[rollei_list] Re: OT: Don and His Computers
- From: Don Williams <dwilli10@xxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:59:18 -0500
At 12:55 PM 3/29/2012, you wrote:
Don
You must be a smoker. A desktop ought to make almost no noise with
its fans unless they get clogged with dust. I am a pipe smoker and,
so, when I start hearing noise from my computer fans, I know that it
is time for me to open the case and to use canned air to clean it out.
I am not religious about backing up but I do keep a thumb drive with
my vital files on it which I update monthly and, about once a year,
I do a complete system save on an external hard drive.
Marc
Nope, never been a smoker. The fans were loud from the start because
I bought a big Gamers box with 3 fans plus the one for the CPU.
Everyone can skip the rest of this, it's completely non-camera related. . . . .
I surely can tell you about smoke on fans, however. While still
living in La Jolla, one night we came home and I went up to my office
(back in my consulting days) and 2 computers were running. It seemed
to be a little warm and the fans, in both computers, having
temperature-controlled speed, began to really wind up. I began to
smell smoke coming from the heater vent and then saw flames. Now
this would be effectively on the 3rd floor with the main floor below
and the garage below that.
By the time I got back down to the main floor it was clear that the
place was on fire. I got the wife and dogs out and the fire
department arrived with a total of 13 trucks, including the Red
Cross. The front door was locked so I got over the back fence, in
through the doggie door, and through the smoke (no lights at that
point) opened the front door.
I also got the garage door open, trying to save the cars,because the
fire had, by then, fallen from the chase to the front (meaning the
end opposite the doors) of the garage. The heat went up to the top of
the garage, came all the way to the open garage door area, and melted
the plastic on the REAR of my car.
The fire had started in the chaseway that ran from the garage,
housing the main heater and water heater, and went up to the
attic. The cause was a heater exhaust which was leaning enough,
within the chase, (2X4') to start a fire with very dry wood. (Dry
wood can be ignited at very low temperatures as indicated by the ATF
guy who evaluated the situation).
Bottom line-
1. Both cars were semi-saved but so smoke filled that the insurance
company bought them after the dealer spent weeks trying to get the
smoke smell out of them.
2. Both computers were filled with what looked like grey cotton
candy, something from the smoke pulled in before the power went
out. No data was lost from the computers!
3. The firemen were able to restrict the fire to the central core of
the house, and actually moved the grandfather clock away without damaging it.
4. We spent 9 weeks in The Residence Inn, paid for by the insurance
company. We being me and my wife, one daughter, and one large dog.
5. All new carpets, drapes, wall covering, new kitchen with solid oak
cabinets, new appliances, and an improved interior structure.
6. More room overall because the chaseway was eliminated and added to
the end of a closet upstairs, and to a kitchen cabinet downstairs.
Bottom line is that I do have experience with smoke in computer
fans. Beyond that, I used to own a computer systems house and we
maintained about 250 computers at UCSD, before they got their own
small computer systems folks, and we did indeed have to clean fans,
mostly because of dust.
About backup, I have an external Western Digital 1 TB drive that
backs up my complete system every week. I also have access to
on-line backup by Cox, but it takes an incredible amount of time to
just "get ready" so I have removed that process.
My laptop backs up onto an external laptop drive in a case with a
system that powers it from the USB ports.
My new HP is completely silent, making Dragon NaturallySpeaking very
happy and making me very happy.
So, there you have it. More than you ever wanted to know.
DAW
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