new build

[Hop]

... IMHO, for what I have an opinion on; ...

GPU - I don't think exceeding my video (GeForce 9300 GTX+) would make much difference with even heavy Alibre renders.
Save money and get a second, stock, video card and cheap monitor (if you have too, I can run two off of my GeForce). Run resource monitor on it (task manager).
The only time I get into trouble with Alibre is when resources (memory) gets cluttered or the CPU fan or others get dust covered.
This can come from IE hogging on a web site (a lot of Redeye quote part uploads), Alibre crunching exports (STL) and a mish-mash of intermediate applications.
When you choke it is too late. With Task manager running on the "back" monitor it doesn't happen. The extra monitor fills in as a great parking place for reference information while I work Alibre in the main window.

Case - I don't have internal drives. I put in (fairly cheap, very reliable) HD docking stations and rotate disk image backups. Full Tower "Cooler Master" with an extra quality fan or two - 6 External 5.25" Drive Bays (actually bays in the case on the front - not detached). I call this "Cloud computing". :mrgreen:
I use an SSD in one station for "CAD" (Alibre, Keyshot, Excel) files with continuous backup with Autosave to a compressed hard drive partition.
Otherwise I use WD Caviar Black 640 GB drives. More (even this) is wasted space and backup (clone) time.
I can touch a drive to check heat or vibration which is gratifying. What happens in the case (heat or while cleaning) has minimal drive impact.
I can pull the drives for dust control in an instant.

For not a lot of money I think I have a solid dream configuration (for the money). Others may clarify or offer other beneficial insight, or better opinions.
…

Color added for emphasis to above quotation.

I meant to comment on this earlier and forgot… I agree 100% with this design philosophy, especially the external hard disk drive stations with image backups ready to swap in as needed. Thumbs up on both hands for that idea.

The problem with gigantic HDDs appears to be the unrecoverable bit error rate is not small enough to guarantee an error-free backup. For example, a typical unrecoverable bit error might be one in 10^14 reads. That sounds pretty low, but depending on the size of the drive, it could mean that reading the entire drive (as for an image copy) will virtually guarantee at least one unrecoverable error. Not good if you are doing image backups.

There are articles on the Web by more knowledgeable people than me who can shed some light on this problem. The gist of it, from what I read, is the increase in HDD capacity is not accompanied by a proportional decrease in unrecoverable errors. At some size point (we are talking very large RAID 6/10 sets used mainly for server farms) it becomes virtually impossible to keep a system up and running error-free. For more information you can look at this article.

Hop

 

[RCH_Projects]

... The 120Gb SSD's are reasonably affordable and that is plenty of space for all of the applications I run. If I kept data on that drive though, I'd be full several times over.

Underline mine.

If you can get away with it, keep "active" projects on that or another SSD.
The Alibre related time to "save as", delete and "replace" might be worth the WOW in some cases. Images and such are a gimmee. Usually want to relocate those myself anyway.

Maybe Alibre will get more clever about "Saves" and "replace" some day (so I don't have to be).

Glad the suggestions were well received.

(Hop, I thought the terra bound hard drives were getting crazy for the typical user anyway [not creating full length digital films anyway].
But that is scary. Hmm - a bad bit on a compressed file... . After all, that is a "bit" rate.
Oh - but if you Raid everything yu should be ok - and they sell more drives, hardware, recovery tools / services, etc. :roll: OH - I get it - forced to the cloud.
Yes - I really worry for being able to even find sane drives on my next build)

BTW - incremental backups - I don't believe in them.
When the sh.t hits the fan and you go to reconstructing here and there from this and that - well forget it. I'm not wet behind the ears.

 

[Hop]

Re: new build and incremental backups

Yeah, incremental backups are a leftover from days of yore when media cost was a significant part of backing up, and storage space quickly became scarce. Ever see a 9-track storage rack with hundreds of tape reels hanging there? Go back a few years and try to recover data from one of those puppies and discover that years of idle time hanging from the rack have allowed the so-called "data" to print through from adjacent layers of tape. Good luck restoring from that!

At one company I worked for in the 70s, they did daily incremental backups for their PDP-11/34 and VAX macines. Once every two or three years they would physically clean and re-tension the tapes. That might have helped some, but print-through still occured. I never did trust those backups. Saved all my work locally on an early IBM PC emulating a DEC terminal, with a small hard disk (by today's standards) and pair of 5-1/4 inch floppies. Those were the "good ol' days" and the IT mavens hated me for it.

For a time, at home, I used to backup to 6GB tape cartridges. That got old really quick, waiting for them to format and write the data. Enter CD-ROMs and later DVD and Blu-Ray storage media. Still not very attractive because the hard drives got bigger faster than the backup media. I think the only real solution is a cheap hard drive of adequate capacity to image the working drive. Make the image and lock it away until needed in a dust-free environement... a gun safe is ideal, and you should have one of those anyway, bolted to the floor in a corner of your master bedroom, along with plenty of weapons and ammunition to defeat the CDC Zombie Uprising. Buy a new "backup" drive every six months or so and make a new image. Start rotating the drives, i.e., use the image drive as the active drive and put the old active drive in the rotation for backups. Whew! This takes way more organization than I am capable of, but IMHO it's still a good idea. Invest in three or four external hard disk docking stations and get started. It's also a great way to run Linux and Windows without bothering with the old dual-boot, dual partition crap.

Hop

 

[RCH_Projects]

Re: new build and incremental backups

... Ever see a 9-track storage rack with hundreds of tape reels hanging there? ...

You are on the money for me. What is bad is the University I worked at for ten years would send these tapes to off-site (paid climatic) storage year after year without retrieval or a "clean and re-tension" - although anyone in the business knew better. A few years after I left I poked the University attorney on the shoulder about the (junk) archive or it might have continued ad infinitum.
(Pedophilia excepted, Penn. State administration is angelic by comparison in their morality / athletic / financial systems to rogue departments at my old employer - wow, when that stuff starts ...).

... Buy a new "backup" drive every six months or so and make a new image. Start rotating the drives, i.e., use the image drive as the active drive and put the old active drive in the rotation for backups. Whew! This takes way more organization than I am capable of, but IMHO it's still a good idea. Invest in three or four external hard disk docking stations and get started. It's also a great way to run Linux and Windows without bothering with the old dual-boot, dual partition crap.

Hop

Right on. We sure have come a long way. I hope I get my new tech out the door in our lifetime.

 

[DM8761]

this is what i ended up with,

Intel i7-3770k, oc'ed to 4.2
asus z77 sabertooth mobo
corsair vengeance 32gb memory
1- corsair neutron SSD 256gb
1- west dig HHD velocity raptor 10rpm 600gb
dual gigabyte radeons HD 7970's oc'ed to 1.2 mhz
ultra x4 1200w PSU
win 7 pro

the SSD works great as the boot drive, from post beep to login is maybe 2 seconds, and after you hit enter on login to windows being done is another 4 seconds. all windows and drivers ect.. are on the SSD, and i was planning on using the SSD as the "project" drive, ie when im working on the project save all the files to the SSD, and then when im finished move to the HHD and back up to my external.

i have a few games on the HHD, i run steam on the HHD, no hickups

does anyone know if alibre runs ok on a second hard drive?


(P.S. Mechwarrior online playing with 3-36" screens, in eyefinity mode... kicks ass!)