The Computer Thread

Do NOT microwave anything but food,common sense yes electrical devices could be a fire hazard due to the metal in then

Pretty sure the only way to truly erase a hard drive is to straight up degauss it.

Edit: of course doing that renders the drive little more than a really expensive paperweight but yeah.

Edited by Deadbeatloser22 on Sep 27th 2018 at 9:49:21 AM

When you dispose of electronics, hard drives in particular, make sure you do it with a reputable firm that promises complete wiping/destruction of the drives. Generally speaking, professional businesses will have access to much better tools for that purpose than the typical consumer.

I'm not paranoid enough to worry about someone rooting through my discarded drives; it's not like I'm loading state secrets or illegal content on my devices, or running for political office. If they care enough to use advanced, expensive recovery techniques to look at my deleted porn, that's fine by me.

Financial documents are another matter, of course, but that's what professional disposal is for.

See, my personal solution to that sort of quandary is not to have illegal shit on my computer, and more broadly speaking, not to do illegal shit. But maybe that's just me.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 27th 2018 at 10:42:40 AM

Well, if you have shit on your SSD that is going to give you a longer sentence than arson, there is no good reason not to microwave your SSD.

What if you Hurl It into the Sun?

well you need a strong arm for a start..

Physics geek literal answers incoming.

• You'd need to "throw" it from Earth with a relative velocity of over 70 km/s. Never mind how, it would be obliterated by Earth's own atmosphere if you threw it from the ground. This would accomplish the goal of wiping the drive.
• The Sun's magnetic field is more than powerful enough to erase any drive that comes close enough. It would also be vaporized by the heat long before getting that close.
• Lastly, "recovering" it would be slightly tricky even if it somehow survived these other things, so you win in all respects.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 27th 2018 at 10:47:34 AM

The safest way to prevent data from being recovered from an HDD: drill three holes through the drive. This not only destroys the circuit board and makes it hard to insert the platters, the metal bits scratch up the platters and could prevent even a SQUID from trying to recover the data.

There is a tale about a sex offender who found out that the FBI was looking for him. He tossed his laptop into the Mississippi river (a river that carries tons of silt each year).

Well the FBI used a SQUID to recover enough data to get a conviction, despite the laptop being waterlogged.

I had no idea the FBI used squids

Drill holes through it, mess around with strong magnets near it, probably directly connect the platters to an electrical circuit, and then toss it into a fire for good measure.

Or don't do illegal stuff that might prompt the FBI to seize your hard drives?

My HP 15 Notebook PC hinges is falling apart but my warranty is expired and I cannot return it HP for repair. Apparently I am not the only one but I might need to somehow save up money to get it repaired.

HP has audio problems with the windows update. My lappy has crap sound on the speakers, but the HDMI is crystal clear.

I've updated and loaded and rolled back. As far as I can tell it's some kind of software issue.

I'm going to have Geek Squad roll back to basic Windows 10 and I will update the driver from HP's website.

Ugh, I hate HP, we got a few at work and not a single one of them did NOT have driver issues at some point.

I recommend using the HP Support Assistant Tool, for some reason the drivers it finds are more up to date than the ones on their website.

Edited by Kiefen on Oct 15th 2018 at 7:48:36 PM

Something I'm curious about: did the Amiga operating system come with any sound effects, the way Windows and Macintosh did?

With the prices of Video Cards not going down, I guess it's time for me to bite the bullet before they get any higher.

What specific parts should I be going for to build a gaming PC of this year? I'd like to run games like XCOM 2 at a more reasonable framerate and at higher settings. I'd also like to get both an SSD for the OS and video editing programs and a larger conventional hard drive to store everything else (like games).

Well, now's a good time to get 1080's and the like because the RTX line has just been released so people are rushing to upgrade. Second-hand cards aren't that unreliable. Plus a lot of cards used for mining now that cryptocurrencies are down in price.

Occasionally my laptop suddenly decides to turn on the "Show file extensions" option in the middle of my working on it, and refuses to let me change it back. The problem resolves itself automatically if I restart the computer, but I have no idea why it happens to begin with.

Anyone got a clue?

Decided to upgrade my PC (mostly because I noticed that running Monster Hunter World at these settings and resolution does occasionally drop the framerate below 30FPS, though smooth 60 would be nice; and I torture Skyrim/FO4 with mods) and get a new GPU.

Partspicker thinks that there should be no problems on the power consumption, some other power supply calculator thinks that I'm going to be ~40W overdrawn on the 550W PSU I have installed. Admittedly the Vega 64 is just power inefficient^note General performance is comparable to a 1080 and even with those going for sale secondhand they still go for nearly the same secondhand that a new 64 is currently selling. Nvidia also needs more effective opposition in the GPU market, so it's worth supporting. Plus the 64 comes with free games, and I actually want DMC 5 when it releases. but I'm still a bit sceptical on that power draw assumption.

Edited by RainehDaze on Nov 18th 2018 at 1:49:01 PM

Looks like the cryptocurrency bubble popping has sent Nvidia shares into freefall.

Huh. I haven't been keeping track, but maybe I can afford to replace my video card now. Good riddance to those crypto nuts.

Yeah, if the 1060 stock gets price-slashed to shift inventory I might be upgrading my 750.

As I said, second hand prices are pretty good. I've seen 1060s for £150 and 1080s for £350.

I honestly think in the future crypto mining will be made illegal,it's already pretty dodgy what with power consumption and all

Its normaly not a good idea to buy a second hand GPU though, there one of the parts that kinda burn out overtime, and especialy from crypto they might have heavy wear.

Going for the overstock is better.