stevie_b

I've never done it, but I would advise that you follow your instinct and do it.

Put it up for £10k and see what happens.

Will it copy automagically? The answer is maybe. Hence I strongly recommend you take a backup of the data first. Reading the forums for my NAS box (I know you're setting it up inside your PC, but the principle still applies), it's got a reputation of toasting the data when you replace one of the two drives with a fresh one. It really depends on the implementation of the RAID, and it's not predictable enough to say without exact details. Your C: SSD should be untouched, as long as you take care. But I suppose it also depends on the RAID options given to you in the BIOS. I would think it would ask which 2 disks to RAID together. This point would be a bad time to be distracted by anything.

I like the entrepreneurial thinking. Some questions: - Would the interface allow the buyer to see all of the For Sale threads in one go, or would they have to use the interface to skip between For Sale sections of multiple (dozens/hundereds) of forums? Different forums will present their For Sale threads in different ways, with different-titled sections. - Would the buyer need to have an account on the forums? Some forums require you to log in before letting you browse their threads. - Could it be converted to auction format? Forums almost always have non-auction For sale sections. Auctions are good because 1) the seller knows he'll almost always shift his stuff if he starts at a low starting price, and 2) buyers tend to get a better deal than with non-auction formats: a lot of people over-estimate the value of what they're selling. - Which forums would be members? It could be dominated by things that people have specific interests in (cars is an obvious example for us). Although most things I could think of just now could well have several forums associated with them, so this wouldn't be a problem if a decent cross-section is obtained.

Still for sale: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HOVIS-BREAD-WARBURTONS-registration-Number-plate-/271809448345? Bizarrely, having had no interest at £5k for 4 or 5 auctions, the seller has bumped the starting bid up to £5500. Maybe he thinks people have been put off because it's simply too cheap?

I think a lot of NAS enclosures run a version of Linux, and they probably use ext2/3/4 to format their disks. E.g. I've got a fairly old DLink 2-bay NAS, which I've hacked. That runs Linux, and the disks are formatted with ext2, so if anything happened to the DLink I reckon I could connect them to any Linux installation and read them, or use something like ext2fsd to read them in Windows.

I think Windows 7 already comes with generic drivers to run the majority of common hardware. Jamesy, it sounds like you don't have a recent backup of the data on your PC. It's a pain to begin with, but this is a good opportunity to fix that and then get into the habit of taking a regular backup going forward. http://michaelsuess.net/it/yesterday-backup-song/

What's the exact make/model of the PC? Be as specific as you can. If it's a Dell, what's the service tag (all Dells have one)? http://www.dell.com/support/contents/us/en/04/article/Product-Support/Self-support-Knowledgebase/locate-service-tag/Desktops I could google it for you when I have a bit of time.

Go 64-bit if your computer hardware supports it. Being an XP-era PC, it's quite possible that your computer doesn't fully support 64-bit. 32-bit is like the failsafe option.

Correct

I'll add my 2p worth: some of my views are the same as others. If it were me I'd set up a 2-drive RAID1 array, with sepearate backup elsewhere. If I want to access this array from multiple PCs, I'd buy a 2-bay NAS RAID device: Synology and QNAP are good makes. If the RAID will only be used with a single desktop PC and I wanted to keep things simple, I'd buy a DAS (like a NAS, but connects to the computer with USB instead of connecting to your LAN via ethernet). I'd put a pair of identical-model Western Digital 5400rpm SATA drives into the NAS/DAS. I think SATA and SAS connections are a different shape, which means you wouldn't be able to put SAS drives into a SATA NAS/DAS enclosure. Not sure though, best check before taking this as gospel. I don't see why you couldn't set up a 2-disk RAID array inside the PC case. It would cut down on clutter. You'd probably need a RAID controller card, something like this: http://www.ebuyer.com/340389-adaptec-raid-6805e-storage-controller-raid-8-channel-sata-600-2270900-r (punchy price, but it supports SAS) http://www.ebuyer.com/661697-3-port-pci-express-2-0-sata-iii-6-gbps-raid-controller-card-pexmsata343 (better price, no SAS - probably the sort of thing I'd buy) Having your OS on a SSD is irrelevent to whether you can set up an internal RAID or not. The RAID controller does all the clever RAID management stuff, all that the rest of the computer sees is a drive with whatever the equivalent storage is. For example, if you use 2x 1TB drives in RAID1, the storage capacity of the RAID will be 1TB. Your computer will see a 1TB drive. Hope that hasn't confused you any further.

There seems to have been a knee-jerk reaction in response to buyers getting tucked up on ebay by shady sellers. That may have been a problem 5-10 years ago, but they've lurched the other way: e.g. can't leave negative feedback for buyers. All the rights and benefits seem to be on the buyer's side. I hear you. That rule's never made any sense to me. Unless you start an auction at a price that's similar to the buy-it-now, the buy-it-now fee is usually wasted money. Ebay span off paypal late last year: they're completely separate companies now AFAIK. I didn't think that worked: no matter what the payment method (cash, cheque, paypal, luncheon vouchers), ebay's fees will still be taken from your paypal account (which as a seller, I think you're obliged to have). A rival to ebay is something I've thought about many many times. The problem is not the cost of developing the website or even the considerable infrastructure (the infrastructure could start relatively modest, and be upgraded as the site grows in popularity and traffic). The problem is the dominant position of the incumbent. Auction sites need to be popular to tempt people to list their goods on there. Buyers only look at websites that have plenty of goods for sale, thereby making these sites popular. It's a vicious circle. Warren Buffet calls it a "moat" around the business, a barrier against competitors setting up and being successful. Ebay's got a seriously big moat. There are already other auction sites: how many of you have listed something on eBid recently? Their fees are way lower than ebay's. I've just done a quick search for internal hard drives on both sites: eBid has 34 listed, ebay has 367,993 (I limited the ebay listings to UK only to make it fair). Therein lies the problem. Someone shopping for a hard disk is unlikely to go to eBid. Therefore sellers are unlikely to list their drives on eBid, and the cycle repeats. If anyone has the pull to make it happen, it'd be someone like Amazon. Their site already has huge visitor numbers, and people are familiar with the brand. Adding a consumer-to-consumer auction offering *could* work for them.

That's quite an altruistic thing to do. Your selflessness is inspiring.

Nice! The tyres look very close to the wheel arches though: I reckon some rubber gets shaved off when the car squats down.

The battery might be overcomplicating things. I would have thought a fan draught during daylight hours would suffice, therefore not needing a bettery? Go for the highest power output solar panel you can. I've read on here that anything else is a false economy/won't work. What you'll need to know (and what I can't help with) is whether you can run a fan directly from the solar panel. I'm thinking you might not be able to, due to insufficient current. So you might be back to charging a battery by day, and circulating some air by night. Even an hour or two of fan should be enough to give you decent air circulation. Unless you've got garage doors that you can fit your fist around the door frame though, I'm not sure if it will be able to draw enough fresh air from outside. You might just end up moving the stale air around.

For me, this one: http://www.mkivsupra.net/vbb/showthread.php?132779-Pick-up-new-TT-tomorrow The colour isn't my favourite, but I loved that it was generally well looked after (think it was sold by an aero engineer), stock, a TT6 and at a great price. I've always fancied a go in a TT6.

Port forwarding will forward the user to the camera's IP address when they use your public IP address with a specific port. One potential gotcha is if you don't have a static public IP address at home. Something like DynDNS can get around that, or some ISPs allow you to have a static IP address for a small fee.

I think I'd rather my cakes be salty, not sweaty. At least population paste contains protein. Edit: but I'd rather they contain neither.

Agree with Richard Hammond being annoying. It's interesting reading the letters pages in newspapers about this subject. There's a lot of dislike for Clarkson, someone called him a nincompoop today, a word I haven't heard in about 32 years. But for me, Hammond is easily the most annoying of the Top Gear three. He plays the incredulous man when JC says something intentionaly and tamely controversial, and his voice rises by 2 octaves when issuing a retort.

Please, please never be in charge of the catering at any events!

I'll have a bet that says Clarkson won't be back for the remainder of this series. Shall we say £50? I think it goes deeper than a publicity stunt: hitting someone is not something the BBC management would joke about. These are people who have palpitations when the number of female panellists fall below a specified quota. It could be a storm in a teacup, a bit of handbags between two guys who had had a rough day. So, who wants to bet?

Road-going red Ferraris feel like a cliche. A different colour shows more imagination.

It reminds me of when Angus Deayton had to give up presenting Have I Got News For You (due to some delicate/embarrassing affair, the details aren't important here). The beeb then used (and still do AFAIK) guest presenters. Maybe they could try something similar with Top Gear. A show's presenters shouldn't be bigger than the show itself for something like TG.

Congratulations! I think I'll have to take my NA MSB out for a spin at the weekend to celebrate on your behalf! Looks like a good tidy example you've bought.

This assumes that you're using an email program like Outlook, and not just using a web-based email like gmail or Yahoo mail etc: ..... Action: I would run some antivirus software. Something like Avast is good and free, or use your own choice of AV software. Also run MalwareBytes Anti-Malware (also free: it looks for a different kind of malware than Avast). Running both should cover you pretty well. Reason: if there's a virus on your computer that's looking through your address book and spamming people it finds, it's unlikely that it uses your password to send the emails. It's likely to be some code that runs when you use your email program. Hence whatever your password is, it just waits for you to log in to your emails and then it'll do its spamming.