PC World: Biggest PC Myth.

[andylawcc]

http://tech.msn.com/howto/article_203-2.armx

 

[jadinolf]

Nice read. Thanks.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I'm only surprised about the whole "turning off the computer without properly shutting it down is fine" thing. Sure 99% of the time there won't be any problems. But I have seen MANY a corrupt Oracle Table, Index, Rollback Segment, or entire DB go corrupt because of power outages .. or systems being shut down while writing data. There are many cases where a proper shutdown is EXTREMEMLY important. Why risk that 1% chance for problems if you have an alternative.

I guess most people don't run DBs on their home PCs though.

 

[Zepper]

I get "misreporting Free Space" errors frequently when I shut down improperly. Sometimes "lost clusters" also. Once I fragged my whole C: partiton!... :frown:
.bh.

 

[Varun]

Yup pretty good read. Thanks!

 

[bluemax]

"A magnet powerful enough to disturb the electrons in flash would be powerful enough to suck the iron out of your blood cells,"

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
I'm only surprised about the whole "turning off the computer without properly shutting it down is fine" thing. Sure 99% of the time there won't be any problems. But I have seen MANY a corrupt Oracle Table, Index, Rollback Segment, or entire DB go corrupt because of power outages .. or systems being shut down while writing data. There are many cases where a proper shutdown is EXTREMEMLY important. Why risk that 1% chance for problems if you have an alternative.

I guess most people don't run DBs on their home PCs though.

And wnyone who does it is just an impatient idiot, anyway. You hit the power button. It takes maybe 5 seconds, and it turns off. Maybe as much as 30 for a store-bought bogged-down POS.

 

[AristoV300]

Thx that was a good read.

 

[JBT]

thanks.

 

[txxxx]

Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
I'm only surprised about the whole "turning off the computer without properly shutting it down is fine" thing. Sure 99% of the time there won't be any problems. But I have seen MANY a corrupt Oracle Table, Index, Rollback Segment, or entire DB go corrupt because of power outages .. or systems being shut down while writing data. There are many cases where a proper shutdown is EXTREMEMLY important. Why risk that 1% chance for problems if you have an alternative.

I guess most people don't run DBs on their home PCs though.

Especially with the advent of 8MB caches, and 16MB on the way. Sudden power down's can really take a chunk out of a disk...

 

[slpaulson]

I thought another interesting thing was their debate about turning computers off. They mention processor life being affected, but fans or harddrives would generally wear out long before a processor.

 

[trikster2]

>
If you don't 'stop' a USB device before unplugging it from a PC, you'll screw things up

Not as big of an issue in XP because "write caching" is disabled for usb drives by default. May have been an issue if write caching was not disabled in 2000 winme/98

> Today's hackers want to hijack systems, not destroy them.

BS.. Tell that to everyone who had their IDS nuked by Wity. Sure some hackers want to hijack your system, but a lot of script kiddies out there jus wanna have fun.

> I don't see a direct relationship between the cost of a surge protector and the protection it provides," says Joe Wilson, a senior electrical engineer with Eugene Water and Electric Board, the utility company that serves Eugene, Oregon. "Most surge protectors are based on the same sort of technology, and the response time (how fast they switch on) is similar across the board.

BS again. If you have the $$$$ get a line isolation transformer ($60 to $300) from triplight. It uses significantly different technology than the normal MOV based surge protectors on the market and is tons better against certain power problems.


Regarding grounding staps:

"To be safe, wear a strap, or before you tinker inside a PC"

since when is making yourself the shortest path between an electric device and ground "safe". I wore a strap starting out, but when a great mentor said dump it, just touch the case, I did and have never had a problem.

 

[Sonix7]

a very nice read. Thanks

 

[Trey22]

Newest (August '04) Maximum PC has 11 common computing myths debunked or proven true... for those interested.

 

[Iron Woode]

Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.

love that error message!

 

[magomago]

haha suprised about the battery one, not gonna care now if my cell phone battery isn't fully charged...normally i talk till it dies

 

[simms]

bookmarked

 

[PliotronX]

Originally posted by: cRazYdood
I thought another interesting thing was their debate about turning computers off. They mention processor life being affected, but fans or harddrives would generally wear out long before a processor.

Yes, hard drives have a finite amount of startup cycles and usually that limit is reached before the MTBF IIRC in desktop machines. As with any machine, the mechanical parts are the ones that give out before solid state parts. That is the focus of the debate, I'm surprised they omitted that fact.

 

[DeeKnow]

nice read....

 

[Jeff7]

"The same goes for hard drives. The only magnets powerful enough to scrub data from a drive platter are laboratory degaussers or those used by government agencies to wipe bits off media."

Scrub data? Yeah, I'd say a lab degausser would be needed. Totally screw it up so that a user can't read it, or Windows says "This drive is not formatted" - then a regular magnet can do the job. That's been my experience anyway, messing around with some old junker drives.

"The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates cell phone use in a plane, has a different view: "The concern is that cell phones would conflict with onboard avionics," says Paul Takemoto, the FAA's electronics guru."

My cellphone interferes with a wired answering machine that's on a completely separate line. No idea how it does that.

"We didn't check disk fragmentation because some hard-drive experts told us that defragging today's faster, bigger drives has little to no effect on performance.)"

Huh? Since when? I know NTFS is more resistant to fragmentation.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
"The same goes for hard drives. The only magnets powerful enough to scrub data from a drive platter are laboratory degaussers or those used by government agencies to wipe bits off media."

Scrub data? Yeah, I'd say a lab degausser would be needed. Totally screw it up so that a user can't read it, or Windows says "This drive is not formatted" - then a regular magnet can do the job. That's been my experience anyway, messing around with some old junker drives.

I've never seen anyone able to affect the magnetic recordings of a fixed-disc drive, without actually opening it up. If you've actually done so, I would appreciate a writeup of the experiment. Thanks.

Originally posted by: Jeff7
"The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates cell phone use in a plane, has a different view: "The concern is that cell phones would conflict with onboard avionics," says Paul Takemoto, the FAA's electronics guru."

My cellphone interferes with a wired answering machine that's on a completely separate line. No idea how it does that.

They fry your brain cells too.

Originally posted by: Jeff7
"We didn't check disk fragmentation because some hard-drive experts told us that defragging today's faster, bigger drives has little to no effect on performance.)"

Huh? Since when? I know NTFS is more resistant to fragmentation.

Ironically, NTFS seems to be more affected by fragmentation, than other common filesystems. (Meaning, that when it does fragment, it affects performance more than other filesystems when they get fragmented.)


That article's suggestion to not worry about shutting down PCs cleanly.. whoa. That's a load of irresponsible journalism right there. I mean, they could also say that it's generally not harmful to play in traffic too.. I mean, on a lightly-traveled road, what are the odds that a car is coming? Same analogy to "disk traffic". Stupid MSN. I'll wait until they get the infamous "SYSTEMced not found" error-message, and have to re-install Windows from scratch. Then I'll LMFAO at them.

It's bad enough that the Windows-controller ATX soft-off shutdowns can still hose a machine. :|

This one is a gem of journalism:

"Warning: The newer the microprocessor, the more susceptible it is to power spikes. The greater the number of transistors packed into a chip, the less tolerant it is of excess voltage, says Wilson. If you use an aging computer without a surge protector, it may survive a spike. A newer PC, on the other hand, will fry."

Nevermind that the voltage that the CPU sees, isn't what comes off the AC line, but what is output from the PSU, and those voltage standards haven't changed much in years. If they instead said something about PSUs of today being markedly cheaper (in terms of quality) than in years past, then they might have had a valid and newsworthy point.

Plus, technically, it has nothing to do with the number of transistors, and everything to do with transistor feature-size, which determines the range of nominal voltages (and just so happens to correspond pretty well in terms of order-of-magnitude of transistor counts as well).

Another destructive gem:

"Newer laptops use lithium ion batteries that have no memory, says Isidor Buchmann, the founder of Cadex, a Canadian manufacturer of battery chargers and analyzers. They don't need to be discharged to maintain their life, he says. Lithium ion batteries prefer a partial rather than a full discharge. Nonetheless, every 30 charges or so, you should run them down to zero. This measure isn't to preserve the battery but to recalibrate the fuel gauge--the indicator on the laptop screen that shows how much battery juice and time remain."

Hmm. Everything that I've read, indicates that modern batteries, really hate to be run all the way down to zero, and that can in fact damage them. That seems like a major unnecessary risk, just to calibrate a software feature that may or may not have accuracy issues. In fact, many modern batteries have their own tiny microprocessor that keeps a much more accurate battery charge history/rate.

And this one too:

"We've advised using antistatic wrist straps, but some technicians say they're unnecessary. "I've never worn a strap, our shop's floor is carpeted, and I've never shocked out a machine," says Jake Strouckel, a computer repair tech. "I've even grabbed hard drives and gotten a shock, but nothing happened to the drive." Hold cards by their edges, instead of touching the gold-plated circuits, he says, and you'll be fine."

Uhm... FLIPPING MORONS!

If there is a noticable static discharge, that's BAD. Coomputer components can be damaged by shocks of much lower magnitude than will cause noticable sparks. Remind me never to visit that repair shop, ever. (Well, maybe just to watch them work on a worthless machine, and laugh at them. hehe.)

Again, dangerous advice:

"To be safe, wear a strap, or before you tinker inside a PC, ground yourself by touching the PC's frame with the cord plugged into a grounded outlet or by touching something metal that's grounded, such as a plumbing fixture."

They forgot to mention, UNPLUG the cord, before actually working on the machine. The risk of electrical shock from the AC is very slightly, but technically possible, should something prove defective in the PSU. The real danger is (and I've even done this myself, a few times, forgetfully), is that modern ATX systems supply standby power to the PCI cards, USB ports, and RAM, as long as the cord is plugged in. Changing components while standby power is active can fry them. (Thankfully it didn't happen in the couple of cases that I forgot, but the potential is there.)

 

[StrangerGuy]

I have to say that the "improper PC shutdown is safe" article is complete bullshit.

 

[Coalfax]

Incase anyone wants to read a few more:

Salon Contest Archives

 

[Jeff7]

I've never seen anyone able to affect the magnetic recordings of a fixed-disc drive, without actually opening it up. If you've actually done so, I would appreciate a writeup of the experiment. Thanks.

Ah, without opening it up. I've not tried that.

They fry your brain cells too.

Thing with the EM emissions from cellphones - it's non-ionizing radiation. I've not seen anything concrete that says that these low levels of radiation cause any adverse effects.

Ironically, NTFS seems to be more affected by fragmentation, than other common filesystems. (Meaning, that when it does fragment, it affects performance more than other filesystems when they get fragmented.)

But is it resistant to fragmentation in the first place?

"Newer laptops use lithium ion batteries that have no memory, says Isidor Buchmann, the founder of Cadex, a Canadian manufacturer of battery chargers and analyzers. They don't need to be discharged to maintain their life, he says. Lithium ion batteries prefer a partial rather than a full discharge. Nonetheless, every 30 charges or so, you should run them down to zero. This measure isn't to preserve the battery but to recalibrate the fuel gauge--the indicator on the laptop screen that shows how much battery juice and time remain."

I thought the same thing - as far as I know, lithium ion cells are difficult to charge properly, and running them down to nothing can seriously shorten their life expectancy. Now I will say, the battery level indicator does get messed up easily on my laptop - sometimes it'll go to 0% after about 5 minutes, but the "dead" battery keeps running the laptop for an hour or more.

They forgot to mention, UNPLUG the cord, before actually working on the machine. The risk of electrical shock from the AC is very slightly, but technically possible, should something prove defective in the PSU. The real danger is (and I've even done this myself, a few times, forgetfully), is that modern ATX systems supply standby power to the PCI cards, USB ports, and RAM, as long as the cord is plugged in. Changing components while standby power is active can fry them. (Thankfully it didn't happen in the couple of cases that I forgot, but the potential is there.)

Just thinking here though....there would need to be a few things wrong with the PSU and the wiring - the hot and neutral would likely need to be reversed, and the power switch would have to be busted. I will have a power supply plugged in while I work on a PC, but I also keep it switched off, so that there is no power at all going to the motherboard.
Of course, too many power supplies don't seem to even have a main power switch on them anymore. Cheap manufacturers. :roll:

 

[simms]

I forgot to read this.. bump again.