COMPLETED - Replace Main Laptop

[granz]

It's such a sad thing when a faithful companion starts to die. 

My main laptop for the past several years has been a Dell M6800. I must admit that one reason for getting a system with the M6800 number was  being the same number as the Motorola CPU that I taught about in my microcomputer classes back in the early '90s.  But this system was a great system for me - I bought 32GB of RAM (way more than any system that I had ever had) and two 2TB drives along with a 65GB M.2 SSD (again WAY more drive space than any other system,) for that Dell. This was by far the most powerful system that I had ever had. And in addition to all that, it has a full keyboard, with number keypad, and a full 17" built-in display. It even has a DVD burner! 

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. On Friday I noticed that the left hinge has started to pull away from the laptop's body. I can no longer close the screen without doing further damage to the hinge. So, time to get another system.

Fortunately (blessed, rather) I had found a full, working Lenovo ThinkPad P71 system (Lenovo ThinkPad P71 Site) at my local e-Waste site a few months ago. This thing is just as big as my M6800, and actually has 64GB of RAM, already installed. Of course, being in the eWaste, the person who dropped it off took out the drives. But it has space for a 2.5" IDE spinning-rust drive, and two M.2 SSDs. I already put a 500GB (followed by one of my 2TB drives) in to check it out - it boots, and seems to run fine.

My Dell boots to the SSD, and then had the two 2TB drives for data. I was going to use them for mirroring, but decided that I didn't want that as much as the full 4TB of storage, so never set up the mirroring. As it turns out, I never really needed the second IDE drive - thus it ending up in the ThinkPad. For the past couple of months, my Dell has been booting off the SSD, and using only the single 2TB drives with all my data.

Now, my newest project (and the highest priority for now) has to be to move my Dell's SSD, and IDE drives over to my new ThinkPad, and to get it up and running (meaning getting myself used to the new system.  )

Of course, a near-future project will have to be setting up a server (with RAID) with a few TB of usable space (accounting for the loss due to the recovery stripes/whatever for whatever RAID I use,) for all my data. That way, I will have access to my entire data library no matter which computer I use. Then I will set up a VPN tunnel on my laptops, so that I can tunnel back into my home network and access all of my data (plus print to my home printer as a bonus.) Although, since I got into computing before networking, I have a kind of distrust of my data being on anything other than my local computer - even if the server is mine (what if my network goes down? what if the server dies? etc.) So, to help alleviate that nervousness, I'm thinking of keeping a copy of my data on my main computer (whatever that is at whatever current time) and using something like rsync (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync) to keep the server version of my data up-to-date for my other computers. I don't know, that will come later - first to replace my Dell laptop.

[Chris Savage]

It's such a sad thing when a faithful companion starts to die. 

I'm sorry to hear that, granz. I don't deal with change easy. I like things the way I have them and it's bad enough when Microsoft goes and mucks up things that were just fine, but then to have the hardware fail, that means starting over. I hope it's as painless as possible for you.

[granz]

I'm sorry to hear that, granz. I don't deal with change easy. I like things the way I have them and it's bad enough when Microsoft goes and mucks up things that were just fine, but then to have the hardware fail, that means starting over. I hope it's as painless as possible for you.

Yeah, that is one of the biggest reasons that I go for years without blowing away, and reloading, my systems (which should be redone every six to twelve months.)

Any way, I am starting now, hopefully I will be back up and running on my new hardware soon.

[granz]

Well, Capt. Murphy's observation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law) is still in effect: if anything can go wrong, it will. Ugh...

It turns out that my Dell's SSD was a mSATA drive, while my new ThinkPad has two m.2 SSDs. So, using my phone, off to Amazon, I go... a few taps later, I have two 128GB drives on order - to be delivered in about a week.    So, let's cancel that order - OK, now have two 256GB drives, which should be here tomorrow, much better. But wait! There's mooorrrrreee!!! These drives use the three-part connector, rather than the two-part that my ThinkPad wants. Why must we have a gazillion different, incompatible interfaces. So, yet another cancellation (they are trying to cancel the order, if they cannot then I get to keep the two 256GB SSDs.) I also ordered a mSATA to USB reader, so that I can "Ghost" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_(disk_utility)) the data over to the new SSD.

Yet another reason that I am glad that I am retired. 

In the meantime, I tried booting the ThinkPad, and it turns out that I had not loaded any operating system on this drive (I had on the other 500GB drive) - won't boot. So, yet again, I got to install Linux one more time. Good thing for my Ventoy (https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html) thumb drive - although it still takes quite a while to install the OS, and then do an update.

At least I have a working system with which to get into Savage///Chats, Amazon and ZapBots. So, while I can post, and check my orders and other things, I do not have any of my data, nor do I have any of my added programs. So, hopefully my new drives will actually arrive tomorrow, and the project won't give me any further trouble.

[granz]

I'm beginning to have real problems with Amazon - I ordered the SSDs that I did, specifically because they promised delivery tomorrow (Tuesday)! Of course, now that I actually did order them, the expected delivery date is Thursday!!! 

This move may now be delayed until Thursday, or later. Bummer.

[JKnightandKARR]

Sadly, stuff just not built like used to anymore... my Acer Nitro 5, has issues with the lid switch sensor.  Randomly goes to sleep, so all disabled.

[granz]

Broken Hinge, as in physically broken:

[granz]

WOW! I don't ever want to do that again. What a nightmare.

At first, when I got the two NVMe drives, I went to try to copy the data over from my mSATA drive, but the computer couldn't see the mSATA drive. After playing around, I finally got it to see the old mSATA drive, and using GPARTED (GNU Partition Editor) I was able to get the data to the new NVMe drive. But, every time that I transferred the data, it changed which NVMe drive it was using.  Finally, I took out the second NVMe drive, and used only one in the first slot. Now I was able to get the boot partition onto the NVMe drive, but it wouldn't boot. I tried all sorts of things (reinstall GRUB, BIOS settings, playing with the partition flags, etc.) but was unable to get it to boot.

So, I finally decided that I was going to need to do a complete reinstall of Linux Mint (newest version, of course.  ) During the install, the default option was to erase the hard drive (does that mean all drives, including my 2TB data drive? ) and install from scratch. I tried many different options (looking for an option to repair the existing old version that could not boot,) but nothing worked - it could see the Mate 20.3 that was on my old computer, but not do anything with it.    I even tried getting a fresh ISO of Mint 20.3 (newest version is 22.1,) but that didn't work either.

Looking like I was going to need to blow away my drive (both?) I did a backup of my data (took all night, and well into this morning) and then installed Mint 22.1. I decided to try a joint install, along with my old 20.3, just to see what happens.

Eureka! A few minutes ago, I finally did the final reboot, after install, and GRUB came up asking which version I wanted, I selected the 20.3, and it came up with all of my old data (programs, settings, FireFox tabs - 182 of them, everything!) YAY! 

So, back to my first sentence at the top of this post - "I don't ever want to do that again." Now to work on how to prevent that kind of disaster again. The biggest trouble was not having access to my data (on the 2TB, SATA drive;) it was there, but not available. The second biggest trouble (but actually kind of the biggest) was not having my FireFox tabs, and the data and settings in FireFox (passwords, etc.) So, like I mentioned earlier, I should set up a NAS, or something, and then use rsync to copy all of my data to that drive, and to keep it sync-ed up. After that, I need to set up VPN tunneling, so that I can access all of my data when out of my house.

Chris, did you ever complete the article about your NAS (https://savagecircuits.com/r-pi-5-nas-drive/)? How do you use it? Do you use VPN tunneling from outside?

[Chris Savage]

WOW! I don't ever want to do that again. What a nightmare.

I have felt your pain! This whole thing totally reminded me of, Computer Bad Luck Today. You have to remember that I ran a computer shop from 1991 through 2005, working on PCs from 1993 through 2005. After that I bought a few Alienware computers because I was just done.

Chris, did you ever complete the article about your NAS (https://savagecircuits.com/r-pi-5-nas-drive/)? How do you use it? Do you use VPN tunneling from outside?

I have not, however, the last few weeks have seen me very close to getting everything set up in the workshop and den to actually get back to these. You've seen all my posts about the 3D printer stuff...well, as I have been working on that, I have been finishing the shop and den where all my parts are stored.

Some of the prints I have done have been toward that end (tool organizers and such), including the printers themselves. As these things are printing I work on other "stuff". One irony to you mentioning the R-Pi project is that I am also helping a co-worker on some prints for a project he's working on, which uses a Raspberry Pi 0.

The biggest impediment to getting the R-Pi stuff done is that I used to have a separate workstation set up just for that platform. It has an R-Pi Keyboard / Mouse and dedicated monitor. Back in the day I had to use one of my main PC monitors on a separate input, but room / space was always the issue.

The other irony is that I am working on another R-Pi project as well and I am going to use one of my extra R-Pi 4 (I think I have two). I will post a stub for it today so you can get an idea what's coming, but it will essentially be a "server", like the NAS drive, in that it will sit on my network and host an application service to help me organize and track my electronics parts. It's a bit of a priority in the sense that I am currently sorting parts now and this would track all my inventory, so I need it running ASAP.

[JKnightandKARR]

Broken Hinge, as in physically broken:

This looks familiar.....  I don't know why..... lol is it repairable??  Glad you got your drive thing figured out, sucks it took soo long.  Computers can be VERY ANNOYING from time to time...

[granz]

lol is it repairable?? 

Well, technically anything is repairable - of course there are caveats, such as if it were in the middle of a NuDet (http://www.wslfweb.org/docs/roadmap/irm/internet/surwarn/cat/html/nudetds.htm) and was vaporized, it would be kind of difficult to repair. 

But, practically no it is not repairable, at least not by me. I also stripped it of RAM, drives, the batteries (including the coin cell for BIOS setting backup) and even the speakers. So, it's not worth putting any effort into fixing the hinge. If you are really hungry for a hopeless case, I could pack up the carcass and ship it to you (you would need to reimburse me for shipping.) 

[JKnightandKARR]

what laptop is it?

[granz]

what laptop is it?

Dell M6800 (https://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/business/smb/merchandizing/en/Documents/Dell_Precision_M6800_Spec_Sheet.pdf)

It was a great machine, up until the hinge broke. I've just never had any luck fixing hinges on laptops/notebooks. Also, as I said, the carcass has been pretty well picked over - there ain't much left over; I even took out the WiFi card and the fans. It would not be worth anything as a computer - unless you do like I did with my first car: it was a $50 Ford Maverick which turned out to be a $50 body repair course. 

[Chris Savage]

It was a great machine, up until the hinge broke. I've just never had any luck fixing hinges on laptops/notebooks.

Well, at least you can do some repairs. I have seen people abandon PCs over very simple things, just because they didn't know what was going on. I'm glad I can do my own repairs.

[granz]

I'm glad I can do my own repairs.

Ditto - Plus, I just like playing with them.