Recent content by Peter Blanchard

OK. I have a NAS that uses 10 1TB 10k RPM Velociraptor HDDs. It's SATA only. Squeezed into mATX case, with a FlexATX mobo. HDDs are ancient and bound to fail at some point. Whilst there are there are refurbished(?) and even a handful of new drives on the market, they are expensive. When...

I feel your pain. I've got a bunch of low value kit that I want to get rid of. Pick up/drop off by/to local people is the only economical option. I fell down a rabbit hole of box/carton staplers. They aren't cheap. Cutting down a box is probably the best option and use strong tape.

How many of the Startech cards can you get in the R720 etc? Do they support OS other than Windows? I've had issues using USB 3 cards with Linux boxes. Something I don't really understand is why USB peripherals are not always recognised by host computer, especially when using a USB hub. Is...

Something that occurred to me - how good are Blu-ray drives at reading older format disks? I can remember situations when DVD-writer would fail to read damaged CD but a CD drive had no problem. I've been binning PATA optical drives today.

CD/DVD duplication devices can turn up for cheap. In themselves probably not what you need but the cases might be useful to you. I remember the time it took me to rip a couple of hundred CDs. 9000 disks? I shudder to think how long that might take.

I eventually bought a Dell TB16/K16A with 130w PSU for £23 (which is a good price in the UK). It does the job - one cable for power, data and video. Desk is much tidier as a result. Wife is pleased. There are a couple of things that could be done to make desk even tidier. eg swap out wired...

HP laptop is a couple years old Spectre x360 14. It does have Thunderbolt. I think that a chunky second user "dock" from known brand might be a better bet than a new <insert random string> brand "hub".

Another annoyance of USB C hubs is the very short cable tail.

What do I mean by "extraneous"? SD/TF card slots. Analogue audio ports. More than one HDMI/DP out. The dream is the one cable swap out. One thing I don't quite grasp is whether that USB C port on a laptop that is described as power does data too? There are plenty of devices that use USB C...

If someone else was paying for it, I'm sure it's an ideal solution. As I'm paying for it, way too expensive. Most of the peripherals are USB 2 speeds. Mouse, keyboard, webcam and printers. There is an external HDD that's USB 3. I've got various wifi dongles that want USB 3. There are USB 3...

My wife's desk has become a rat's nest of cables. Lots of reasons why but life is too short to list them. There's a ThinkPad E14 Gen 5, HP machine as well as recent-ish Intel-based MacBook Pro. Don't use them all together so unplugging/replugging USB C cable(s) is fine. Have a number of USB C...

Can't upload image for some reason. 5.25'' Cage Rack Hard Drive Tray Caddy Bay to 5x 3.5'' SATA SAS HDD Expansion | eBay is an example but you can find them in various places. It's not hot swap. Nor does it have a backplane.

The front door was lost before I got hold of it. This review is helpful. Wood is under rated as a DIY case material.

Very cool. "If I had a 3D printer" crops up a lot here but I can't afford a decent one at the moment and my 3D CAD skills are pretty much zero. I managed to find another case for free that is better suited to my purposes - Chieftec Scorpio TX-10BLD Entry Level Server Chassis. What you...

If the type C port supports DisplayPort Alternate Mode, you can connect up to 2 x 4K 60Hz displays. I've a USB C "dock" (they are more "dongle" form/size in my mind) that has one DP and two HDMI - the dongles do the conversion from DP to HDMI. HDMI to both VGA and DVI-I exist if you have older...