Random Tech Questions you want answered.

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So I know one does not defrag an SSD or SSHD. What about an external USB backup device? I don't actually use mine for backup, but for scenery storage/creation for my flight sims, so it does get a fair bit of usage.

Treat it based on the underlying tech. If it spins, you can defrag it. If not, don't.

Carlbear95 wrote:

So I know one does not defrag an SSD or SSHD. What about an external USB backup device? I don't actually use mine for backup, but for scenery storage/creation for my flight sims, so it does get a fair bit of usage.

Generally Windows and macOS both handle defragging as needed. Depending on your use of the drive it may not even need it. Non-boot drives don't usually get as fragmented as boot drives and large capacity drives also tend to behave better than the tiny drives we were using years ago. There is no harm in checking if it needs it of course.

Thanks, yeah having not defragged a drive in forever, I didn't even realize W10 manages it automatically nowadays (maybe that's why I haven't defragged!).

Carlbear95 wrote:

Thanks, yeah having not defragged a drive in forever, I didn't even realize W10 manages it automatically nowadays (maybe that's why I haven't defragged!).

I don't even think it is as new as Windows 10. I think it has done it automatically since 7 if not since Vista (never used Vista much as most enterprises skipped Vista and stayed with XP until 7 came out and I wasn't using Windows on my personal machines until 10).

mrtomaytohead wrote:
Vargen wrote:

I'm doing some work with the local Scouts BSA and they've asked me about having a looping promotional video in their summer camp store. What's the best way to go about that these days? Their TV set might have playback off a USB stick but I'm not going to bet on it. I know I can do it with a DVD but that definitely doesn't seem like the best answer. Is this a good time to learn about those Raspberry Pi gizmos?

My mid-range plasma from 2009 has USB video playback. I would assume any and all TVs should have that function. I would think a prudent course of action would be to ask them what they have available to connect to it and what the model # on the TV they have is determine it's capabilities.

So I finally got access to the hardware. It turns out that plasma TVs from 2007 do not have USB video playback. Or at least these don’t.

My GPU has developed a really annoying problem and I am hoping someone here can suggest a fix I haven't tried yet.

It's an EVGA GTX 1060 3GB. I got it as a hand-me-down in August. Sometime recently -- I don't remember exactly when -- the fan started occasionally revving up to full speed for no apparent reason (under any or no load), then ramping back down. And it's been gradually getting worse, spending more time at full speed, but still with a lot of unpredictability as to when it'll happen and for how long. And the fan is really obnoxiously loud at full speed.

Things I've tried, each of which seemed to work for a while:
Rebooting.
Updating drivers.
Uninstalling and reinstalling drivers.
Installing EVGA Precision X1 and adjusting the fan curve.
Dusting the GPU fan and the inside of the case in general.
Unplugging and reseating the power connector to the card.

That last led to noticing that sometimes software reports the GPU fan speed as 0 rpm, and that the issue only happens at those times. (It continues to report 0 RPM when it's running at full speed.)

There haven't been any problems with the display or reduction in performance, just excessive fan noise.

misplacedbravado wrote:

My GPU has developed a really annoying problem and I am hoping someone here can suggest a fix I haven't tried yet.

It's an EVGA GTX 1060 3GB. I got it as a hand-me-down in August. Sometime recently -- I don't remember exactly when -- the fan started occasionally revving up to full speed for no apparent reason (under any or no load), then ramping back down. And it's been gradually getting worse, spending more time at full speed, but still with a lot of unpredictability as to when it'll happen and for how long. And the fan is really obnoxiously loud at full speed.

Things I've tried, each of which seemed to work for a while:
Rebooting.
Updating drivers.
Uninstalling and reinstalling drivers.
Installing EVGA Precision X1 and adjusting the fan curve.
Dusting the GPU fan and the inside of the case in general.
Unplugging and reseating the power connector to the card.

That last led to noticing that sometimes software reports the GPU fan speed as 0 rpm, and that the issue only happens at those times. (It continues to report 0 RPM when it's running at full speed.)

There haven't been any problems with the display or reduction in performance, just excessive fan noise.

If you have a performance overlay (such as the new Nvidia Experience one) does the temperature or any other stats spike at these times? Or is it just that the fan RPM is reported as 0 and nothing else changes? Does it happen when you aren't actively trying to use the GPU for anything?

It's possible the GPU isn't reporting fan speed properly so the driver freaks out and increases speed but it's also possible you have some background app eating GPU power unexpectedly once in a while. That's why I'm curious if it's just fan speed changing or other stats as well.

Showing 0 RPM while going full tilt probably means a bad fan or fan cable. Did you try to boot into the bios and let it run to verify if the fan goes full blast there too? That can rule out a software problem.

You can usually find replacement fans on eBay or other sites for like $20.

When you say “dusted”, you mean with a blower, into the vents and fans? If it’s just surface dusting you could have an accumulation of sticky dust on the fans and inside the vents.

Could it be possible that a temperature sensor has gone bad and is misreporting the temp causing the fans to spin up and down at random.

Thanks for the suggestions, everybody!

I've seen (or rather, heard) it when playing games, through a reboot, and just sitting on the desktop after rebooting. I've used both EVGA Precision X1 and Corsair iCUE to check stats, and the GPU temperature has made sense for what it's doing every time I looked.

I just pulled the card, checked that the heat sink was dust-free and the fan cord connector was secure. Right now as I type this, I'm seeing a GPU temperature of 34 degrees and a fan speed of 686 RPM and everything is behaving itself.

But whatever is going on has been intermittent, so I expect jet-engine sounds at any moment. And LeapingGnome's theory is sounding the most plausible right now, so when it acts up again, I'll head to eBay

I have a Seagate hard drive that's probably more than 10 years old and 77k hours on it. What's the likelihood that it lasts me another year?

You're on borrowed time my friend. As long as nothing important is on it or you do regular backups, I guess you just see how long it lasts?

Yeah it's my games docs photos drive, but the photos and docs back up to OneDrive. What I'm really looking for is someone to enable me to swap it out for an SSD.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

Yeah it's my games docs photos drive, but the photos and docs back up to OneDrive. What I'm really looking for is someone to enable me to swap it out for an SSD.

Swap it out for an m.2 NVMe drive. Do it and never wait for a game to load again.

merphle wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

Yeah it's my games docs photos drive, but the photos and docs back up to OneDrive. What I'm really looking for is someone to enable me to swap it out for an SSD.

Swap it out for an m.2 NVMe drive. Do it and never wait for a game to load again.

my motherboard just barely precedes m.2 drive support, unfortunately, so I'll have to stick with a sata SSD.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
merphle wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

Yeah it's my games docs photos drive, but the photos and docs back up to OneDrive. What I'm really looking for is someone to enable me to swap it out for an SSD.

Swap it out for an m.2 NVMe drive. Do it and never wait for a game to load again.

my motherboard just barely precedes m.2 drive support, unfortunately, so I'll have to stick with a sata SSD.

I mean, there's another option, and you did say you were looking for enablement...

I bought and M.2 adapter for PCI-E last year and popped in a 500GB drive for my boot drive. Works great. Very inexpensive adaptor.

merphle wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:
merphle wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

Yeah it's my games docs photos drive, but the photos and docs back up to OneDrive. What I'm really looking for is someone to enable me to swap it out for an SSD.

Swap it out for an m.2 NVMe drive. Do it and never wait for a game to load again.

my motherboard just barely precedes m.2 drive support, unfortunately, so I'll have to stick with a sata SSD.

I mean, there's another option, and you did say you were looking for enablement...

true. I want to get a 2tb SSD though, and the m.2 models are like 50% more for a reputably named model vs SATA, so I guess my ability to be enabled has some limits.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

I have a Seagate hard drive that's probably more than 10 years old and 77k hours on it. What's the likelihood that it lasts me another year?

I have a couple that are almost that age that seem to be doing fine. They are in a redundant array though so if one fails I won't lose any files.

Something to keep in mind with ssds, windows can sometimes start optimizating (ssd equivalent to defrag) constantly when set to auto, apparently alot of drives were getting sent to their write limits SUPER FAST from that. Might be a good idea to set them to manual and just remind yourself to press the button once every few months. I keep track of my drives pretty close and when i turned auto optimize off my writes per week went down by like 40%.

Tycho, that bug was fixed in the Sept 2020 update. No more worries now.

Good to know, thanks.

So, my desktop has been in a continuous issue where Windows 10 will try to apply the newest update, which then freezes the computer on restart. Going into my computer's restore function, nothing comes up as a problem in the hardware tests, and reverting to whatever my previous restore point was before the update was applied always fixes the problem, making it very clear that something in that update is doing something to my startup files or something.

After going through this multiple times (as Windows likes to force an update when too much time has passed) and buying myself some time by pausing all updates to the maximum amount, I would like to know what my next step is? Is there (a) A way to figure out what the update is doing that conflicts with either my BIOS or just the startup in general or (b) A way to stop Windows 10 updates in a more permanent fashion as it works fine otherwise and I'd like to wait until the current madness dies down a bit before buying a new PC?

I've tried googling 100 different ways but it just gets me to advice on how to restore before the update if my scenario happens, not how to rectify the problem entirely.

I ran into that a couple years ago and had to reinstall windows on a fresh drive to fix it.

kuddles wrote:

So, my desktop has been in a continuous issue where Windows 10 will try to apply the newest update, which then freezes the computer on restart. Going into my computer's restore function, nothing comes up as a problem in the hardware tests, and reverting to whatever my previous restore point was before the update was applied always fixes the problem, making it very clear that something in that update is doing something to my startup files or something.

After going through this multiple times (as Windows likes to force an update when too much time has passed) and buying myself some time by pausing all updates to the maximum amount, I would like to know what my next step is? Is there (a) A way to figure out what the update is doing that conflicts with either my BIOS or just the startup in general or (b) A way to stop Windows 10 updates in a more permanent fashion as it works fine otherwise and I'd like to wait until the current madness dies down a bit before buying a new PC?

I've tried googling 100 different ways but it just gets me to advice on how to restore before the update if my scenario happens, not how to rectify the problem entirely.

This is pretty common and there are dozen of things that might be causing it and so dozens of possible solutions. One pretty simple solution to try involves deleting the update files so it can redownload fresh copies. To do this open C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download and delete everything inside of that folder and then try running Windows Update manually.

As far as disabling Updates completely this link has a few methods you can use.

You can also just rename the SoftwareDistribution folder to something like SoftwareDistribution.old and that should force windows to re download the update which may solve the issue. This way you are not deleting anything just in case.

That is the oldest trick in the book.
I used to use that all the time when I suspected someone's profile was corrupted.
Ya just rename their user folder to username.old and it would create a new one and let them login. Then just copy over the pictures, music, documents etc...