EEVblog #927 - Jaycar Dumpster Sale - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 06:31:31 am
content: The annual Jaycar warehouse sale, take it for a buck or it goes in the dumpster!UPDATE: Yes, all the hard drives work.

author: TheSteve
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 07:50:12 am
content: Shame the power supplies were gone, might have been a fun repair video there.

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 08:14:44 am
content: Those solar panels.... for a dollar a piece...If anyone else knows where bulk partially failed panels are going for a song, i am all ears,

author: Muttley Snickers
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 08:32:33 am
content: Now you're just rubbing it in, I collect those CCTV controller keyboards and on some the joystick assemblies alone are worth a packet particularly if they have a z axis for zoom.I've seen in the past similar clearance sales down here from other companies and instead of going directly to Ewaste some of it ends up at the local council recycle depots where people get another opportunity to buy it cheap and it also keeps a few people employed, some people frequent these places and buy up big and then sell it on at the weekend trash and treasure markets but it's generally buyer beware stuff, this is not a bad thing as there can be some bargains to be had but then nothings really a bargain unless you have a use for it.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 09:38:05 am
content: For some reason here in the UK they would rather pay someone to take it away in a skip than sell it dirt cheap, most likely to do with the consumer reg's. Other times it is sold sealed bid on pallets making it pretty much trade only.

author: cezar
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 09:40:44 am
content: Deve, bear in mind those drives are probably sutveillance ones which means they are optimized for writes, may be lacking some power saving features and may not be good for reads (especially random access time). Those kind of drives have usually much longer MTBF but they don't like to be power on and off too often.

author: cezar
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 09:46:30 am
content: Quote from: G7PSK on September 26, 2016, 09:38:05 amYeah... I was looking for similar sales in the UK with no success. I saw a quite few times some white vans guys, stack up with old Maplin stuff on various boot sales so there must be something going on

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 09:57:16 am
content: Quote from: cezar on September 26, 2016, 09:40:44 amThey also usually have little to no on-board error correction. A few bit errors when it comes to CCTV or other video usually doesn't matter. These types of drives are cheap which is why they are used a lot of those low-end Chinese CCTV systems (with bloody painful codecs which usually don't comply with any standards). They are also not recommended for use in RAID arrays.I generally put these AV/Media type drives in the same category as "Green" drives.

author: GabYoung92
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 10:27:22 am
content: Haha reminds me of good old days of Jaycar - All the stuff there was typical dead on arrival products.Countless times I got asked by customers for those tall speaker boxes but all they could say was 'there is none left'. Wanted some myself! rageBig eye opener to see how much of the exact same product gets returned to warehouse as dead...FB9999 - This is a test code for the IT department to sell so that it didn't throw off figures at the end of the day.G'day Anthony if you're somehow reading this!

author: @rt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 11:23:10 am
content: Overall, I don’t think that was good publicity

author: Magnets
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 11:43:33 am
content: I'd make a Freenas/ZFS box with all of those, all off the shelf 2.5" NAS boxes are so expensive. Just get some of these things to really jam the drives in a regular PC case:http://www.ebay.com/itm/121075264932http://www.ebay.com/itm/390853038839http://www.ebay.com/itm/272287743033

author: Blastcap
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 04:01:24 pm
content: Even if they werent very good the tunrtables, i would have taken 6-10 of them.Or at least a few of the cartridges.

author: ericloewe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 04:18:38 pm
content: Quote from: Magnets on September 26, 2016, 11:43:33 am+1 for FreeNAS.In a shameless act of self-serving promotion, I'll link in a guide to testing hard drives from the FreeNAS forums. It's written for new ones, but the same goes for old dodgy ones:https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-hard-drive-burn-in-testing.21451/Easier, but less thorough script:https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/solnet-array-test.1/Don't believe what people say on Reddit, we're actually a friendly bunch.The drives themselves should work fine in a server environment - them being surveillance drives doesn't make them any worse, unlike some have suggested.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 04:26:20 pm
content: $7 paid by mastercard there goes their profitNow will someone share an equal site from Keysight ?

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 04:50:51 pm
content: Very cool video Dave, and nice score! Too bad they don't have too many of these sales around here, or at least I never get to hear about them. There is a definite urge to go to one and hard to resist my hoarder instinct.As you did, I'd just harvest the good bits.... but then what to do with all the junk that's left over? You still have to now dump the case, boards, cables and everything else that you can't really use. It's worth it though given how cheap it all was. I would find it hard to resist bringing more stuff home.... And then the wife will kill me.What bothers me to no endis my recent visit to BESTBUY.... and sometimes STAPLES. They have this area at the front of the store for recycling... where people bring their own e-Waste to recycle. Last time I was at BESTBUY they had a stack of stereos, laptops, phones, and I don't what else.That is like teasing an alcoholic with a bottle of vodka....I wanted so badly to see if I could "dumpster dive" into that area, as I was almost certain it wasn't complete garbage. It's just as you walk into the store. But I realize that it is stealing if you take it, just as much as curbside-grabs (without asking the home owner who dumped it) can also be an issue. Still, I know there are trucks going around the neighborhood on garbage days and loading up stuff.... Especially the more affluent areas of town, where people dump valuable stuff all the time.BESTBUY and STAPLES are supposed to be giving this stuff to e-Recycling, but then again, how many of those minimum-wage paid kids in the store probably dive in there themselves as a fringe benefit of the working at the store? Are do they have a strict policy in place to not touch any of it? The e-Waste company also likely paid BestBuy or at least paid to install their e-Waster Recycling Box/Display in the front entrance, so they are looking to make some profit from whatever stuff they are scoring as well, in the used after-market or recycled materials. I'm sure they have a warehouse and staff that go through it all and decide where it should go to return the best profit as well.Anyways, I'm in the Vaughan, Ontario (north of Toronto) area and so far I haven't heard of or been aware of any such warehouse sales or e-Waste recycling depots that let people go through and pick up stuff that they can re-purpose. I'm obviously not going to steal stuff from the recycle bins of BESTBUY and STAPLES, and I don't have or know of any e-Waste-rich dumpsters in my area.That's probably a good think... don't enable a hoarder...The only thing that comes close are some surplus electronics stores, but they are fairly expensive or have old junk and obviously need to pay to keep the place open. Still... It would be nice to know for example,if anyone has any old laptops that I can wipe them clean and give them to my local kids schoolas they are always looking to equip the classes (they are under 10 years old, grades 1-5 primary).

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 05:19:13 pm
content: Probably there was enought UPS there to turn your house into an island operation... I would have loaded up all those in a heartbeat for 5 bucks.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 06:21:07 pm
content: Quote from: edy on September 26, 2016, 04:50:51 pmYou can always ask nicely and swear on the soles of your (unborn) kids you don't make a mess.

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 07:03:04 pm
content: Quote from: NANDBlog on September 26, 2016, 05:19:13 pmThey were all 'faulty' but the batteries in them are worth money. Even as scrap you might make a profit on them at those prices.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 08:25:02 pm
content: The items to really go for would have been the inverter gen-sets. Make as many good ones as possible and then weigh the rest in.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 08:28:48 pm
content: Quote from: ericloewe on September 26, 2016, 04:18:38 pmIf anything i'd expect them to be better than most 'end user' hard drives, my experience of them places them somewhere between the commodity ones and the server grade ones, not stellar performance but they run forever and a day.

author: M4trix
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 10:37:49 pm
content: This is why I never forgave my parents for leaving Australia 40 years ago.

author: ericloewe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 10:47:30 pm
content: Quote from: CJay on September 26, 2016, 08:28:48 pmThe retail ones are mostly NAS drives with additional DVR-centric features in firmware, like ATA Stream, which drops writes instead of retrying (only if explicitly requested by the host, so they're generally safe to use).The OEM drives shouldn't be too different, but they might need a tweak or two to their idle timers and TLER timeouts, depending on what defaults the Chinese DVR vendor (the thought of Chinese DVRs makes me want to throw up, but mostly due to experiences unrelated to them... mostly.) asked for.

author: ericloewe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 10:51:53 pm
content: Quote from: wilfred on September 26, 2016, 10:46:13 pmAt the very least, they're very similar. All the comparisons I've seen are from different batches and/or revisions, making direct comparisons harder.NAS drives might possibly include an additional sensor to theoretically compensate for vibration in multi-drive environments... In practice, nobody has shown the existence of the sensor to be true (some have speculated they're just measuring variations in angular velocity) and neither has anyone shown NAS drives to be "better" than their non-NAS equivalents (WD Red vs Green/New Blue, for instance).As for DVR drives specifically, I'm almost certain that NAS and DVR drives are only distinguished by their firmware and an extra 10 bucks slapped onto the sticker price.

author: Towger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2016, 11:31:17 pm
content: Quote from: wilfred on September 26, 2016, 10:46:13 pmI believe they may have changed over years WD have colour coded their drives.But the early Black drives are build using a heavy case, much like the drives of old. They feel like quality from their weight when you pick one up, I only assume better quality parts are also used internally. The early Red drives were the same as the Black but with different firmware. The difference was to fail with a read/write error faster. The idea is to drop the drive from an RAID array fast, rather than hang a server while it retries.I am not sure if this still holds true for the current versions.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 12:33:04 am
content: Quote from: CJay on September 26, 2016, 08:28:48 pmI wouldn't say they are any better than consumer-grade drives they are just "different". They are designed to use less power, generate less heat and operate reasonably silently in recording devices at the expense of read/write throughput. In things like PVRs and CCTV recorders, as I have already mentioned, data integrity is less important. Bit errors generally go unnoticed in those sorts of applications, so it's cheaper to manufacture these drives with little or no built-in error correction technology. If any of this stuff is not important to you, then yes, they might be a good, cheap alternative to some desktop hard disks.What tends to happen with some of these "AV" drives is that it's been constantly fed a stream of video/audio data. If a write operation takes too long, it won't sit there retrying or attempting to correct the error, it'll just fail the write operation and carry on with the next command. More often than not, especially with CCTV video, some missing frames aren't even noticed. Can you imagine what would happen if this happens to some important data?Of course every manufacturer have different sets of features and market their drives differently. I personally wouldn't be relying on these sorts of drives for anything critical and certainly not in a proper RAID array.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 12:58:25 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on September 27, 2016, 12:40:40 amBecause it's cheaper both in terms of the few dollars they save in manufacturing costs and the time penalty it takes to attempt correction. Many modern drives have an error timeout of several seconds (from memory some WD or Seagate drives are factory set to 8 seconds). During that time, no other commands are processed until the one causing the error finishes (either by timing out or by successfully correcting the error and completing the command). Meanwhile, video data is still coming in and if you're talking about multiple video channels being recorded, that'll fill up the buffer fairly quickly.For these sorts of applications losing an insignificant amount video data over many hours is quite acceptable. Who cares if over the course of 14 days the system looses a few frames or a few seconds of footage? Again, this is why they are used in these cheap off-the-shelf devices. It keeps costs down without really impacting too much on the overall reliability and design of the system.Of course in a proper, large-scale CCTV installation (large venues, traffic monitoring centres etc...) you would have proper storage servers with proper enterprise drives.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 01:49:38 am
content: Quote from: Fungus on September 26, 2016, 07:03:04 pmI grabbed 3 of the 1500VA units. Nice and heavy - there's batteries in there!!Will be looking at checking them out and see if they are serviceable. If so, I might try them out on another UPS I have that is in need of batteries.There's always the question of how well they might perform - but I'll do some testing before pressing them into service (if the exercise gets that far).

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 01:50:51 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on September 26, 2016, 11:49:11 amvery much thisas for the drives, those DVRs often use ATA security aka password protected firmware of the drive - it wont be detected in bios without that password, just like Xbox hdd. Seeing Dave rip the drives without checking first made meso hard.This sale is the result of ridiculous money value in AU. Everything is so cheap compared to wages and local prices(utility/housing) there is no financial incentive to repair.In Poland smart local electronic retailers list all the RMAed stuff on web auctions, for example:http://allegro.pl/listing/user/listing.php?us_id=39502583(allegro = east European ebay, main advantage is no paypal, you pay with direct money transfers = no fees), broken crap sells at $5-30.I really like this type of initiatives:https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/09/23/2236230/from-bicycles-to-washing-machines-sweden-to-give-tax-breaks-for-repairs

author: calexanian
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 05:23:53 am
content: I wonder if those generators were two stroke and people did not put the oil in. Also how many people "Rented" them for a weekend camping trip and returned the "Broken" unit when they got home. They actually have a law against returning anything Gas powered here in California after you have put fuel in it. Everything past that point must be handled by the manufacturer and not the store because people were abusing return policies and for safety cause incompetent employees may spill the fuel which California has labeled as a carcinogen and therefore must be left outside. I always love to point out that they sell pre mixed two stroke fuel at hardware stores, but that is met by blank looks on clerks faces.

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 08:01:14 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on September 27, 2016, 12:58:25 amComplete bollocks.Anyof these drives could end up in the wrong place. No manufacturer is knowingly going to sell an unreliable-for-PC drive, it could cost them their business.I don't know what the difference between these drives is, but if it's more than just marketing it will be in the seek times, spindle speeds, etc. It won't be in the reliability or amount of error correction.eg. A DVR doesn't need the raw seek times of a PC, it could have a slower/quieter head positioning mechanism. A server drive might have extra heatsinking.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 08:08:04 am
content: Quote from: Fungus on September 26, 2016, 07:03:04 pmYes. Even if some has faulty electronics, probably it is still stuffed with a big lead acid. If one electronics is good, you can snap a bunch of extra batteries from the other dead UPS to it, and get a longer lasting, same power output UPS (theory).Quote from: Brumby on September 27, 2016, 01:49:38 amGood luck, let us know how it went!

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 08:51:24 am
content: Quote from: Fungus on September 27, 2016, 08:01:14 amWould you care to explain why you think it's complete bollocks (since you basically admitted in the same post that you don't know what the difference is)?Perhaps my 17 years in IT may add a little weight to the discussion; and I don't just mean I answered IT helpdesk calls for the past 17 years, my expertise includes (among other things) server, NAS and SAN builds and administration for (at the time) one of Australia's top three largest telcos and forensic data recovery from both magnetic and solid state media (or course I'm not going to divulge what I did specifically, but for the purposes of this forum, consider me well versed).Unless you believe the marketing wank, these drives are nothing special. If you have a look at the Western Digital AV-GP drives as an example, they are marketed as being "firmware optimised for write-intensive operations". In other words, it utilises theATAPISteaming Feature Set. First line straight out of the ATAPI documentation:The Streaming feature set allows a host to request delivery of data within an allotted time, placing a priority on the time to transfer the data rather than the integrity of the data.Specifically the sections we are interested in:4.23.2.4 - The READ CONTINUOUS bit in the read stream commands (see 7.30.3.3) specifies that the device shall transfer the requested amount of data to the host within the time specified by the DEFAULT CCTL field (see 7.4.3.4) or the COMMAND CCTL field (see 7.30.3.2) even if an error occurs. The data sent to the host by the device in an error condition is vendor specific.4.23.2.5 - The WRITE CONTINUOUS bit in the write stream commands (see 7.69.3.2) specifies that the device shall transfer the requested amount of data from the host within the time specified by the DEFAULT CCTL field (see 7.4.3.4) or the COMMAND CCTL field (see 7.30.3.2) even if an error occurs. If the device is unable to resolve an error within the time specified by the DEFAULT CCTL field or the COMMAND CCTL field, the erroneous section on the media may be unchanged or may contain undefined data. A future read of this area may not report an error, even though the data is erroneous.As I said in my previous posts, if this sort of drive behaviour is something you don't care about (such as in the case of streaming video that isn't used for broadcasting or post-production purposes), then this drive might be quite alright. If you're thinking about storing anything critical on it, you run the risk of corrupted files.You'll also note that in their specifications, their MTBF figures are quoted based on hard errors (which I think most manufacturers are). You could have endless amounts of soft errors that go uncorrected.There is a reason why these drives are specifically targeted at low-end CCTV systems and consumer streaming NAS type devices.It basically comes down to the old mantra: FAST, GOOD, CHEAP; Pick two.

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 09:17:14 am
content: Quote from: Fungus on September 27, 2016, 08:01:14 amComplete bollocks. It most certainly will.Strong error correction is not categorically a good thing to have. Market segmentation dictates the level you need. For PC use you want as much as you can throw at the problem, 10 second complete system freeze while drive is clicking like mad is preferred over lost data. Enterprise raid environment on the other hand demands tightly controller timings, busy for too long will throw you out of the array as a faulty drive.http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/other/2579-001098.pdf

author: kalleboo
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 09:31:25 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on September 27, 2016, 08:51:24 amThose are just extra features *it supports* if the application uses them. If you pop it in a PC it will use regular read/write commands and act like a normal drive with regular error recovery.One area where there are important differences are "For RAID" drives (WD -RE), where they have a hard limit on error correction retries. You used to be able to enable/disable that behavior with a utility but they killed that.

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 09:43:53 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on September 27, 2016, 08:51:24 amI thought I had, but...Quote from: Halcyon on September 27, 2016, 08:51:24 amThis ^Imagine a web site that says, "Warning: Some of our drives are unsuitable for use in desktop PCs, they might corrupt your data!!"If that fits into your world-view then you're from a completely different planet.But let's look at some drive brochures....Here's two Samsung drive brochures for desktop + video drives:http://www.seagate.com/www-content/support-content/samsung/internal-products/spinpoint-m-series/en-us/samsung-m9t-internal-ds.pdfhttp://www.seagate.com/www-content/support-content/samsung/internal-products/spinpoint-m-series/en-us/docs/15SS443_US_Spinpoint%20M8_VIDEO.8.10.2015.pdfNote that the reliability specifications arethe same.The noise/accousticsaren't. The max transfer ratesaren't. The biggest difference I can see is in the "power-on-to-ready" time. One is measured in seconds and the other in milliseconds.These are exactly the sort of differences I predicted without knowing a damn thing about the drives or having any experience in a PC support context.Also, the 'video' drives have smaller capacity than the desktop drives.So yeah, if you've heard anything regarding "reliabilty" it's probably just marketing wank to try and sell you a more expensive disk (I'm guessing the video drives are slightly cheaper because of the smaller capacity).

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 09:55:07 am
content: Quote from: Rasz on September 27, 2016, 09:17:14 amDid you even read that? That's totally not applicable here.Short version: In a RAID environment you don't need to halt the system and do an error recovery cycle when a disk sector read fails. You can log the event and return immediately because you have redundant data from the other disks. The bad sector can be rebuilt later from the other disks in the RAID.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 10:11:19 am
content: Quote from: Fungus on September 27, 2016, 09:43:53 amMy world view is that manufacturers tend not to advertise their product's shortfalls in marketing material or their glossy brochures. I could be completely wrong there though? Maybe they are all up-front and honest.Quote from: Fungus on September 27, 2016, 09:43:53 amYes and measured in hard errors (hence the "Non-recoverable Read Error"). They mention nothing about soft or correctable errors.I'm not sure what the argument is here? My entire point was that these "AV drives" are designed for a specific purpose, a purpose where data integrity doesn't matter all that much. Under the hood, they are mostly just a bog standard desktop drive with some tweaked firmware and maybe some hardware components missing (ECC circuitry, accelerometers etc...). Why on earth would someone (other than someone who didn't know what they were talking about) go out and buy a hard disk specifically designed for CCTV and streaming video applications and throw it in their regular desktop computer, or a server or install it in a laptop?This is a great example of why there are so many "computer technicians" out there, but only a small fraction of them are actually great at their job.Have you actually had a look at some of these cheap and nasty Chinese CCTV recorders? They are just awful bits of hardware. That's where these drives are great, they'll just write what it's told to write and read back whatever it reads back. Errors go unchecked and un-noticed (mostly) and probably a good thing too, some of the crap hardware would probably just lock up.

author: ericloewe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 10:46:23 am
content: Quote from: Fungus on September 27, 2016, 09:43:53 amThe 3.5ms spinup figure is pure bullshit. No drive spins up from 0 to 5400RPM in less than 4ms. Some marketing person accidentally added the m, most likely.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 01:11:04 pm
content: I've always wondered about those different drives - I have several AV-GP drives in my server, have for YEARS and never had had any issues. No SMART errors, nothing. It's on 24/7 and 5400 RPM is plenty fast enough to run multiple video streams from, so the reduced power is a handy feature. Now that they have further segmented the drive times to specifically call attention to the "surveillance" models, I don't buy those for the server. This server does not use any form of RAID so I don't want drives meant for RAID controllers. I have a mix of drives, the oldest ones are probably 4-5 years old now, the newest one I installed last year. As I run out of space I replace one of the smaller drives (still have a couple of 1TB models) with a new larger on (usually the second largest available, as the latest and greatest always commands a huge price premium - today the 4TB might be the better deal over a 6TB, for example).The only ones I'd think might have relaxed ECC code might be the newer Purple ones meant for surveillance video, since it really doesn't matter if there is some bit dropout. IF this is the case, I don't believe they did it with the previous models, or if they did, the effect is not nearly as bas as might be assumed.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 01:13:50 pm
content: Quote from: Fungus on September 27, 2016, 08:01:14 amServer or Enterprise class drives are rather different, often they are obviously mechanically different packages to the 'equivalent' desktop drives, things I've heard quoted are extra rigidity in the chassis for more accurate repeatable positioning of the heads, extra mass for more heat dissipation, they often use different platters (2.5" platters in a 3.5" form chassis for instance because they can be spun faster and seek times are lower because the heads have less distance to move, glass platters for better thermal stability and 'flatness' which I believe improves media reliability)DVR drives often have different thermal recalibration profiles to desktop drives, different acoustic profiles, sometimes have different cache configurations and are 'guaranteed' to meet sustained transfer rates whereas desktop drives are all about the headline speeds because you might ask it to give you 1GB of data every twenty minutes but not expect it to write 16 streams of video 24x7.My experience with DVR drives in CCTV tells me there are differences in desktop and DVR rated drives in terms of reliability and that was backed up by my wholesaler, he made the same markup on desktop and DVR drives but had way more returns of desktop drives (I did the occasional paid repair day for him, he eventually gave up offering 'budget' drives because they cost him more in the long run).I'd have no problem using DVR drives in a RAID for my own use if I were using a hardware RAID controller, hell it's RAID and the controller deals with bad data, you're highly unlikely to lose data unless it's a gross failure across two or more drives (which I have seen, two 500GB drives failed within an hour of each other in a mirror set), but if I were speccing a storage array for a client I would most definitely spec server or enterprise class drives and stress the reasons for the choice to the client.

author: boffin
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 07:19:53 pm
content: You want a Supermicro chasses to toss them into:https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/2U/2027/SYS-2027R-WRF.cfmIf that's too expensive, find yourself a used 6-8x 2½" drive server on ebay, and run FreeNAS on that, something like this:http://www.ebay.ca/itm/HP-Proliant-DL380-G5-2x-Intel-X5460-3-16Ghz-Quad-Core-32GB-Ram-3x-146GB-HDD-Serv-/201673138316?hash=item2ef4a7e08c:g:dp0AAOSwYIxX4aZe(assuming it has the drive trays)

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 07:41:50 pm
content: Quote from: boffin on September 27, 2016, 07:19:53 pmCan't go wrong with Supermicro gear. Highly recommend it! Not badly priced either compared to brand name server gear. I get my Supermicro parts fromAlfa Computersover in Alexandria.

author: Jeff_Birt
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 07:45:35 pm
content: What jumped out at me is that places such as Jaycar buy all this cheap crap from China, knowing a LARGE percentage will be DOA, because they know they can flog it on the public who salivates when thinking about all the cheap crap from China they can buy. The people buying it know its cheap crap that might not even last a year, but hey, it was CHEAP! In six months to a year they are back buying more cheap crap from China to replace the previous cheap crap they bought which has already died.If you want to spend your money wisely it is hard to distinguish the cheap crap from quality products. Just because something is 10x the price does not automatically mean it is 10x as good. You might choose to spend a little more on the Sony TV vs. the Walmart brand guessing that it will last for 10+ years, not the perhaps 2 years of the cheap crap (if Sony did not use cheap One Hung Lo brand caps that is.)When I grew up we did not have a lot of money but I can remember my Mom talking about spending money wisely, "Would you rather have more cheap junk or a few nice things?" I think for most of the world now the answer is more cheap things.

author: ericloewe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2016, 09:28:56 pm
content: Quote from: boffin on September 27, 2016, 07:19:53 pmOoof, that thing would be loud, power-hungry and seriously slow.Anything older than Nehalem really has serious difficulties keeping up in modern environments. For FreeNAS, specifically, anything older than Nehalem is atrociously slow - not really because of the CPU core, but because of the FSB. Since everything had to be crammed through the FSB (unless it was in cache or registers), that thing became a massive bottleneck. It's even worse on the quad-cores, because they're two dual-cores in one package tied together with the FSB.That said, one popular solution is to acquire an ancient server and throw everything but the chassis out - this works well with the Supermicro stuff because you can still get parts for many older models (or easily adapt parts from newer ones). The only major components that may need replacing are the SAS backplane, if it's an ancient SAS1 expander backplane, if drives larger than 2TB are to be used; and the power supplies - older PSUs were extremely loud, with proper fan control being a relatively recent feature.

author: Alaskaal
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 28, 2016, 12:56:18 am
content: I don't think that I could have mustered the self-control to video as Dave did without dropping the camera, grabbing a cart, and stacking goodies on it. Those power supplies impressed me, even if they were crap. I would have grabbed the stack and used the cases for builds. Where else can you get a nice project case for $5.00, not to mention a dollar!Wow! That was neat. We never get events like that in Alaska. The closest I come to it is trash day at the dump. Great video Dave!

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 28, 2016, 02:09:31 am
content: Dave must have had influence.... When I was there, the only things on offer for $1 were the turntables everything else was $5.... but I did walk up to the register with 11 items and when I said "make it $50?" the guy said OK. Iwaswearing my negative feedback T-shirt. The guy that served me was in Dave's video at the Maker Faire.

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2016, 02:26:56 am
content: Quote from: Fungus on September 27, 2016, 09:55:07 amso you agree there are disks with different level of error correction and your previous post was _Complete bollocks_, yes?

author: Baer
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 28, 2016, 03:14:27 am
content: Quote from: edy on September 26, 2016, 04:50:51 pmthe big problen, atleast with the Canadian stores, is once the e stuff goes in the boxs or in the area. You cant touch it. looking for some 18650s to recycle from laptop batteries . I went to the local staples and asked. " Nope, once the batteries are in the boxes we legally cant do anything with them. Its the same at other collect points ,for E waste. It not like Iam going to do anything illegal with the stuff I just like to see what make tech tick

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 28, 2016, 05:12:03 am
content: I am sorry I didn't go earlier in the day.There was one thing I was tempted by - and I would have liked to have picked up a couple. These were the powered speakers.When I got there, I saw someone pushing out a trolley with several - so I thought there were still some left. I hunted around, not having much luck and was thinking about settling for a couple of those little cube units people use for busking. But, hiding down the back in among a scattered mess I found one in it's box - only one. It had a broken side handle, but otherwise seemed quite reasonable.Still checking it out, but the major functions I would use seem perfect. Best $5 I've ever spent.

author: Vgkid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2016, 03:32:53 am
content: That was a neat watch, wish we had something similiar around here. Would have easily grabbed a few of those UPS's.

author: aargee
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2016, 06:31:42 am
content: Sort of compensates for us Aussies seeing the cheap test gear bandied about in the US.I would have liked to have been there... but not. (Sort of Jekyll and Hyde thing).Being in Queensland the wallet stayed firmly shut and I still have my garage space. :-)

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 29, 2016, 06:57:18 am
content: Quote from: aargee on September 29, 2016, 06:31:42 am... yes - sort of. Even if you lump together every opportunity across the whole of Australia, the frequency of these events still leaves us in the 'poor cousin' category.I heard somebody mention that Jaycar wouldn't be doing that sort of thing again for a number of years, but that they might dosomethingnext year. One can but wonder ...

author: sparksflying
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 21, 2016, 11:43:16 pm
content: I wish they had one in Melbourne, would have loved a few of those inverter generators

author: ale500
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2016, 11:01:47 am
content: I'd love one in the south of Germany.... I hear you cannot touch what is already dumped at the collection points...

author: th3q
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 03, 2016, 10:08:01 am
content: Are there any sales like this in Germany, at all?