Topic: Playstation 3

[Dr. Hasslein]

What annoys me are the people who bitch about their PS3 or Xbox overheating, which they have wedged between two other pieces of AV equipment in a tiny unit with cables and shit everywhere all hooked up to one power point. And they can't figure out what it happened.

[Achim]

I was told my PS3 had broken due to some motherboard failure. Warranty had of course expired, but they gave me a discount for getting a Slim rather than having the motherboard replaced.

[Critter]

I will probably end up with a slim eventually when my PS3 will break, which I'm sure it inevitably will. That just seems to be how things go with me and consoles. I do get a few good years out of each one though.

[hal9g]

I was told my PS3 had broken due to some motherboard failure. Warranty had of course expired, but they gave me a discount for getting a Slim rather than having the motherboard replaced.

You seem to be having more than your share of "technology" issues!   

[MEJHarrison]

I was told my PS3 had broken due to some motherboard failure. Warranty had of course expired, but they gave me a discount for getting a Slim rather than having the motherboard replaced.

Those bastards didn't give me an option! Mine was replaced with the exact same model I used to have. 

[MEJHarrison]

I was told my PS3 had broken due to some motherboard failure. Warranty had of course expired, but they gave me a discount for getting a Slim rather than having the motherboard replaced.

You seem to be having more than your share of "technology" issues!   

When I lost my PS3 earlier this year I also lost the data drive on my main PC and the hard drive on my wife's laptop.  All in the same month.  And none of the hard drives were backed up.  A situation that has since been remedied. 

[hal9g]

I was told my PS3 had broken due to some motherboard failure. Warranty had of course expired, but they gave me a discount for getting a Slim rather than having the motherboard replaced.

You seem to be having more than your share of "technology" issues!   

When I lost my PS3 earlier this year I also lost the data drive on my main PC and the hard drive on my wife's laptop.  All in the same month.  And none of the hard drives were backed up.  A situation that has since been remedied. 

I've just spent a week recovering from a hard drive crash on my PC.  I was using Norton 360 to backup weekly to an external hard drive, only to find out that Norton does not back up .exe files!     So I lost all of my downloaded programs and have been "negotiating" with a number of software manufacturers to get copies of the setup files I need.  Fortunately, the spreadsheet that I maintain all registration keys and serial numbers was recovered and I always save all correspondence related to online purchases of software.

My PC originally came with 2 250GB drives using RAID0, for a total of 500GB.  I did not realize it, but this offers ZERO redundancy/recovery capabilities.  When one of the drives died, I lost everything on both.

I replaced those drives with 2 1.5TB drives and set them up with RAID1, giving me 1.5TB with full redundancy.  If one fails, I can keep running on the other 'til I get a replacement.  I'm using the one good 250GB drive as additional storage for additional backup safety.

It's been a very long week!

[Najemikon]

Yes, RAID 0 is striping which splits the data across the array to improve speed and balance performance. Sorry to say, it's largely useless in desktops and you see very little if any benefit. I once built a dedicated PC with a gaming drive from a RAID 0 array and it was a waste of time.

RAID 1 is mirrored and much better, however, again I have moved on from using RAID at all. There is no better backup than offline and I decided that disk failures were rare and when it does happen, I have all my installs and data backed up so it's an excuse to reinstall Windows anyway and clear out the crap.

I now have a NAS drive and run a scheduled backup to back data up both ways. Much easier.

One quick thing you could do to help with offline stuff is setup cloud backup with someone. Even Windows Live Messenger gives you 25gb free: http://www.windowslive.co.uk/skydrive

I've been meaning to set it up myself. PC > NAS for bulk and basic hardware protection; NAS has two mirrored drives; NAS > Cloud for absolutely essential, house-could-burn-down protection. And requires no admin day-to-day...

[hal9g]

Yes, RAID 0 is striping which splits the data across the array to improve speed and balance performance. Sorry to say, it's largely useless in desktops and you see very little if any benefit. I once built a dedicated PC with a gaming drive from a RAID 0 array and it was a waste of time.

RAID 1 is mirrored and much better, however, again I have moved on from using RAID at all. There is no better backup than offline and I decided that disk failures were rare and when it does happen, I have all my installs and data backed up so it's an excuse to reinstall Windows anyway and clear out the crap.

I now have a NAS drive and run a scheduled backup to back data up both ways. Much easier.

One quick thing you could do to help with offline stuff is setup cloud backup with someone. Even Windows Live Messenger gives you 25gb free: http://www.windowslive.co.uk/skydrive

I've been meaning to set it up myself. PC > NAS for bulk and basic hardware protection; NAS has two mirrored drives; NAS > Cloud for absolutely essential, house-could-burn-down protection. And requires no admin day-to-day...

I figured out how to configure Norton to back up my .exe/zip files that I've downloaded, so I'm feeling it bit better now with two levels of redundancy (mirrored drives and back-up), but you are absolutely right, I really need to backup some stuff (Quicken data, etc) off-site for total security.  I just don't like the idea of putting my financial data out in the cloud!  I could also back it up at Quicken.  I've got to give that some thought and get over my paranoia!   

[Najemikon]

I know what you mean. I used to absolutely dead against cloud anything. There was a time Microsoft said you wouldn't install applications locally and my instinct was, no way am I dealing with private files across a remote connection.

But I've softened. The very nature of how cloud works and the scale it's on means it's safe. Someone would have to target you and your details specifically, plus know what they were looking for to get anything worth looking at.

I'd be happy to upload anything now to a secure web based system. And you can help yourself. Take your Excel document, password protect and encrypt it, rename it "printerdriver_v3.dll" or something very ordinary, bury in another folder of random crap, zip the whole folder and password protect that, then upload it and don't, for goodness sake, forget what you did!

[hal9g]

snip...

 Take your Excel document, password protect and encrypt it, rename it "printerdriver_v3.dll" or something very ordinary, bury in another folder of random crap, zip the whole folder and password protect that, then upload it and don't, for goodness sake, forget what you did!

There's the rub, eh?  At my age, I can't remember what I did yesterday!   

[Rogmeister]

Well, I hooked up my PS3 and turned it on for the first time today...I played a few minutes of Red Dead Redemption    It looks pretty good!  I would have played longer but my cat brushed against the system and the system's cord came out of it's outlet.  Darn that short power cord!  It's partly the fault of a short cord, partly the fault the cord's plug isn't a very tight fault in the outlet...partly my cat's fault?  Are you mad?!  It's never the cat's fault!    I do need to find a permanent spot for the PS3.  Maybe tomorrow I will find a new permanent spot for the system...

[Critter]

Ha! Seems like someone in your house wants your attention on themselves Roger, instead of the PS3.

[Dr. Hasslein]

I just read some interesting news about Uncharted 3. The Nathan Drake character won't be returned this time. Instead you'll be playing as Grimace from McDonalds.

[Critter]

I just read some interesting news about Uncharted 3. The Nathan Drake character won't be returned this time. Instead you'll be playing as Grimace from McDonalds.