I have a perfectly good Asus K501 sitting in a drawer. It can't be powered up because the power jack at the back has come loose inside. For a while we could get it to work by wiggling the cord from the power supply but now it's dead.

I've researched online, and apparently this is a fairly common problem with an easy fix: you either resolder the jack onto the circuit board, or replace it.

But you have to disassemble the entire laptop, everything else comes out before you can get to that jack, and I'm not confident I can do that job and have it work when I'm done. I've watched it on youtube, and it doesn't look easy at all. It's cheaper to buy a new laptop than pay somebody to fix that one.

But i just had a thought. The battery pops out, and there is a 9 pin (well, not pin, blade I guess you'd call them) connector where it makes contact. Can I just run the laptop tethered from that connector, using the original power supply? It's rarely on batter power anyway. Can I buy that connector, or maybe individual female blade sockets? How do I find the pinout for the blades? It seems likely to me that 3 are power and ground to the PC, 2 are charging leads for the battery, and the rest maybe monitor state of charge or something.

On 10/08/2014 20:07, Tim R wrote:
I have a perfectly good Asus K501 sitting in a drawer. It can't be powered up because the power jack at the back has come loose inside. For a while we could get it to work by wiggling the cord from the power supply but now it's dead.

I've researched online, and apparently this is a fairly common problem with an easy fix: you either resolder the jack onto the circuit board, or replace it.

But you have to disassemble the entire laptop, everything else comes out before you can get to that jack, and I'm not confident I can do that job and have it work when I'm done. I've watched it on youtube, and it doesn't look easy at all. It's cheaper to buy a new laptop than pay somebody to fix that one.

But i just had a thought. The battery pops out, and there is a 9 pin (well, not pin, blade I guess you'd call them) connector where it makes contact. Can I just run the laptop tethered from that connector, using the original power supply? It's rarely on batter power anyway. Can I buy that connector, or maybe individual female blade sockets? How do I find the pinout for the blades? It seems likely to me that 3 are power and ground to the PC, 2 are charging leads for the battery, and the rest maybe monitor state of charge or something.


Get a felt tip pen and a camera and mark subparts and take pics at all
disassembly stages, and separate containers for subparts and screws,
while following the video.

IF... if, if, if... ALL that's required is resoldering the jack... I can't
imagine why the repair would be horribly expensive.

On 10/08/14 20:07, Tim R wrote:
I have a perfectly good Asus K501 sitting in a drawer. It can't be
powered up because the power jack at the back has come loose inside.
For a while we could get it to work by wiggling the cord from the
power supply but now it's dead.

I've researched online, and apparently this is a fairly common
problem with an easy fix: you either resolder the jack onto the
circuit board, or replace it.

But you have to disassemble the entire laptop, everything else comes
out before you can get to that jack, and I'm not confident I can do
that job and have it work when I'm done. I've watched it on youtube,
and it doesn't look easy at all. It's cheaper to buy a new laptop
than pay somebody to fix that one.


OK do that.

P.S. Can you leave your old laptop carefully bagged by the trash can.
I'd wanna pick it up later...



Seriously, your local district is probably growing with smart kids that
are yearning for a challenge that might teach them something more than
you are willing to give yourself the experience. Maybe two heads better
than one, and yes there is youtube....

Not impressed. I'd expect this of a woman. Man up :-(

--
Adrian C

On Sunday, August 10, 2014 4:40:38 PM UTC-4, William Sommerwerck wrote:
IF... if, if, if... ALL that's required is resoldering the jack... I can't

imagine why the repair would be horribly expensive.

Because it takes 3 hours to get it apart far enough to even see the jack.

3 hours of shop labor at $85 per will run an appreciable fraction of a new laptop

On 8/10/2014 4:10 PM, Tim R wrote:
On Sunday, August 10, 2014 4:40:38 PM UTC-4, William Sommerwerck wrote:
IF... if, if, if... ALL that's required is resoldering the jack... I can't

imagine why the repair would be horribly expensive.

Because it takes 3 hours to get it apart far enough to even see the jack.

3 hours of shop labor at $85 per will run an appreciable fraction of a new laptop


Show us the page or URL of a video, I don't see how it could even take
30 minutes to disassemble. I've had my Toshiba all apart, to fix the
jack, didn't take that long. Yours could be an outlier.
Mikek

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On 8/10/2014 4:10 PM, Tim R wrote:
On Sunday, August 10, 2014 4:40:38 PM UTC-4, William Sommerwerck wrote:
IF... if, if, if... ALL that's required is resoldering the jack... I can't

imagine why the repair would be horribly expensive.

Because it takes 3 hours to get it apart far enough to even see the jack.

3 hours of shop labor at $85 per will run an appreciable fraction of a new laptop


I just watched this video, disassembly is pretty involved, but I think
at 15:11 he pulls the board with the power connector.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtkEm7XXNjo

Mikek


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I'll bet you any shop will charge $200 just to look at it.

Okay, I have another way to ask the question.

Suppose I man up and take the darned thing apart. It's been on my list of projects for a while, but it's been low on the list because of the obvious frustration factor. I hate plumbing but at least I can cut a hole in the wall and replace drywall later if I really have to.

And suppose it doesn't work. I get it all back together, but something's fried in the AC power circuit in the process

It would be nice to have a backup plan, run some DC in through the battery connector. It's my daughter's old school laptop, and I seem to remember the battery wasn't holding much charge anyway.

It probably isn't as simple as just putting jolts on V and Gnd, right? The laptop probably has some circuitry to check battery state before turning on?

I've done a bunch of googling and not found anyone who's succeeded at powering the laptop through the battery port. (but also a bunch of people who tried repairing the jack and couldn't get it out without ruining the board)

On 8/10/2014 4:41 PM, Tim R wrote:
I'll bet you any shop will charge $200 just to look at it.

Okay, I have another way to ask the question.

Suppose I man up and take the darned thing apart. It's been on my list of projects for a while, but it's been low on the list because of the obvious frustration factor. I hate plumbing but at least I can cut a hole in the wall and replace drywall later if I really have to.

And suppose it doesn't work. I get it all back together, but something's fried in the AC power circuit in the process

It would be nice to have a backup plan, run some DC in through the battery connector. It's my daughter's old school laptop, and I seem to remember the battery wasn't holding much charge anyway.

It probably isn't as simple as just putting jolts on V and Gnd, right? The laptop probably has some circuitry to check battery state before turning on?

I've done a bunch of googling and not found anyone who's succeeded at powering the laptop through the battery port. (but also a bunch of people who tried repairing the jack and couldn't get it out without ruining the board)


I don't know. The batteries have several pins, I'm not sure what they
all do. If I found two pins that measured 12.6 volts between them, and
ONLY TWO PINS, I would feel comfortable feeding 12.6 volts into the
mates on the laptop. I'm not confident you will only find only two pins
on the battery that have voltage.
If I had it and the battery was not good, I'd tear it apart and see
what pins were the correct ones. Might even be able to do that non
destructively.
Good Luck, Mikek

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Batteries are pretty smart, they have a printed circuit board inside; I don't know exactly what it does. But they have some kind of overcharge protection, and they also communicate with the PC, because the PC knows the state of charge and does some power management. So more pins than just voltage are probably needed.

On Sun, 10 Aug 2014 14:10:02 -0700 (PDT), Tim R
wrote:

On Sunday, August 10, 2014 4:40:38 PM UTC-4, William Sommerwerck wrote:
IF... if, if, if... ALL that's required is resoldering the jack... I can't
imagine why the repair would be horribly expensive.

Because it takes 3 hours to get it apart far enough to even see the jack.
3 hours of shop labor at $85 per will run an appreciable fraction of a new laptop

I do power jack repairs and replacements quite regularly. For
example:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/HP-laptop/

The time it takes is usually a function of how much damage was done to
the PCB, whether I have the correct jack in stock, and whether I need
to remove the motherboard to replace the jack. For power jacks with
connectorized pigtails (some HP and Compaq), I can be in and out in
about 45 minutes. For laptops with a zillion screws securing the
motherboard, about 2 hrs. Shop rate is $75/hr and I typically quote
$80 to $160 for the job, which includes cleaning out the crud, fan
lube, keyboard cleaning, and quicky charger/charging test.
Incidentally, I find a substantial number of bad power supply cords
and connectors, so don't assume that it's the jack without first
trying a different power supply.

Hint: Take a photo of the PCB, print it, put it over a sheet of
styrofoam, and shove the screws through the page in their original
locations. That way, you don't forget to reinstall any screws or put
the wrong length screw in the wrong hole.

As for "an appreciable fraction of a new laptop", I'm curious as to
what percentage of the cost of a new laptop you would be willing to
pay for a repair?

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Sunday, August 10, 2014 11:29:17 PM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Hint: Take a photo of the PCB, print it, put it over a sheet of

styrofoam, and shove the screws through the page in their original

locations. That way, you don't forget to reinstall any screws or put

the wrong length screw in the wrong hole.



As for "an appreciable fraction of a new laptop", I'm curious as to

what percentage of the cost of a new laptop you would be willing to

pay for a repair?



Thanks, very helpful. I've been trying to think of a good way to remember where the screws go. Neat trick.

The cost is a good question. I'm still using a laptop (not this one!) I paid $1,000 for ten years ago. It has a wonky fan and I'm backing up files waiting for it to die. The local shop quoted me $200 to fix it, which is 20% of the purchase price, but a new laptop that is faster and better in every way would run me $300, or a refurb would be $179.

I think the break point is not a percentage but an amount. $80 I would pay, $100 is a maybe, $120 is definitely no.

Having done a fair number of these repairs, I can say that the majority of the time spent is to dis-assemble and re-assemble the unit. I have only had to replace a few connectors. In most cases, the solder joints have failed because of mechanical abuse NOT because of poor solder. The jacks often don't have sufficient support to prevent flexing of the solder joint. My own Toshiba unit suffered from a similar fate. A little expoxy around the connector to support it better and I have not had a recurrance in 4 years.

Use the advise above to keep track of the dis-assembly process and you shouldbe able to fix this yourself.

Dan

On Mon, 11 Aug 2014, wrote:

Having done a fair number of these repairs, I can say that the majority
of the time spent is to dis-assemble and re-assemble the unit. I have
only had to replace a few connectors. In most cases, the solder joints
have failed because of mechanical abuse NOT because of poor solder.
The jacks often don't have sufficient support to prevent flexing of the
solder joint. My own Toshiba unit suffered from a similar fate. A
little expoxy around the connector to support it better and I have not
had a recurrance in 4 years.

I'm not sure it's "mechanical abuse" so much as a stress point. Any
connector that gets used regularly is likely to show problems. And it is
because the solder is most of what's holding the connector in place. Add
that epoxy, it will be stronger afterwards.

Michael

Use the advise above to keep track of the dis-assembly process and you
shouldbe able to fix this yourself.

Dan

On Monday, August 11, 2014 9:55:00 AM UTC-4, Michael Black wrote:
I'm not sure it's "mechanical abuse" so much as a stress point. Any

connector that gets used regularly is likely to show problems. And it is

because the solder is most of what's holding the connector in place. Add

that epoxy, it will be stronger afterwards.



Michael

I would call that stress point a design defect. Apple had a good idea with the magnetic connection.

On Mon, 11 Aug 2014 06:55:23 -0700 (PDT), Tim R
wrote:

On Monday, August 11, 2014 9:55:00 AM UTC-4, Michael Black wrote:
I'm not sure it's "mechanical abuse" so much as a stress point. Any

connector that gets used regularly is likely to show problems. And it is

because the solder is most of what's holding the connector in place. Add

that epoxy, it will be stronger afterwards.



Michael

I would call that stress point a design defect. Apple had a good idea with the magnetic connection.

As others have said, don't assume the problem is the jack. I had a
Sony laptop that had the same symptom - giggling it made it work. It
turned out to the wires in the cable right near the plug. I soldered
a new plug on and solved the problem for a year. It then did it again
so I shortened the wire slightly and resoldered the connections. Fixed
for another year. The wires in the cable were very brittle. Try a
friend's power supply before tearing anything apart. Note that this
was my wife's laptop. It never left the house and she is not the kind
of person to abuse electronics.

On Monday, August 11, 2014 10:41:31 AM UTC-4, Pat wrote:
As others have said, don't assume the problem is the jack. I had a

Sony laptop that had the same symptom - giggling it made it work. It

turned out to the wires in the cable right near the plug. I soldered

I think that the diagnosis is correct. A second known good cable was tried, and the center pin in the jack wiggles slightly when pushed. I think that I may also have tried the technical department at Best Buy or Staples.

On Monday, August 11, 2014 11:55:57 AM UTC-4, Tim R wrote:
On Monday, August 11, 2014 10:41:31 AM UTC-4, Pat wrote:

As others have said, don't assume the problem is the jack. I had a



Sony laptop that had the same symptom - giggling it made it work. It



turned out to the wires in the cable right near the plug. I soldered



I think that the diagnosis is correct. A second known good cable was tried, and the center pin in the jack wiggles slightly when pushed. I think that I may also have tried the technical department at Best Buy or Staples.

Oh. I had a second laptop that was assumed to have the same problem. I didn't have an extra power supply to try, so I took it in to Staples. They found a power supply that would fit and I was back in business.

Given that the unit is unusable -- and those, technically, junk -- it seems
that the time spent to fix it would be worth the trouble. If you fail, you
haven't really lost anything -- except your time.

I think highly of ASUS products. (My last two computers used ASUS mobos.) That
alone would be justification for trying to fix it.

Here's a possibly useful suggestion... Find an undisturbed place to work on
the machine. Then, do a little bit at a time -- no more than perhaps ten
minutes. When you feel tired or irritated, stop and come back the next day.

I had a Sony laptop that had the same symptom --
giggling it made it work.

What did you use? "Captain Billy's Whiz-Bang"?

On Mon, 11 Aug 2014 06:02:40 -0700 (PDT), Tim R
wrote:

On Sunday, August 10, 2014 11:29:17 PM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
As for "an appreciable fraction of a new laptop", I'm curious as to
what percentage of the cost of a new laptop you would be willing to
pay for a repair?

The cost is a good question. I'm still using a laptop (not this one!)
I paid $1,000 for ten years ago. It has a wonky fan and I'm backing
up files waiting for it to die.

Until just recently, I was running a Xenix server that's been running
since about 1993. I got tired of waiting for it to die, so I pulled
the plug.

The local shop quoted me $200 to fix it, which is 20% of the purchase
price, but a new laptop that is faster and better in every way would
run me $300, or a refurb would be $179.

Thanks. 20% of the purchase price is not what I'm looking for. I'm
curious about the repair cost percentage of the replacement price.
$200 / $300 = 67%
which is far too expensive. If you can find a $300 replacement
laptop, I would certainly replace instead of repair.

However, if you're looking for a Windoze 8.1 machine, I don't believe
you can buy anything decent (i.e. i3 CPU or better) for less than
$400. If you want a screen that you can see, which means 1920x1080, I
would guess about $500 minimum. Since laptops don't come with built
in CD/DVD drives any more, add another $40. (Add about $150 for MS
Office 2013 Home and Student). Ignoring MS Office, taxes, Geek Squad,
time to reinstall, and some extras, my guess is a shiny new Win 8.1
laptop will set you back about $450 minimum.
$200 / $450 = 44%
So, what percentage of the REPLACEMENT cost would you be willing to
repair the laptop rather than replace it?

I think the break point is not a percentage but an amount. $80 I
would pay, $100 is a maybe, $120 is definitely no.

$80 / $450 = 18%
$100 / $450 = 22%
$120 / $450 = 27%
I usually use 25% as my fix/replace break point, which puts the jack
replacement as marginal. I just wanted to confirm my pricing. The
$75/hr shop rate allegedly includes any warranty and failure to fix
costs. At 25%, I guess the decision should be by whether the laptop
is worth fixing. If it's a single core CPU or older, forget it. If
it's a dual core or later, then it might be a worthwhile repair.

Incidentally, for the laptop tightwads, the $130 laptop:
http://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-acer-116-chromebook-with-14ghz-dual-core-processor
I have several and they run Ubuntu 12.04LTS quite fast and fairly
nicely.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Tuesday, August 12, 2014 11:41:55 AM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Incidentally, for the laptop tightwads, the $130 laptop:

http://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-acer-116-chromebook-with-14ghz-dual-core-processor

I have several and they run Ubuntu 12.04LTS quite fast and fairly

nicely.

Interesting. No conventional hard drive, just a 16G solid state. Do you find that a limitation? or just run an external? Oh wait, I just googled chromebook and realized most of the aps are in the cloud.

On Tue, 12 Aug 2014 13:07:43 -0700 (PDT), Tim R
wrote:

On Tuesday, August 12, 2014 11:41:55 AM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Incidentally, for the laptop tightwads, the $130 laptop:

http://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-acer-116-chromebook-with-14ghz-dual-core-processor

I have several and they run Ubuntu 12.04LTS quite fast and fairly

nicely.

Interesting. No conventional hard drive, just a 16G solid state.

Most of my stuff is now in the (Google) cloud or one of half a dozen
cloud servers that I'm having difficulty tracking. Locally, its on
either a flash drive, USB 3,0 hard disk, NAS box, or various customer
servers. I don't need to carry everything I own with me.

I gave a talk on the install to the local Linux abuser group:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/FLUG-talk-2014-07-26/
It's just my noted and totally disorganized. Web page to follow if I
can find the time.

Do you find that a limitation? or just run an external?

The SSD is easily upgradeable:
http://www.androidcentral.com/how-upgrade-ssd-your-acer-c720-chromebook

With Ubuntu 12.04LTS 32 bit loaded, the "Disks" program shows a 14GB
partition (after subtracting 2.1 GB for the swap, and 2.1 GB for
something else I left on the drive. Out of the 14GB, I have about 7GB
free (after substracting out several 1GB movies). Yeah, a bit tight
after loading LibreOffice and a bunch of big CAD programs.

The 2GB RAM is amazing. I monitor the swap with "System Monitor". I
have to run a mess of programs before it even begins to swap. With a
SSD, I hardly notice any slowdown. 4GB would be better so that I can
run 64bit Ubuntu, but 2GB is adequate, especially at the price.

What impressed me most is how fast everything runs compared to my
assortment of other laptops. About 20 seconds to boot from a cold
start including the login and loading a bunch of drivers I added.
About 5 seconds to shutdown.

Oh wait, I just googled chromebook and realized most of the aps are
in the cloud.

I tried running ChromeOS for a while and learned to hate it. I
assumed that I could run Android apps, like on my Android tablet and
phone. Nope. ChromeOS is a differenet animal with very few useful
apps. There are now laptops that run Android, but I don't want to pay
the price. Besides, I like Linux better.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Tue, 12 Aug 2014 15:10:51 -0700, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Tue, 12 Aug 2014 13:07:43 -0700 (PDT), Tim R
wrote:

On Tuesday, August 12, 2014 11:41:55 AM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Incidentally, for the laptop tightwads, the $130 laptop:

http://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-acer-116-chromebook-with-14ghz-dual-core-processor

I have several and they run Ubuntu 12.04LTS quite fast and fairly

nicely.

Interesting. No conventional hard drive, just a 16G solid state.

Most of my stuff is now in the (Google) cloud or one of half a dozen
cloud servers that I'm having difficulty tracking. Locally, its on
either a flash drive, USB 3,0 hard disk, NAS box, or various customer
servers. I don't need to carry everything I own with me.

I gave a talk on the install to the local Linux abuser group:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/FLUG-talk-2014-07-26/
It's just my noted and totally disorganized. Web page to follow if I
can find the time.

Do you find that a limitation? or just run an external?

The SSD is easily upgradeable:
http://www.androidcentral.com/how-upgrade-ssd-your-acer-c720-chromebook

With Ubuntu 12.04LTS 32 bit loaded, the "Disks" program shows a 14GB
partition (after subtracting 2.1 GB for the swap, and 2.1 GB for
something else I left on the drive. Out of the 14GB, I have about 7GB
free (after substracting out several 1GB movies). Yeah, a bit tight
after loading LibreOffice and a bunch of big CAD programs.

The 2GB RAM is amazing. I monitor the swap with "System Monitor". I
have to run a mess of programs before it even begins to swap. With a
SSD, I hardly notice any slowdown. 4GB would be better so that I can
run 64bit Ubuntu, but 2GB is adequate, especially at the price.

What impressed me most is how fast everything runs compared to my
assortment of other laptops. About 20 seconds to boot from a cold
start including the login and loading a bunch of drivers I added.
About 5 seconds to shutdown.

Oh wait, I just googled chromebook and realized most of the aps are
in the cloud.

I tried running ChromeOS for a while and learned to hate it. I
assumed that I could run Android apps, like on my Android tablet and
phone. Nope. ChromeOS is a differenet animal with very few useful
apps. There are now laptops that run Android, but I don't want to pay
the price. Besides, I like Linux better.
I have an older Asus laptop that was made to do graphics. The hard
drive it came with died so I put in an SSD and the 20 second boot time
from a cold start has been my experience too. However, I have been
told by some of my computer guru friends that the SSD will have a
shorter life than a regular hard drive because of the physics of the
way stuff is stored. There ways to minimize rewrites and so on to
lengthen the life of the drive and my son has implemented some of
these but I don't really know anything about it. I just love how much
faster the computer is now.
Eric

wrote in message ...

However, I have been told by some of my computer guru friends
that the SSD will have a shorter life than a regular hard drive...

Unlike HDs (which can last a week or several decades), SSDs have a known
finite lifespan. It has to do with trapped charge that eventually makes it
impossible to erase and rewrite.

You don't want to use an SSD on a system where huge files are constantly being
written and rewritten. You should install the largest drive you can afford, as
it will sustain more write cycles.

When I bought a new computer two years ago, I used the SSD solely for the
operating system and files that didn't change often. (Mail, temp files,
indexing, etc, were assigned to a large hard drive.)

On Wed, 13 Aug 2014 06:19:09 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

wrote in message ...

However, I have been told by some of my computer guru friends
that the SSD will have a shorter life than a regular hard drive...

Unlike HDs (which can last a week or several decades), SSDs have a known
finite lifespan.

Not a "known" lifetime. More like a bell curve of estimated lifetimes
based on uncorrectable errors. If it worries you, run the
manufactories diagnostic software to track the errors. For example
Intel Toolbox and Samsung Magician:
http://www.intel.com/design/flash/nand/managessd.htm
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/samsungssd/downloads.html
I deal with about 8 machines running Intel and Samsung SSD drives. In
about the last 6-12 months, no new errors. With a failure rate of
about 1.5% per year (as compared to 5% for rotating HD storage), I
don't expect to see too many failures with such a small sample.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/30/are-ssds-reliable/
Failure rate by brand:
http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/108284-huge-list-of-failure-rates-on-pc-components-french-but-i-translated-nearly-everything/
(Search for "SSD").

It has to do with trapped charge that eventually makes it
impossible to erase and rewrite.

Nice article comparing reliability and failure modes of rotating
storage and SSD:
http://www.idema.org/wp-content/downloads/1879.pdf

You don't want to use an SSD on a system where huge files are constantly being
written and rewritten. You should install the largest drive you can afford, as
it will sustain more write cycles.

Probably good advice. None of my machines or my customers machine or
even their servers fit that description. In my case, it's a small
number of fairly small files that written, erased, and copied
constantly. Various filesystems that are designed to even out
read/write cycles throught different cells on the SSD help quite a
bit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_systems#File_systems_optimized_for_fl ash_memory.2C_solid_state_media
I use YAFFS for weather stations running on CF cards.

When I bought a new computer two years ago, I used the SSD solely for the
operating system and files that didn't change often. (Mail, temp files,
indexing, etc, were assigned to a large hard drive.)

I've had more problems with corruption due to unplanned power failures
than anything else. Fortunately, it's repairable by running an erase
cycle (takes forever), and restoring from an image backup.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 13 Aug 2014 06:19:09 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

Unlike HDs (which can last a week or several decades), SSDs have
a known finite lifespan.

Not a "known" lifetime. More like a bell curve of estimated lifetimes
based on uncorrectable errors.

I have to disagree. If a cell is good, on average, for 6000 write cycles, one
can easily compute how much data can be written to the drive before it becomes
useless.

Those unfamiliar with SSDs need to know that such drives -- including flash
drives -- include "leveling software" that spreads writes across the entire
disk. If a cell is good for 6000 writes, than a 256GB drive can tolerate
1536TB of data being written to it before becoming useless. (Of course, it can
still be read.)

A major problem with SSDs is that, to make them cheaper (for a given
capacity), the cells have to get smaller. And smaller cells won't tolerate as
many write cycles.

My boot drive is a 256GB SSD. Only about 25% of it is used, and most of the
files are OS files that aren't often updated or changed. Barring "some other"
disaster, I expect it to last 20 years or more.

When subjected to inappropriately heavy use, SSDs can fail rapidly.


I've had more problems with corruption due to unplanned power failures
than anything else.

Don't you have some sort of power backup?

While we're on it... I sometimes hear my SPS "buzzing" for no obvious reason.
The computer then often goes into Sleep mode, also for no obvious reason.

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Failure rate by brand:
http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/108284-huge-list-of-failure-rates-on-pc-components-french-but-i-translated-nearly-everything/
(Search for "SSD").

That's an interesting article. Thanks for posting it!

Hmm... these two 500 GB Seagates have been spinning for about 6 years
now. (24/7, RAID-1.) Perhaps replacement disks would be a good idea...

Matt Roberds

Update, being typed on the broken laptop.

I have the week off and decided to take the ten minutes a day working on it advice given earlier. I cleaned off the table and picked up the basement room and got mentally ready.

But first, I took it in to the geek squad dept at the local stationary store and asked them to check it one more time. Yeah, that jack looks loose, it shouldn't move like that, let me plug it in with your power supply - nothing - let me plug it in with the store's power supply - hmmm, powers up fine. I bought a universal power supply and am back in operation.

"Tim R" wrote in message
...

I have the week off and decided to take the ten minutes a day
working on it advice given earlier. I cleaned off the table and
picked up the basement room and got mentally ready.

But first, I took it in to the geek squad dept at the local stationery
store and asked them to check it one more time. Yeah, that jack
looks loose, it shouldn't move like that, let me plug it in with your
power supply -- nothing -- let me plug it in with the store's power
supply - hmmm, powers up fine. I bought a universal power supply
and am back in operation.

Life Is Not Fair. Especially when all the symptoms point to one and only one
cause -- which isn't it.

On Fri, 15 Aug 2014 04:25:16 +0000 (UTC), wrote:

Hmm... these two 500 GB Seagates have been spinning for about 6 years
now. (24/7, RAID-1.) Perhaps replacement disks would be a good idea...

I've come to the anecdotal conclusion that it's not how many hours you
run the drive, but how many times you turn it on and off. I have a
1995's vintage Conner Peripherals CFA1080A SCSI drive running in my
Xenix server. The box has been up since about 1989, but various parts
and pieces have been replaced along the way. The drive was installed
in 1996 and has been running flawlessly for the last 18 years.

I get somewhat less lifetime with my server drives and RAID NAS boxes.
Leave the drives spinning and they seem to last nearly forever. Run
them in start-stop mode, and they die quickly.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
...

I've come to the anecdotal conclusion that it's not how many hours
you run the drive, but how many times you turn it on and off.

This seems to be the consensus. My previous computer was rarely turned off,
and ran 11 years with no problems.

With my current machine, I switch it to Sleep most nights, so the drives are
not being shut down more than about 300 times a year.