ANNOUNCING The best linux distro ever for desktop use!
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From: Roger Johansson on 27 Aug 2006 14:38 Bill Turner wrote: > >I have not mounted the hard disks as usual. I'm too lazy for that. It > >is easier to just place a new hd in the computer and connect it without > >pushing it into a compartment often hindered by cables. > It would be interesting to see if your HDs are running hotter than > usual. Without screwing them down, you lose a certain amount of heat > dissipation through the mounting itself. There are both advantages and disadvantages with pushing the HD into a compartment and screw it in a fixed position. The screws and the sheet metal leads some heat away, but the compartment stops air from flowing freely around it. So maybe the advantage is balanced by the disadvantage. I have had my HDs unmounted like this for years and have experienced only one HD going bad, it was very old and probably worn out. There are air streams around the hard disks because the power supply fan blows air around inside the computer even without a cover. I have a friend who has 5-6 hard disks standing beside his computer, with some space between them and with the contacts on top, and he doesn't use a cover either, so he can easily move the contacts to the HDs he wants to use for the moment. He has screwed them to a 6 inch long piece of sheet metal to keep them in place, one screw for each HD. His HDs don't get much air stream at all and it has worked fine for him for at least five years. HDs don't get hot, by the way, I often handle them and have not felt much heat when I touch them. The drawer type of HD tray is not so easy to change a HD in, the HD needs to be connected to the contacts inside the tray, and the top lid should be put on it again before pushing it into position. I have such a HD tray unit on a shelf here but it is too much work to mount it and it is easier to just move contacts on free-standing HDs. I don't even have a 5" compartment free, by the way, because I have two CD-burner units. -- Roger J.
From: Al Smith on 27 Aug 2006 15:12 >>Interesting idea. It would be like having two separate computers. >>>Do you use a fixed hard drive for data storage that is shared >>>between both OSs? > > > ------------ REPLY FOLLOWS ------------ > > Yes, exactly. I have a 160 GB HD as my second HD which is permanently > mounted as the "D" drive, and a swappable tray which is my "C" drive. > > -- Mr Bill That would make a lot of sense. I like the idea.
From: John Fitzsimons on 27 Aug 2006 17:51 On Sun, 27 Aug 2006 04:17:27 +0300, "humphry" <humphry(a)i.com> wrote: >"John Fitzsimons" <DELETEucwubqf02(a)sneakemail.com> wrote in message >news:l5p1f2h9ersttu5c1unfhd70p4cvtrl76p(a)4ax.com... < snip > >>>PClinuxOS is here......! >>>http://www.pclinuxos.com/ >> Screen shots might be nice. Maybe such things aren't possible with >> PClinux ? >osdir has screenshots of linux and other os >http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=713&slide=5 >on the right you have thumbnails.. click to see the enlarged view Thank you. That's better. :-)
From: Mark Warner on 27 Aug 2006 18:45 mike wrote: > "humphry" <humphry(a)i.com> wrote in > news:44f0ed1c$0$8875$88260bb3(a)free.teranews.com: > >> of course you can.. that is a feature of kde.... >> the taskbar is called "panel" in kde linux.. right click on it and you >> will see the >> Configure Panel option. Then you will see a window that has some small >> rectangle buttons in a square formation.. this shows where you want to >> place the >> "taskbar". See screenshot > > Very nice, too. > > Of course, this is one of the things that drives me nutty about trying to > use linux - it's all so nice if you can speak the language. > > What we get is a few fine chaps like you and Mark who answer specific > questions - and there's not all tha many who do, in English at any rate, > and you try it - (I just have), and you think, what a cracking OS, if only > I could find out which one was the OS, and the instructions weren't written > in Klingon. > > Oh well, we shall win, if we faint not ;-) Yes, getting the lingo can be difficult. One reason is that using Linux gives you so many choices, and all those choices have different names. In very non-technical terms: "Linux" is the kernel -- the base layer that interacts with the hardware. It is strictly command line. Everything is built on top of it. This alone can be considered an operating system, though only a few uber-geeks would find it useful. "KDE", "Gnome", "xFce", "Fluxbox", etc. are window managers -- they are essentially the GUI interface and a set of included applications. Windows-think prevents us from thinking of the kernel and the window manager as being separate, but they are -- W2K, XP, and 2K3 are all built on the Microsoft NT kernel. Then there are the applications. Some are essentially stand-alone, others "depend" on other components found in KDE or Gnome or elsewhere. Fortunately, the 'apt' and/or 'rpm' systems that are used to download and install most applications are able to seamlessly find these 'dependencies' and include them in the download and installation. A distribution (distro) is one iteration of a combination of the Linux kernel, a window manager, and applications. When one talks about PCLinuxOS, Red Hat, SimplyMEPIS, Ubuntu, or anything of that nature, one is referring to a particular distro. Then there are the derivatives. There are a handful of what I would call "base" distributions out there that others have customized. Debian has produced the most derivatives, it appears, among them Ubuntu, Knoppix, and Damn Small Linux. SimplyMEPIS recently went a step further and switched from building on top of Debian to building on top of Ubuntu, making it a Debian derivative, once removed. Other bases are Red Hat, which has spawned Mandriva (which has spawned PCLinuxOS) and Fedora Core. Slackware has a spawned Zenwalk. What you will find is that there is a great deal of similarity between distros from a certain "family" -- working with and in the Debian based distros is in many cases identical from one to another. I personally have been able to utilize tips and tricks from say Ubuntu in SimplyMEPIS. No doubt the same can be said about Mandriva and PCLinuxOS. HTH. -- Mark Warner PCLinuxOS v.93 Registered Linux User #415318 ....lose .inhibitions when replying
From: Mike Dee on 27 Aug 2006 20:55
"Roger Johansson" <roger4911(a)gmail.com> wrote in news:1156684396.160046.311120(a)i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com: > I bought a very similar product and could not make it work. > Later I found out that I had to use the key that comes with it and > turn it to enable the hard disk in the drawer unit. I don't know > if all such units work that way but it can be useful to know if it > doesn't work for that reason. I thought the key was there to stop > people from stealing the hd so I did not realize that it had to be > used to enable the hd. None of the mobile racks we've purchased have required the key to turn on the hard drive. It has only been used to lock the tray in place when moving computers etc. Recently a friend purchased some racks and told me that he had to use the key to access the drive. This was news to me at the time. Not all racks are the same obviously. -- dee |