anyone shipped a hard drive back for RMA? if so does shipping cost more than 10 bucks? debating if i should just pay seagate or canada post lol

I've sent a drive back to Toshiba iirc

and it was $15 through Canada Post (shipping to Ontario)

so a bit cheaper with seagate at $9.95USD
have to ship one back to seagate for rma
ship another one back to newegg for DOA
ship another one back to wd for rma

GG

It's a sign

IIRC when I had to RMA a Seagate for work they sent us a prepaid label, that was ~2011 though.

lol wow...what were you doing to them? :P

I used to build computers back in the late 90's at a part time job, but lost interest and haven't touched anything since.

Yesterday I picked up some parts from NCIX and thought I could put it together. After installing everything and booting up the system for the first time, I noticed the video card wasn't working. Asked my buddy to check it out and turns out I didn't hook up the power. WTF? Video cards require power now? Damm, haha, how technology has changed.

The goal is to either have something in the living room (tv/bluray/receiver) being able to connect to a NAS (or home server) to access music/movies/pictures with an easy interface for my parents.

Currently I've been downloading shows on my computer and putting it on an external to plug into our bluray player. But this option requires me to transfer the file for them. Plus the bluray interface is horrible when browsing files, it cuts on the title of the file so sometimes they can't tell if its the correct episode.

TLDR: I would like to be able to download shows on to my NAS/server. And have them access either or from the TV.

^ most media players these days can see your files on your home server. I'd just look into something that supports Plex. Even PS3 media server works. I wouldn't go out of my way to get a HTPC esp if they're not tech-savvy.

some lower-end mid range cards are getting efficient enough that they dont require power connectors

I'd definitely recommend a Raspberry Pi/RaspBMC setup then, they're very easy to use and have some nice features ie. if their TV supports CEC (I think that's the name) they can just use the TV remote to control the Pi. They're cheaper than most of the media boxes I've seen as well.

Quick question, I ran CrystalDiskInfo to check on the condition of my drives and it reported a caution status on one of them with the "Reallocated Sector Count" raw value of 2, should this be something I should be worried about or is it normal considering the age of the drive?

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-S...aldiskinfo.jpg

start running frequent backups to be on the safe side. It may be on its way out

so my replacement motherboard (not the one from asus, the one i bought) was also doa :crazy2:

so the guy at ncix got a replacement to install and i suggested that maybe it was my case causing a short

so he looked into it and said he thinks so and used some tape/pads

anyway everythings working now woot

Fractal Designs has some of the best customer service i've ever experienced, it's a shame the QC on their cases aren't great (had other issues with it)

One of my ASUS boards had a situation like your first board. It'd turn on sometimes, and I'd have to flick the power switch on the PSU on and off to get it working. It ended up dying after a week.

Forgot to suggest breadboarding your setup, whoops.

Where abouts do I start? Pick up a raspberry pi first and its like plug and play?

For what it is worth, one of my old 1TB had been running with that exact problem for nearly 3 years before it finally went kaput. When I discovered the problem, I relegated the drive to scrap / temporary storage duties, and it still saw lots of read/write cycles. Near the end of its life, it finally started giving me disk access issues on a random basis. It took another solid 2 months or so before it finally bit the dust.

Obviously, YMMV.

Read through the RaspBMC setup instructions, it's probably one of the easiest installs I've ever done. All you need is a Pi, SD card (don't bother buying new, ask a photographer friend for an old 2GB or so) and an old microUSB phone charger. Follow the RaspBMC instructions to get the card set up, pop it in the Pi with an internet connection and it'll set itself up. Then you just need to point it to a few shared directories on the network and you're good to go. If you keep movies in a separate directory from stuff like TV shows and tell the Pi that it's a movie folder it'll pull media info from the net and let you search by genre, actor, etc etc etc without you having to do anything.

If you get confused by anything or need more specific directions shoot me a PM and I'll help you out as best I can.

First time builder, looking to play CS:GO, Dota 2

This is what I've got so far:
Intel i5 4690k
Crucial M500 240gb SSD
Thermaltake TR2 500W Power Supply
Phenom MicroAtx Case

What kind of motherboard, video card, and ram should I be looking at? I heard I should just get the cheapest ram I can find, is this true? What else am I missing? Thanks in advance!

Motherboard:
A) http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-z97m...3-65-97030.htm
B) http://www.ncix.com/detail/gigabyte-...0-e1-96901.htm

PSU:
A) http://www.ncix.com/detail/xfx-pro-7...78946-1416.htm

Video Card:
A) http://www.ncix.com/detail/msi-gefor...02245-1445.htm

Any RAM will do fine. Get whatever matches your motherboard.

But to be honest, if you're only going to be playing CS:GO and D2, you might as well just grab an Intel G3258 and a used R9 280X for like $150.

Thanks for the quick reply!
Might wanna play Battlefield 4 as well, and that new rainbow 6 game looks tempting

So I had a 4tb hdd that failed, got Seagate to send me a replacement before I sent mine in

and I got my replacement today and they sent me a refurbished 4tb SSHD

the thing is when i plug it in (as an external) i hear a beeping sound and after about 30 beeps my computer detects the drive but only as 2TB

so I choose to Initialize it as GPT but the moment i tell it to i get a CRC error (even if i try a MBR initialize)

did seagate send me a dead drive? or am i doing something wrong?

This kit comes with everything you need including a SD card with Noobs. Noobs has 8 operating systems including Raspbmc. Super easy to setup.

Raspberry Pi Model B+ WiFi Kit | BC Robotics

^ not a bad kit if you need everything in it, otherwise that's a bit overpriced IMO.

you should give them a call about it. They seem pretty nice on the phone when i had to call them. i just got sent a replacement drive and it wasn't a refurb unit either. maybe they ran out of the model in refurb ones.