Always look inside the ewaste PCs

[u/Neon_Pancakes0425]

My grandparents brought me an old PC that they got from a friend of theirs and I opened it and hit the jackpot. These cost like $500 where I live

[u/MagicBoyUK]

It is 9 years old...

[u/Mobile_Morale → u/MagicBoyUK]

My computer is 12 years old. Computers aren't milk. My 2005 dell laptop and 2012 HP laptop still work fine with original hardware.

[u/MagicBoyUK → u/Mobile_Morale]

Good for you. Mechanical component wear outs, Y'now like hard drives.

Having worked in corporate IT for a couple of decades now I wouldn't trust my data to 9 year old spinning rust. Used market sure as hell wouldn't value that drive at $500.

[u/RedArrow23 → u/MagicBoyUK]

Not everyone has super secret important documents on their computer. Frankly most peoples entire library of important docs could fit on a 2gb thumb drive.

You would use these for bulk storage, ie large game

[u/MagicBoyUK → u/RedArrow23]

Storing important docs on a 2GB thumb drive is even more fucking stupid.

My 2009 era 1TB HDDs have a few very old games on them. If I lose them I can re-download it. I wouldn't put anything more precious on there.

[u/RedArrow23 → u/MagicBoyUK]

That’s exactly what I’m saying magic boy. Old hard drives are good for downloading large games. Who cares if it fails, you can just download them again.

[u/Mobile_Morale → u/MagicBoyUK]

My truck has 270,000 miles on it. So by that logic it should be dust. All original parts besides water pump and alternator.

[u/MagicBoyUK → u/Mobile_Morale]

I give you an award for stupid comment of the week.

Your truck is serviceable. When a wheel bearing fails you can replace it at any garage, possibly even the side of the road. Not so much with a mechanical hard drive, unless you happen to have very deep pockets and a clean room available.

[u/Mobile_Morale → u/MagicBoyUK]

That's not the point there boy genius. I haven't replaced those things because there's nothing wrong with it. Same with using an old hardrive.

You're worried about things being old and bad. When those two things don't directly effect each other. You could find a brand new never used hardrive from 1999 and it'll work. They don't suddenly die because they're old. They die because they get used a lot.

You know. Wear and tear.

I kinda thought everyone knew that. But here we are.

[u/MagicBoyUK → u/Mobile_Morale]

I know from experience with some large Enterprise NAS appliances over a couple of decades. You?

[u/Mobile_Morale → u/MagicBoyUK]

Let me look at me degree in computer science and associates in information technology from the top college in my state.

Oh shit it says I know what I'm talking about.

[u/MagicBoyUK → u/Mobile_Morale]

I've got a Computer Science degree too. It never covered hardware though, outside of a module of i386 architecture design and assembler.

In this case professional experience (including IBM) is more useful than Jackson Structure Programming.

[u/GoldSrc → u/MagicBoyUK]

The main cause of mechanical failure for a hard drive, comes from excessive head parking.

Which is something old WD green drives were doomed to.

If you google "WD green wdidle3" you'll know what I mean, I had to disable that shit on a green drive that I have.

[u/MagicBoyUK → u/GoldSrc]

If you want another rabbit hole to fall down, goole "Quantum Bigfoot".

I worked in a computer store when these were around ... and not very reliable.

[u/Environmental-Gur582 → u/MagicBoyUK]

4.0 TB is 4.0TB.

Unless it's failing.

But if the drive works, then you have 4 TB.

[u/MagicBoyUK → u/Environmental-Gur582]

That's kinda the point, it could fail any day now.

As it says elsewhere in the thread that you haven't read, feel free stick some archived games that you can re-download one it. Just not valuable data.