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alchemyprime
2011-03-25, 07:15 PM
Question 1
So I have now at my disposal two old desktop computers. One has 1GB RAM, one has 512 MB. One has an 80GB HD, the other has a 200GB HD. One has a nice DVD ROM drive, and the other... actually doesn't.

So my big question is this:

Should I attempt to put the RAM and Hard Drives into the same computer and make some kind of Master Control Program monstrocity (that will still be weaker than my laptop...) or do I just take the better parts and scrap the useless stuff? I also was looking at it and I got to thinking: if I have two Hard Drives in one computer, would it be possible to make one just storage and partition the other one to run Windows XP on one half and Linux on the other (either the Fedora or Mint platforms preferably, but I do have Ubuntu, Xubuntu and Suse around here somewhere)?

This is something I hop to eventually evolve into a gaming rig, but I am broke, so for now I just want to see if I can make one... not necessarily "super computer" but something better than what I have at least.:smallredface:

Question 2
Can anyone help me with changing my laptop from being just Vista to multibooting Windows Vista and Linux Mint 10?

factotum
2011-03-26, 05:51 AM
You *might* be able to cobble together the better parts into a single machine, but without knowing more it's impossible to say--for instance, if one machine uses DDR RAM and the other DDR2 you won't be able to combine the RAM. Hard drives are more likely to be compatible (even if one is PATA and the other SATA most motherboards have both types of connection), and having multiple hard drives in a single machine works just fine!

As for #2, I don't have any direct experience with Linux Mint, but I've done the same thing with Ubuntu--however, in that case I was planning to do it all along so I deliberately left some unpartitioned space on the hard drive to put the Ubuntu install into. If you didn't do that you would either need to use a tool to shrink the Windows partition to free up space for Linux, or use something like Ubuntu's WUBI system (where the Ubuntu hard drive essentially becomes a file on the Windows drive--slows down disc accesses, but it all other ways it's a native Linux install). You could also use something like VirtualBox to run a Linux OS at the same time as your Windows one, but you can't expect the best performance from the Linux side of things if you do that.

Ganheim
2011-03-26, 02:50 PM
As Factotum has said, you should be able to combine your computers, depending on the particulars of certain components.

Operating systems also aren't typically grossly large, so instead of dedicating a whole hard drive to it/them, I'd recommend partitioning the smaller HDD and putting the operating system onto one partition - you can find free HDD partition programs online. Doing so is a good idea because it's easier to make a rescue disk or format one partition than a 10GB HDD, and faster to wipe and restore than if you used a full HDD even if you didn't put anything else on it. As long as you've got a good partition and rescue disk, the only thing you'd have to worry about is HDD failure, but that's why you should keep most of your important files on the other HDD and back-up every so often. If you can get a solid-state external HDD, I hear those are even better because those essentially don't fail.

factotum
2011-03-26, 03:09 PM
If you can get a solid-state external HDD, I hear those are even better because those essentially don't fail.

I'd disagree with that...any electronic device can and will fail, it's just a matter of when! Solid-state HDDs actually have a built-in failure mode in that the Flash memory they're based on has a limited number of times you can write to it--modern SSDs alleviate this somewhat by moving the data around to areas that haven't been written to as much, but they still won't last forever.

tyckspoon
2011-03-27, 01:02 AM
I'd disagree with that...any electronic device can and will fail, it's just a matter of when! Solid-state HDDs actually have a built-in failure mode in that the Flash memory they're based on has a limited number of times you can write to it--modern SSDs alleviate this somewhat by moving the data around to areas that haven't been written to as much, but they still won't last forever.

They do not, however, suffer mechanical failures in any meaningful sense, which is what will kill your standard hard drives long before you would get anywhere near burning out an SSD's write limit. Ever heard a hard drive giving off the click of death, which means "back this stuff up now or you will never be able to access it again?" Even a dying SSD is still readable, which is a huge benefit; you just can't save new data to it.