What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!

[beanflying]

Added a new "larger" external HD to the backup fleet today as the 1.5Tb Seagate is over a decade old and can't hold even the important bits on the NAS as a backup to it any more.

Donating the old 3 1/2 to a mate who is still rocking an external HDD with a seperate PS 

[alm]

Aren't most 2.5" disks SMR, which depending on how much data transfer the backups involve could kill performance?

[Jeroen3]

@alm SMR performs only very poor in random writes. Sequential is fine, if you have enough free space.

[beanflying]

Aren't most 2.5" disks SMR, which depending on how much data transfer the backups involve could kill performance?

The 2 1/2 4TB has always been just a bulk dumping ground either for whole PC's worth of docs or Post the NAS going online a remote backup of it as a disaster recovery option. My main PC also syncs and holds everything on the NAS except for Videos and Music files as they don't change much and losing them isn't important. It gets plugged into the back of the NAS and I go to sleep so speed isn't a factor.

The new 'toy' is more going to get used for bulk dumping of anything I might need from PC to PC and it will also hold an extra redundant copy of my photos and really critical docs.

The Seagate 3 1/2 was USB2.0 from memory so it is a total slug in a modern environment but for video playback it is fine which is it's likely use from her on.

[PlainName]

I would be more concerned that the M.2 SSD has a fanless case. I ran a couple fanless in the PC and they didn't do well, so now I always shove a fan on those. And my spares in external cases get very hot with long operations, so I always use fanned externals now too, except if I'm just pulling a couple of files off, say.

[Martin72]

where did you buy the frames?

The aixfoam frames I´ve bought by aixfoam...

https://www.aixfoam.com/assembly-cassette

[rsjsouza]

And my spares in external cases get very hot with long operations, so I always use fanned externals now too, except if I'm just pulling a couple of files off, say.

I saw the same thing with external HDDs in long operations, but I now use only enclosures made of metal/aluminium that do an excellent job at dissipating the heat to the case itself.

[Datman]

A chinese BT189 battery tester.
https://it.aliexpress.com/item/1005001381541786.html

I was hoping for a better instrument...
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/chinese-bt189-battery-tester/msg4843979/#msg4843979

[jonovid]

Cheap Solder Sucker Desoldering Iron

this is the most basic level of a desoldering iron if you seek to live dangerously.
as seen here. I go this one out of mostly curiosity.
the 220V AC Desoldering Iron needs a 3 wire replacement cord and 3 pin plug. before plugging in to my
240V to 220V autotransformer.
the 4 screws are under the plunger knob and the black plastic shell has 3 grooves set into the plastic.
but only 2 are used to cheap out on the not suitable for single insulated 2 wire power cord.

I use EU 3 pin plugs for my 220V tools to avoid miss-pluging things into 240V AU wall outlets.
also did not show any power cord modifications here.

[RAPo]

An Hp15c collectors edition from
https://www.eduwinkel.nl/hp-15c-collectors-edition-calculator.html

[jogri]

I use EU 3 pin plugs for my 220V tools to avoid miss-pluging things into 240V AU wall outlets.

Europe uses 230 V, as long as your local mains doesn't go above 244 V it's in the tolerance window of EU mains voltage so you don't need a transformer.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Cheap Solder Sucker Desoldering Iron

this is the most basic level of a desoldering iron if you seek to live dangerously.
as seen here. I go this one out of mostly curiosity.

I didn't know such a contraption existed. I too, want.

the 220V AC Desoldering Iron needs a 3 wire replacement cord and 3 pin plug. before plugging in to my
240V to 220V autotransformer.
the 4 screws are under the plunger knob and the black plastic shell has 3 grooves set into the plastic.
but only 2 are used to cheap out on the not suitable for single insulated 2 wire power cord.

I use EU 3 pin plugs for my 220V tools to avoid miss-pluging things into 240V AU wall outlets.
also did not show any power cord modifications here.

I reached 256v at the tail end of a run a few nights ago.

[paulca]

I would be more concerned that the M.2 SSD has a fanless case. I ran a couple fanless in the PC and they didn't do well, so now I always shove a fan on those. And my spares in external cases get very hot with long operations, so I always use fanned externals now too, except if I'm just pulling a couple of files off, say.

I remember back when MV.2 drives appeared on motherboards.  They were typically placed right under/in between the GPU and the CPU in the hottest part of the board.  People, of course, started reading temps of 60*C+ and many forum threads errupted.

The manufacturers said, "And?"  "Whats the problem?  It's meant to run at 60*C".

But of course out came all the cooling products for MV.2 and SSDs because "60*C" can't be good for it, right?

I seen tests where LMG (LTT) tested a water cooling block for a gen 4 PCIe MV.2 drive and .... it performed worse when cooled by about 25%!

Similarly the chipset (SoC) in my motherboard routinely idles at 60*C and games at 65*C-70*C.  I have seen it hit 80*C!  Yet Asus shrug and say, "It's fine, meant to do that".  Yet.... coolers are now out there on the market to cool the SoC.

[PlainName]

Yeah, I know they are meant to be OK running hot but I have captured one slowing down when it got warm. Also got one that slows to a crawl (literally, kbps) when accessing parts with data. My view is that, like with salad in a fridge, cooling can't hurt but could help, so I play safe.

[beanflying]

Not all NVMeE drives are created equal either. Apart from the recent one which is a WD SN770 Black all the rest are Samsung EVO 970+'s (think I have 5 in use) my main Boot drive ticks along at around 50C most of the time so  Even the shack box when ambient goes over 40C as the case has great airflow I have never noticed an issue.

As to externals HDD (spinny ones) getting hot I really don't see how around 2W even in plastic is going to be an issue. Sit it on top of your PC case maybe but again never seen it be an issue. The 2 1/2 just spent about 20 hours taking a backup from the NAS overnight and I couldn't pick it as being even warm.

I might drop CrystalDiskmark and info on all three of my externals and start a thread just for interest.

[PlainName]

Pretty sure I've measured seriously high temperatures in external cases when doing backups, hence my preference for one with a fan. Maybe I'll join your thread and run off some new measurements

[Muttley Snickers]

I got a new watch.    (We really need an "I'm Excited" emoji thing).

I bought from an Ebay seller a Skmei 1894 Digital Watch which has a huge uncluttered display and will be handy for cycling where you only get a second or two to glance at your watch. The all important feature list: Count Down Timer, Stop Watch, Day, Date, Dual Time, Alarm, Chime, Huge Wrist Strap and a Big CR-2025 Battery, I'm a big battery fan.   

One very nice feature is it shows indication on the main display whenever a back ground function is active such as count down timer, stop watch or alarm. It also has an Electro-Luminescent backlight the same as my Skmei 1278 and 1381, much better than the illumination on my Casio watches.   

[jonovid]

8 size metric Die Set

[RAPo]

Got me an old Heathkit IT-27 advocated as non-working.
Indeed non-working because of a wire that got loose.
After some point-to-point soldering, it worked again.

[Calambres]

Just ordered one of these:



Looks like a nice little piece of kit.

More on this here.

[paulca]

Pretty sure I've measured seriously high temperatures in external cases when doing backups, hence my preference for one with a fan. Maybe I'll join your thread and run off some new measurements

I would avoid multibay enclosures.  I have a 5 bay.  I replaced the 120mm fan in it's base with a Noctua silent fan.  I am now going to buy single bays for all but the two raid backup drives.  Why?  The controllers in those multi-bay units try and do their own power saving by spinning down all the drives.  Thats fine.  What isn't fine is, should the OS access any single one of them, the whole lot get spun up in sequence taking about 20 seconds.  The sub millisecond disk access happens on only one drive and 5 minutes later it spins them all down again, until something pings a file an hour later.

On temps, when the drives are all on and running the evening RSync to raid I've seen 48*C and a "life span" flag/warning of 47*C IIRC.  It's been a while and to be honest I disabled the SMART monitoring as it was IT pinging the damn drives every 10 minutes.

Soon I should be able to afford solid state storage for all "online" drives and the spinning metal can demote to "offline" "ondemand" drives.

[PlainName]

Pretty sure I've measured seriously high temperatures in external cases when doing backups, hence my preference for one with a fan. Maybe I'll join your thread and run off some new measurements

I would avoid multibay enclosures.  I have a 5 bay.  I replaced the 120mm fan in it's base with a Noctua silent fan.  I am now going to buy single bays for all but the two raid backup drives.  Why?  The controllers in those multi-bay units try and do their own power saving by spinning down all the drives.

Are we talking the same thing? My comment, on temperatures with externals, was about M.2 SSDs but yours seem to be thinking rotating disks.

Having said that, I wonder if such external multi-drive cases would be available for the SSDs (other than the two-drive ones). It would be very compact in comparison.

[DiTBho]

Only for this morning, the super expensive Wolfcraft TS 850 Folding Trolley was offered with 70% off!
I couldn't resist, and I bought the off-road version (stronger wheels), for only +10 UKP!

It will be perfect to move little trunks and small pots of lemon trees (up to 50Kg) 

[beanflying]

"FREE" Server with power supplies and board.

Its former owner was tired of moving it around so now it is my turn 

100km road trip to get it and food and a beer along the way so not totally free.

EDIT Anyone want the AMI Aptio server MB let me know, it was working as a NAS and has an I3-3220 CPU in it - FREE + postage or I will junk it.

[nctnico]

I got extra SMD parts bins with the flip-lids. Time to organise the collection of 0402 resistors