digitalwanderer
Legend
I know I have a bunch, but this one happened yesterday and I just told an empty chat room about it so thought I'd share it here too. 
Fixing relatives/friends PCs/electronics, any funny stories?
- Thread starter digitalwanderer
- Start date
An office computer was in dire need of an SSD, and we needed to clone the drive, but the pre-built desktop only had one SATA power connector, and I couldn’t easily replace the small PSU. The DVD drive had a different sort of power connector.
So in order to power the SSD for the cloning, I ended up hauling a spare computer to the work desk and used a power connector from its PSU and turned that machine on.
Of course, I didn’t have particularly long cables here, so it was... something.
ಠ_ಠ
I didn’t want to move the original drive to another computer to reduce any installation-license-driver shenanigans since we didn’t have any identical HW.
I couldn’t use another standard PSU because the infernal machine had special connectors - one of those compact towers from dell and things are made differently.
At the end of the day, the user was happy to have a Core i7-6700 not paired to a piece of shit.
At least the RAM upgrade was as simple as ramming the sticks in.
So in order to power the SSD for the cloning, I ended up hauling a spare computer to the work desk and used a power connector from its PSU and turned that machine on.
Of course, I didn’t have particularly long cables here, so it was... something.
ಠ_ಠ
I didn’t want to move the original drive to another computer to reduce any installation-license-driver shenanigans since we didn’t have any identical HW.
I couldn’t use another standard PSU because the infernal machine had special connectors - one of those compact towers from dell and things are made differently.
At the end of the day, the user was happy to have a Core i7-6700 not paired to a piece of shit.
At least the RAM upgrade was as simple as ramming the sticks in.
Last edited:
digitalwanderer
Legend
What is some decent cloning software? I've never cloned a drive, I always do a reinstall...but I got an SSD and I'd love to put it in my wife's PC but she doesn't want me to reinstall her OS and have all the associated headaches. (And in fairness she's got a clean install of windows 10 that's up to date and running perfectly so I can't disagree)
Oh yea, also I'm in love with the tablet! Never had one, never saw the need but they're damned useful for portable entertainment!
Oh yea, also I'm in love with the tablet! Never had one, never saw the need but they're damned useful for portable entertainment!
Last edited by a moderator:
Once you go tablet, you never go back...
digitalwanderer
Legend
Gotta get a cheap case for it to protect it, I refuse to take it out of the house until then.
Don't want to break it and I don't see any other practical ways to do it.
Don't want to break it and I don't see any other practical ways to do it.
A1xLLcqAgt0qc2RyMz0y
Veteran
Macrium Reflect 7 Free Edition
https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree
Not only is it great for cloning but also great for backups.
digitalwanderer
Legend
Thank you! Much appreciated, downloading and learning it now.
Some background
put a password on someones p.c (in the bios) so no one would get into it while she was away.
on her return I get a phone call "The password isnt working"
/me "what did you type"
"password" (whatever it was i forget)
so I check my notes to see if she's got the right password
she had, so i'm thinking maybe its case sensitive
I ask her if the caps lock is on
"how do I tell"
/me "the capslock light should be lit on the keyboard"
"the keyboard has no lights"
/me "ok lets try it both ways, upper and lower case"
still no success
/me "when you type the letters are little asterisks appearing on screen"
"they did at first but not now"
At this point I'm just about to get her to drive 30 miles to pick me
up with a replacement keyboard, but I have an idea
/me "after you typed in the password did you press the enter key"
"no should I have?"
DOH......
put a password on someones p.c (in the bios) so no one would get into it while she was away.
on her return I get a phone call "The password isnt working"
/me "what did you type"
"password" (whatever it was i forget)
so I check my notes to see if she's got the right password
she had, so i'm thinking maybe its case sensitive
I ask her if the caps lock is on
"how do I tell"
/me "the capslock light should be lit on the keyboard"
"the keyboard has no lights"
/me "ok lets try it both ways, upper and lower case"
still no success
/me "when you type the letters are little asterisks appearing on screen"
"they did at first but not now"
At this point I'm just about to get her to drive 30 miles to pick me
up with a replacement keyboard, but I have an idea
/me "after you typed in the password did you press the enter key"
"no should I have?"
DOH......
Similar threads
