What Have You Done Today - (Computer Version)

  • Thread starter Thread starter tlowr4
  • 4,244 comments
  • 355,088 views
I have some old, unused HDD's laying around I've considered utilizing for this purpose. I have also considered migrating many of my files off that external drive onto my new SSD since I will likely use them later on now that I finally have the space to do so.
There's nothing wrong with utilising old drives, but I'd definitely keep your valuable files on something newer - or at the very least, keep several copies (search the 3-2-1 Backup Rule).

I had an internal 1TB drive that was going strong after 8 years of continuous service, but I didn't want to take a risk - it's now retired, and was replaced with a newer (and admittedly overkill) 8TB version.

All of my important files are backed up on a NAS I built (with an 8TB mirrored configuration), and my camera roll is automatically backed up to OneDrive and Google Photos - though I'm also going to setup automatic photo backups with Immich on the NAS.
 
There's nothing wrong with utilising old drives, but I'd definitely keep your valuable files on something newer - or at the very least, keep several copies (search the 3-2-1 Backup Rule).
I'll have to do the latter because the external HDD I use is the newest one I have. Most of the things I have are going to stay on there anyway, since I use them with my Xbox Series X. Funnily enough, due to its capacity, this drive already serves as a backup drive if I ever need to get everything off my PC for whatever reason.
I had an internal 1TB drive that was going strong after 8 years of continuous service, but I didn't want to take a risk - it's now retired, and was replaced with a newer (and admittedly overkill) 8TB version.
Funny story, the drive I mentioned is an 8TB drive. I had a 2TB Toshiba drive I bought many years ago, and it also served me well, but I later learned its health was bad, and eventually, when I was offloading my stuff from it, it gave me an error that basically stated it was dying. So I quit using it, and now this 8TB drive is what I rely on when I need it, though I don't use it as much anymore since I upgraded my SSD.
 
I could use some opinions!

In short I've just re-inherited my 2017 PC (i7 8700k, GTX 1080, 2x8GB DDR4) and VR gear (Vive, all the accessories including wireless adaptor) but I have nowhere to set it up - at least not easily - the PC doesn't support Windows 11, the wireless adaptor software is probably unsupported now, etc. so my first thought was to sell it, but I feel like I'd regret giving up the possibility of ever playing VR again for the probably low price I'd get for it - I think £300 is doable, although I feel like selling it on eBay or whatever will just end up with me being scammed.

What would you do?
 
but I feel like I'd regret giving up the possibility of ever playing VR again for the probably low price I'd get for it
I no longer know anything about Windows PCs, however the words above resonate with my kind of thinking ⬆️
 
I could use some opinions!

In short I've just re-inherited my 2017 PC (i7 8700k, GTX 1080, 2x8GB DDR4) and VR gear (Vive, all the accessories including wireless adaptor) but I have nowhere to set it up - at least not easily - the PC doesn't support Windows 11, the wireless adaptor software is probably unsupported now, etc. so my first thought was to sell it, but I feel like I'd regret giving up the possibility of ever playing VR again for the probably low price I'd get for it - I think £300 is doable, although I feel like selling it on eBay or whatever will just end up with me being scammed.

What would you do?
Linux Mint an option? You can run most games via Steam/Proton, it's neat and user friendly IMO.
 
I could use some opinions!

In short I've just re-inherited my 2017 PC (i7 8700k, GTX 1080, 2x8GB DDR4) and VR gear (Vive, all the accessories including wireless adaptor) but I have nowhere to set it up - at least not easily - the PC doesn't support Windows 11, the wireless adaptor software is probably unsupported now, etc. so my first thought was to sell it, but I feel like I'd regret giving up the possibility of ever playing VR again for the probably low price I'd get for it - I think £300 is doable, although I feel like selling it on eBay or whatever will just end up with me being scammed.

What would you do?
8th gen and newer Intel CPUs should support Windows 11 out of the box, was there a particular error message you were getting?
 
8th gen and newer Intel CPUs should support Windows 11 out of the box, was there a particular error message you were getting?
Last time I used it, which was a year ago, I briefly saw and dismissed a notification that my PC wasn't ready for Windows 11. It's been ages since I cared but is it possible I need a trusted platform module for it, or is that just something I need to enable in the UEFI? I seem to recall seeing a header on a motherboard marked TPM but I'm not sure if it was on mine or one or the many PCs I've worked on in the past.

Linux Mint an option? You can run most games via Steam/Proton, it's neat and user friendly IMO.
Sadly not, the Vive's wireless adaptor is strictly Windows only.

I no longer know anything about Windows PCs, however the words above resonate with my kind of thinking ⬆️
Yeah, I'm coming around to the idea of streamlining the effort needed to set it up temporarily, if I can leave the lighthouses fixed in place somewhere that becomes a LOT easier... Then it's just the PC itself I need to move every time. I'll think about it!
 
Last time I used it, which was a year ago, I briefly saw and dismissed a notification that my PC wasn't ready for Windows 11. It's been ages since I cared but is it possible I need a trusted platform module for it, or is that just something I need to enable in the UEFI? I seem to recall seeing a header on a motherboard marked TPM but I'm not sure if it was on mine or one or the many PCs I've worked on in the past.
I believe you would just need to enable TPM in the UEFI. Do you know what model motherboard you have?

Alternatively, you could use Rufus to bypass the restrictions - I did this with a Haswell build, and haven't had any issues so far.
 
Last edited:
Alternatively, you could use Rufus to bypass the restrictions - I did this with a Haswell build, and haven't had any issues so far.
I've now done at least seven of those for friends, family and myself. Two of them were so poor showings that they should have been scrapped five years ago anyway, but the owners wanted to see if it works and sure enough it did. One is my own "living room laptop" in nearly daily use and no differences to this desktop that was upgraded in the correct way.
 
I believe you would just need to enable TPM in the UEFI. Do you know recall what model motherboard you have?

Alternatively, you could use Rufus to bypass the restrictions - I did this with a Haswell build, and haven't had any issues so far.
Makes sense, thanks! It's an Asus Z-whatever, I haven't thought about it since 2017 so I can't remember exactly. No problem though, I'll poke around the UEFI and figure it out.
 
I've decided to install Linux Mint 1.0 on my daily driver laptop.

(Ha! Just kidding.)

I installed Linux Mint 22.1 (alongside Windows), but I did make some changes to make it look as close to it's ancestor as possible. And it's all possible thanks to the Trinity Desktop Environment, the KDE 3.5 fork. And boy, it requires a LOT of changes...

This includes:

  • Downloading the original Mount Alpamayo wallpaper
  • Changed the icon scheme to nuvoX, the same one Linux Mint 1.0 uses
  • Downloaded KNewsTicker, and then added a panel dedicated to KNewsTicker, just like the original
  • Changed the window decorations from the original Plastik to Crystal, and changed the widget style, from Plastik, to Polyester
  • Used the same Linux Mint 1.0 sound scheme
  • Change the icons on the panel to match exactly what it displays
Now, all I need is to find someone gullible enough to fall for it! Maybe after setting the resolution, so that it looks like I actually installed Linux Mint 1.0 on it... :mischievous::mischievous::mischievous:
 
Last edited:
I freed up some space on my laptop, and decided to dual-boot Fedora KDE alongside Windows 10 (with the extended security patches).

I'm still on the fence about dual-booting on my desktop. I have an unused 500GB SATA SSD I could dedicate to a Linux distro, but I'm also running out of SSD space. I'm sure 90% of my games will work fine with Proton, but I don't want to keep shuffling partition sizes around so I can have games on both OS's.
 
Plugged my old 1TB hard drive into my laptop with my adapter and checked to make sure it didn't have anything of value on there. I am planning on using it on my PS3 now that I have jailbreak because 120GB just isn't cutting it for me.
So I said this all the way back in 2018, and to put a long story short, I did eventually do this a few weeks after I posted about it. Along the way, I found restoring a backup from a smaller drive to larger one will still show the old capacity despite the drive itself being bigger than that. That said, I had to move everything onto my new drive manually using a file browser on my CFW PS3 at the time.

While I may have gotten everything I wanted from my original drive onto my new drive back then, something that has bothered me ever since is the dates to a lot of things were updated to whatever time it was when I copied it. This bothers me because I had a lot of files that hadn't been touched in years, some of which dating back to when I got the console itself, and they now display the wrong dates, making it seem as if they had been updated, when they really hadn't. I once said this in another thread:
5. I tend to care an awful lot about the dates when certain things happened in my life and I try to keep track of them.
And me being the anal person I am, this is no exception.

That said, I finally decided to do something about it nearly 3 weeks ago. I experimented a bit using an FTP client on my PC and through my research, I found the dates on the PS3 are in accordance to the modification date of the file or folder. The PS3 apparently updates them when you copy them to it, which would explain why the dates on all my stuff changed upon copying them to my new drive back then. Fortunately, something I noticed is if I set my PS3 to the desired time and then copy the file or folder to it, the time will be whatever the PS3 was on when it copied.

So I noted what files had the wrong dates on my current drive and then plugged my original HDD in to document what the real ones were, both on the console and what is displayed in my FTP client. I started doing this weeks ago and stopped for a bit, but I finally decided to get back to it today. So far, I am about half way done and I am hoping I can finish documenting them tomorrow. Once that's done, it'll just be a matter fixing the dates following that last sentence in the paragraph above and while it may take a while, it'll be worth it. 😎
 
Last edited:
Back