomics. Better to work off a table with a supportive chair. (There's a reason offices have desks). I was a road warrior with a laptop for work for ages, and spent long hours working from them, with negative results.

Workstations with a desktop make a lot of sense for 8 hour per day computing. You can create good ergonomics while preventing injury and pain. Corporations have gone to laptops instead as they have become cheaper to purchase, operate, and support IT wise. Yes it's all about the Benjamins! And the employees have gone along with it as they think laptops are cool. A side benefit to employers is folks can, and do, work from "anywhere" and very often put in a lot of free hours on their own personal time. (Trust me I was one of them). For many years I worked out of my home office; but always got a "docking station" with dual monitors, external keyboard & mouse. I saved the working off a laptop for when I was doing the road warrior part; but even then tried to find a good place to work from. Off my lap was a last resort.

Boy are we off topic here...Sorry

 

[lovinthehd]

I ain't giving up my couch for a desk ever again, the ergonomics in my lap are just fine. That sounds wrong somehow....

Besides, better sound system in my living room than the spare bedroom with a desk I barely use. Being retired I suppose is a big help

 

[-Jim-]

@lovinthehd I'm with you here, but if you were truly working 8 continuous hours a day off your lap on the couch, you'd soon develop aches and pains (and possible headaches from the eye strain).

If you have a TV in the living room, connect the Laptop via HDMI into your receiver, get a wireless keyboard and mouse; and set the laptop to dual screens & do nothing when you close the lid. Then sit wherever you are comfortable. Hopefully in a good position. Play Eric Clapton on FLAC and enjoy while you read my posts here on the Forum!

 

[lovinthehd]

@lovinthehd I'm with you here, but if you were truly working 8 continuous hours a day off your lap on the couch, you'd soon develop aches and pains (and possible headaches from the eye strain).

If you have a TV in the living room, connect the Laptop via HDMI into your receiver, get a wireless keyboard and mouse; and set the laptop to dual screens & do nothing when you close the lid. Then sit wherever you are comfortable. Hopefully in a good position. Play Eric Clapton on FLAC and enjoy while you read my posts here on the Forum!

I don't do 8 hour stretches....usually . Used to do 12 hour stretches at a desk often enough, and you develop aches and pains doing that, too. Neither is exactly a good environment for 8 hour stretches.....

Actually eye strain is less with my laptop (17" screens help) vs plugging the hdmi into the avr, as the tv is 12 feet away or so. I've tried . Don't mind the laptop in the lap, have a nice little device to help out in keeping my lap cool and comfortable and lint and stuff out of the laptop (I've killed laptops that way before).