[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by animdas

Its very encouraging! Who did it for you? Local shop?

GBS Services (OMR), I think. Local, but not tiny, I think they have several branches in Chennai

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

And you have to replace HDD anyways, so you can get SSD by spending 2k more.

Whoa! have they come down that much? They were much more expensive last time I looked.

Here's a thought: this laptop is old, SSD is very new. Laptop probably is ATA, SSD would be SATA?

Another thought is that, although SSD is physically far more robust than HDD, with no moving parts, I have read that they actually fail more often.

You are much better informed on current hardware: your replies will be educative

[Aroy]

Even SSD is much slower compared to RAM, so applications using HDD as either data source or as a flow over for RAM will be much slower.

With RAM prices dropping every day, major applications are shifting the focus from HDD to RAM for keeping most of the data when an application is run. For example modern RDBMS keep all current user data in the RAM, instead of paging it in and out to the HDD.

After all with free RAM in the realm of 2-6 GB in current home systems, how many have data of that size? If your hardware & OS can support more RAM, it is better to have more, especially if you are involved in heavy multi tasking.

For older systems it makes sense to use HDD only if the application cannot run with the available RAM (Old Hardware, Modern Application!), even then it makes more sense to upgrade to a newer system, rather than continuing with the older system.

[2500cc]

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

Where does this pagefile reside, In HDD right?

If a system has 256MB RAM and HDD has 2 GB free space, OS can combine these two and present 2.25 GB as RAM to Apps.

And if HDD is SSD, this pagefile becomes fast too.

So you mean to say if I have 10GB of pagefile and 512BM of RAM, the OS sees 10.512GB of RAM ??


For a 32-bit OS:
If your PC has 256MB of RAM, there is still a 4GB memory address space, and if a computer has 8GB of RAM, there is still a 4GB memory address space. This 4GB address space is VIRTUAL. Remember the application never sees the RAM. Applications just use the virtual address space provided by the Memory manager.

For a 64-Bit OS, the virtual address space available is 8TB

As mentioned before, when there is limitation of RAM, the idle application residing on the RAM is moved to the pagefile to free up the space for the foreground applications.

The pagefile is never considered as a memory by the OS Kernel.

But yes, the faster HDD certainly does help in many situations.

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by Aroy

Even SSD is much slower compared to RAM, so applications using HDD as either data source or as a flow over for RAM will be much slower.

Completely agree.

But in this context, he has:

1. An 8 year old laptop.
2. Failing HDD
3. Takes only DDR1 RAM

In this case, investment in SSD can give more bang for buck. Reason is, it will speed up thrashing to some extent. And he has to spend $$ on HDD anyways.

Originally Posted by 2500cc

So you mean to say if I have 10GB of pagefile and 512BM of RAM, the OS sees 10.512GB of RAM ??

Precisely.

If a system has:

1. 256 MB RAM
2. 500 MB Pagefile

A malloc for 400 MB would succeed (Ignoring memory fragmentation).

It is very easy to test. Just create a VM in VirtualBOX / VMWare and give this a try.

[animdas]

Thanks to prateekm, Thad E Ginathom, Aroy, NetfreakBombay!

Loaded with all these knowledge, I have decided to give a final try with a local shop. I also posted with hp- but am sure they wont be back- as earlier.

If the local shop raises its hands I will go for a new laptop/desktop or assembled desktop!

BTW, I tried cleaning by blowing away the dirt & dust from the inlet & outlet of the fans and switched it on. But, poor guy could not start- blank display!

In case I decide to throw it away- I am finicky about someone picking up data from my HDD. Any idea how to trash it?

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by animdas

I am finicky about someone picking up data from my HDD. Any idea how to trash it?

For personal data, just get the HDD out give it a solid thrashing and dump it in water overnight.

[Aroy]

Just connect the old HDD to the new system, recover any data you like and then use any free utility which "Wipes Disk", essentially writes 0/1 on the whole disk.

[IronH4WK]

there is a utility called PDWipe - wipes the data completely on the HDD.

[animdas]

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

For personal data, just get the HDD out give it a solid thrashing and dump it in water overnight.

Better
I am unable to access it- that certainly does not mean nobody can!

[Thad E Ginathom]

If you have anything that will undo the case screws, take it to bits! HDD platters are nice and shiny, and oh-so-smooth, and there are some powerful magnets in there!

Don't use the platters as coasters. I guess they will do a lousy job of protecting your furniture from hot mugs!

Data deletion... DEL will remove it from the most casual seeker, format from the more determined --- but it can be rescued from both. Software that removes the files and then writes random data over the disk will remove it from all but forensic examination. You might be safe from that if the software writes hundreds of times over the disk. Don't suppose that is likely to bother you!

[cruiser@0523]

Originally Posted by mav2000

Thats a nice card, though I cant really make out the model from the pic. Is it a 6950/6970 by any chance.

Anyway on the PSU front, please keep in mind that the extreme power plus series is really not good. It has caused failures in multiple rigs that I know of and I am sure, a lot more that I dont know of. If you can I would suggest you change it.

It is 6950, yes i am aware of the problems, but at the time i was bound by budget and had a lot of pending rendering work. I plan to change it in a few months time with a better PSU.

[akas_chauhan]

Originally Posted by 2500cc

For a 64-Bit OS, the virtual address space available is 8TB

for 64 bit 2^64 almost 1.8TB not 8 TB.

[Aroy]

Originally Posted by akas_chauhan

for 64 bit 2^64 almost 1.8TB not 8 TB.

Giga = 10^9
Terra = 10^12
Peta = 10^15
Exa = 10^18
now
2^64 ~ 4GB x 4GB ~ 16 x 10^18 which should be Exa byte and not Terra byte

Exabyte - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now that is a lot of address space to play around with. I have 8GB and barring image processing that much memory is rarely used.

[2500cc]

Originally Posted by akas_chauhan

for 64 bit 2^64 almost 1.8TB not 8 TB.

It is 8TB dear.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384271%28v=VS.85%29.aspx
http://www.codemachine.com/article_x64kvas.html

[Aroy]

Originally Posted by 2500cc

It is 8TB dear.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384271%28v=VS.85%29.aspx
CodeMachine - Article - X64 Kernel Virtual Address Space

What is theoretically possible with 64 bit CPU is still in 10^18 realm. What is available today is a different story.

The addressable memory available in any system is lowest of
. Adress width. For 64 bit systems it is 2^64
. Hardware limit set by the CPU manufacturer
. Software limit set by OS

For windows system on Intel 64 bit CPU, the limit set by Microsoft is 8Tb
Memory Limits for Windows Releases (Windows)
but the limits are much lower for other windows versions, with lower limit at around 4GB for home editions. But that does not mean that other Hardware/Software combinations are limited to the 8TB. In fact many scientific systems can be configured to adress and use much more RAM.

That said, most of the systems have much lower maximum capacity for physical RAM. For example

. My system with dual Xeon has 192 GB on 16 RAM Slots.
. IBM Power 7 has 512 GB IBM Power 750 Express server specifications
. A home PC will max out at 16GB with 2 or 4 slots.

Here is an examplef a supercomputer with 80TB RAM Memory Interface in Supercomputers | Professor Memory