Couple of Techy Questins

[Jeff Gaines]

Good afternoon all, I need to stop eating for a while so I thought I'd ask
a couple of computer related techy questions!

Firstly I had a frustrating online chat with an alleged human at Amazon
yesterday about a courier who walked up my path, reached the front door
then turned round and went back to his van. I dashed out as I was
expecting a delivery and he said "oh" or something of that ilk, opened the
back door of his van and got my package out. If I hadn't seen him it would
be back at a depot somewhere. I want to communicate with Amazon about this
and the Amazon chat bot/human has given me an email address allegedly for
customer service. I wanted the transcript but apparently I have to go back
to chat and read it. Is there a way of down-loading it does anybody know?
I suspect it's a template with the conversation held on a database so the
answer is probably "no". In the meantime I printed the screen, scrolled
down, printed the screen etc. and have 5 x .pngs of it.

Second one is I would like a computer case that has removable hard drives
accessible through individual doors on the front, preferably with a back
plane so drives can be slid in and out, something like this (link is to
Amazon.com):

https://www.amazon.com/Generic-ZhenLoong-Computer-Workstation-backplane/dp/B0DH4LYCFK

Ali Express has some but shipping is as much or more as the case! Don't
mind a used server to strip down as long as it will take an ATX board.

Happy New Year!

[Paul]

Good afternoon all, I need to stop eating for a while so I thought I'd ask a couple of computer related techy questions!
Firstly I had a frustrating online chat with an alleged human at Amazon yesterday about a courier who walked up my path, reached the front door then turned round and went back to his van. I dashed out as I was expecting a delivery and he said "oh" or something of that ilk, opened the back door of his van and got my package out. If I hadn't seen him it would be back at a depot somewhere. I want to communicate with Amazon about this and the Amazon chat bot/human has given me an email address allegedly for customer service. I wanted the transcript but apparently I have to go back to chat and read it. Is there a way of down-loading it does anybody know? I suspect it's a template with the conversation held on a database so the answer is probably "no". In the meantime I printed the screen, scrolled down, printed the screen etc. and have 5 x .pngs of it.
https://www.amazon.com/Generic-ZhenLoong-Computer-Workstation-backplane/dp/B0DH4LYCFK
Ali Express has some but shipping is as much or more as the case! Don't mind a used server to strip down as long as it will take an ATX board.
Happy New Year!

This is just an enclosure. Presumably the drives slide on
their side surfaces. The door is there, to provide leverage
to propel the drive out of the backplane connector.

https://www.startech.com/en-ca/hdd/hsb4satsasba

That particular one, does not come with a power supply.
The two SATA 15p powering four drives, could deliver 1.5 amps
on +12V per drive, during spinup, which is OK but not a lot of excess
ampacity. When you use large capacity drives, the drives
are designed to take a long time to spin up. On a 1TB boot
drive, it draws more current, but the spinup time is only
1 second. I can barely catch the peak current on my clamp-on
DC ammeter that makes one measurement per second. Whereas
a large capacity helium drive takes forever to spin up
and the peak current on that is less than the 1TB drive.
Once spinup is achieved, the choice of using SATA 15p connectors
on the outside of the enclosure is no longer a concern.

The current trend on motherboards, is reduced numbers of
PCIe slots, as well as reduced numbers of SATA ports (down
from 6 to 4 ports). a new gadget has come out, an NVMe stick
with 6 SATA data ports on it, but it's a bit bandwidth starved
for running a softraid array. There is an Asrock chip with
PCIe x2 lane interface, for the SATA ports.

Computers continue to have two video card slots, and one
of the slots can be used for a RAID card or a multi-port SATA,
but the selection of cards right now may not be all that
wonderful.

*******

If you have Windows 11, the SnippingTool has OCR capability,
using the "text actions" button. It has virtually perfect
comprehension... as long as the text consists of sentences.
If random characters are present in the sample you submit,
it drops back to "tesseract accuracy" and mixes up o/O/0 .
I even had a 0 on a sample, with the strikethru
in the character, the Tesseract-like behavior made an
"oh" out of that character. But on English sentences,
it's a champ.

Paul

[Brian]

Post by Jeff Gaines
Good afternoon all, I need to stop eating for a while so I thought I'd ask
a couple of computer related techy questions!
Firstly I had a frustrating online chat with an alleged human at Amazon
yesterday about a courier who walked up my path, reached the front door
then turned round and went back to his van. I dashed out as I was
expecting a delivery and he said "oh" or something of that ilk, opened the
back door of his van and got my package out. If I hadn't seen him it would
be back at a depot somewhere. I want to communicate with Amazon about this
and the Amazon chat bot/human has given me an email address allegedly for
customer service. I wanted the transcript but apparently I have to go back
to chat and read it. Is there a way of down-loading it does anybody know?
I suspect it's a template with the conversation held on a database so the
answer is probably "no". In the meantime I printed the screen, scrolled
down, printed the screen etc. and have 5 x .pngs of it.
Second one is I would like a computer case that has removable hard drives
accessible through individual doors on the front, preferably with a back
plane so drives can be slid in and out, something like this (link is to
https://www.amazon.com/Generic-ZhenLoong-Computer-Workstation-backplane/dp/B0DH4LYCFK
Ali Express has some but shipping is as much or more as the case! Don't
mind a used server to strip down as long as it will take an ATX board.
Happy New Year!

I use these for individual drives:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/135248200895?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=aanqhb1-saw&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

[RJH]

Post by Brian
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/135248200895?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=aanqhb1-saw&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
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Can you swap drives out while the PC's powered up?

[Daniel James]

Post by RJH

Post by Brian
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/135248200895?
mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=aanqhb1-
saw&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Can you swap drives out while the PC's powered up?

If you look at the instruction booklet just readable in the third
picture on that eBay page you will see that it says that the disk must
not be removed while the computer is running.

Some drive bays do support swapping drives while the PC is running, and
they are normally described as "hot swap".

scan.co.uk usually have quite a decent range, including some that house
multiple drives ... e,g. 3 x 3.5" drives in 2 x 5.25" bays.

[RJH]

Post by Daniel James

Post by RJH

Post by Brian
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/135248200895?
mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=aanqhb1-
saw&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Can you swap drives out while the PC's powered up?

If you look at the instruction booklet just readable in the third
picture on that eBay page you will see that it says that the disk must
not be removed while the computer is running.
Some drive bays do support swapping drives while the PC is running, and
they are normally described as "hot swap".
scan.co.uk usually have quite a decent range, including some that house
multiple drives ... e,g. 3 x 3.5" drives in 2 x 5.25" bays.

Thanks

[Paul]

Post by RJH

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/135248200895? mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=aanqhb1- saw&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Can you swap drives out while the PC's powered up?

If you look at the instruction booklet just readable in the third picture on that eBay page you will see that it says that the disk must not be removed while the computer is running.
Some drive bays do support swapping drives while the PC is running, and they are normally described as "hot swap".
scan.co.uk usually have quite a decent range, including some that house multiple drives ... e,g. 3 x 3.5" drives in 2 x 5.25" bays.

Start by checking the BIOS, for the "Hot Swap" setting
in the BIOS SATA port section. This setting can be
exposed on enthusiast desktop motherboard BIOS.

It has to be turned on in the BIOS, for Southbridge/PCH
SATA ports to have Hot Swap support. Various other means
of providing SATA ports, it's already turned on.

Hot Swap support means, that in the middle of an OS session
while you are sipping your coffee, if a running SATA drive
suddenly has the seven pin data connector make contact
with the seven contact motherboard connector, the SATA link
trains up, and the motherboard "mounts" the physical layer,
scans the drive, and mounts all the file systems on partitions.

If the detection is not enabled, touching the contacts together
does nothing at all.

In the reverse direction, removal, there are safe and safer
ways to do that.

1) Use an application level command, that takes a drive offline,
and not only does the drive go offline, it parks the heads
and turns off the motor. Drives have various sleep states.
Not all drives support the sleep states. Some of the drives
work very well. Good luck figuring this part out. I have some
USB external drives (not what we are talking about), which
successfully put the drive "offline" when you issue a Safely Remove.

Getting this to happen for a SATA drive, it *could* happen, because
with Hot Swap turned on, the "Safely Remove" menu now has your
Hot Swap drive in the menu, ready for a kick in the nuts. But if you use
the Safely Remove, the minimum it does is flush the files.
The drive could still be spinning, and is not necessarily in
the parked state. The reason this is unpredictable, is because
drives do not have consistent support states. Some, accept no
"hints" at all about parking -- the drives are brain dead.
But your files are safe.

2) The next phase, is power removal. Remove power from the drive.
The SATA data cable is AC coupled, and can be disconnected any time.
With the power off, in a "controlled state" such as the drive
had in (1), the drive does not "count one emergency power fail"
in its SMART table. If the drive is not spinning, it is pretty hard
for a drive to log "that the power just went off".

3) The third step, is the physical ejection operation. The ejection
lever, at a minimum, eases the drive out of its backplane
connection. If the drive is completely disabled as in (2), this
step causes no electrical challenges whatsoever. There is no arcing,
there is no reason for MOV to conduct and suppress an arc.

Well, as it turns out, the hard drive *was* designed, to just
be ripped out of the equipment by a cretin. There are two MOV
near the +5V and +12V input power connector, which suppress hot removal
arcing and overvoltage. The drive can start emergency powerdown,
when you yank it out. As long as you have not violated the G-rating
of a running spinning disk, then the heads will retract to the landing ramp,
using energy extracted from the rotating platter and motor-turned-generator.
Before retraction, the contents of the drive DRAM cache, are
written to the platter.

In the case of large capacity hard drives with 512MB DRAM cache
onboard (pretty unusual), the emergency power fail is implemented
by dumping DRAM, to a special NAND flash on the controller board.
They do this, since there isn't sufficient time to write out
512MB of material before the power is gone. the drives only
resort to writing out to the NAND, on an emergency power fail.
On normal shutdown sequences, the NAND is not used, and all the
files are flushed from cache to the platter, in the normal way.

By understanding some of the properties of hot swap drives,
you can make the life of your drive, as simple as you would like :-)

The worst case, is when a drive flubs the landing, the voice coil
doesn't have the energy to get the heads onto the plastic ramp...
and the heads have now landed right on the platter. Ordinary drives do
not have laser-patterned landing areas for heads. The heads
could *stick* to the platter, if they land the wrong way.
(This hardly ever happens.) We press the front button on PCs
in the middle of Windows Update, all the time, so we have been
"testing for flubs" on a regular basis :-)

Someone in another group, turned off the power to his PC,
when it said on the screen "Do NOT turn off the power".
Guess what happened :-/ I understand he reinstalled Windows 10
yesterday.

If you are going to be adventurous, be prepared.
The equipment is prepared for adventure. But,
you can do your part to help.

If I thought all the equipment I owned, was fully compliant
and well behaved (parking support), I would not mind using this feature.

Paul

[Brian]

Post by RJH

Post by Brian
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/135248200895?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=aanqhb1-saw&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
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<div class="footer" onclick="setCursorToBottom()"></div>

Can you swap drives out while the PC's powered up?

I don’t know, I use them instead of dual booting etc so tend to power down,
swap, power up.

They are entirely ‘dumb’ ( at least the ones I have are). Just slide for
the drive and connectors, no electronics to detect one is present etc.

[Jeff Gaines]

Post by Jeff Gaines
Second one is I would like a computer case that has removable hard drives
accessible through individual doors on the front, preferably with a back
plane so drives can be slid in and out, something like this (link is to

Many thanks for all the replies :-)

Some interesting ideas there, will think it through!

[GB]

Post by Jeff Gaines
Firstly I had a frustrating online chat with an alleged human at Amazon
yesterday about a courier who walked up my path, reached the front door
then turned round and went back to his van. I dashed out as I was
expecting a delivery and he said "oh" or something of that ilk, opened
the back door of his van and got my package out. If I hadn't seen him it
would be back at a depot somewhere. I want to communicate with Amazon
about this and the Amazon chat bot/human has given me an email address
allegedly for customer service. I wanted the transcript but apparently I
have to go back to chat and read it. Is there a way of down-loading it
does anybody know? I suspect it's a template with the conversation held
on a database so the answer is probably "no". In the meantime I printed
the screen, scrolled down, printed the screen etc. and have 5 x .pngs of
it.

Complaining to Amazon is a bit of an art. I use the phone option. Chat
doesn't work well. And I time my call for the afternoon, as that way
I'll probably get someone in South Africa. I've found them to be the
most helpful.

Generally speaking, the CS reps are there to put things right, and your
complaint isn't about that. You got your parcel, and the CS reps are
soooooo far down the pecking order that there's no way at all that they
can do anything about crap delivery procedures.

Plus, it's simply not your role to give management consultancy advice to
Amazon. If you don't like their deliveries, go elsewhere.

[Jeff Gaines]

Post by GB

Post by Jeff Gaines
Firstly I had a frustrating online chat with an alleged human at Amazon
yesterday about a courier who walked up my path, reached the front door
then turned round and went back to his van. I dashed out as I was
expecting a delivery and he said "oh" or something of that ilk, opened
the back door of his van and got my package out. If I hadn't seen him it
would be back at a depot somewhere. I want to communicate with Amazon
about this and the Amazon chat bot/human has given me an email address
allegedly for customer service. I wanted the transcript but apparently I
have to go back to chat and read it. Is there a way of down-loading it
does anybody know? I suspect it's a template with the conversation held
on a database so the answer is probably "no". In the meantime I printed
the screen, scrolled down, printed the screen etc. and have 5 x .pngs of
it.

Complaining to Amazon is a bit of an art. I use the phone option. Chat
doesn't work well. And I time my call for the afternoon, as that way I'll
probably get someone in South Africa. I've found them to be the most
helpful.
Generally speaking, the CS reps are there to put things right, and your
complaint isn't about that. You got your parcel, and the CS reps are
soooooo far down the pecking order that there's no way at all that they
can do anything about crap delivery procedures.
Plus, it's simply not your role to give management consultancy advice to
Amazon. If you don't like their deliveries, go elsewhere.

I'm not. I am complaining about their delivery method. They deliver
perishable goods nowadays and different considerations apply, I have had
refunds on two which were dumped on the doorstep and so inedible.

[Andy Burns]

Post by Jeff Gaines

Post by GB

opened the back door of his van and got my package out.

it's simply not your role to give management consultancy advice
to Amazon.

I am complaining about their delivery method.

You got your delivery, beyond that they don't care, they have no
mechanism for you to make your point.

Regarding the chat transcrit, I generally find you have a chance at the
end to either copy/paste it, or have it emailed to you, after that it's
too late (they probably have it saved at their end, but that's for them,
not for you).

[Jeff Gaines]

Post by Jeff Gaines

opened the back door of his van and got my package out.

it's simply not your role to give management consultancy advice to
Amazon.

I am complaining about their delivery method.

You got your delivery, beyond that they don't care, they have no mechanism
for you to make your point.

They do, the chat system during which they have supplied me with an email
address.

Regarding the chat transcrit, I generally find you have a chance at the
end to either copy/paste it, or have it emailed to you, after that it's
too late (they probably have it saved at their end, but that's for them,
not for you).

Not available, they said during the chat there is no mechanism for
printing/saving the transcript but would send me an email summary. The
summary says:

"It has been a pleasure to assist you today!

I am so sorry that your order was marked as delivered even though you did
not receive it - my colleague has filed a complaint against the driver so
the team can take further action. Should you like to provide further
feedback please email ***@amazon.co.uk.

I hope you have a lovely evening - safe travels and Merry Christmas!"

In fact as I told them several times i did receive the order, it was
dumped on the doorstep with no indication, perhaps I was chatting with a
bot?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Post by Jeff Gaines
In fact as I told them several times i did receive the order, it was
dumped on the doorstep with no indication, perhaps I was chatting with a
bot?

I ordered some stuff and it was clkaiomed to have been delivered to the
prch - which had a sliding external door.

It never arrived, Amazon promptly refunded and I reordered.
10 weeks later I found a soggy package where it had been flung into a
recondite corner of the garden.

Sometimes its easier to just give the punter their money back. The
delivery drivers are paid for 'marked as delivered'. They are under
pressure.,

The normal delivery method now is to leave it on the doorstep, ring the
bell and scarper.
It helps if they take a picture, because I have more than one doorstep

[Richard Kettlewell]

Post by Jeff Gaines
In fact as I told them several times i did receive the order, it was
dumped on the doorstep with no indication, perhaps I was chatting with
a bot?

You are tilting at windmills. The idea that someone would complain about
receiving their delivery is so alien to the customer service rep that
they didn’t even understand that’s what you were saying (possibly
compounded by English being their second language and Amazon not paying
them enough to care).

[Jeff Gaines]

Post by Richard Kettlewell

Post by Jeff Gaines
In fact as I told them several times i did receive the order, it was
dumped on the doorstep with no indication, perhaps I was chatting with
a bot?

You are tilting at windmills. The idea that someone would complain about
receiving their delivery is so alien to the customer service rep that
they didn’t even understand that’s what you were saying (possibly
compounded by English being their second language and Amazon not paying
them enough to care).

Perhaps, my choice.

[GB]

Post by Jeff Gaines

Post by Richard Kettlewell

Post by Jeff Gaines
In fact as I told them several times i did receive the order, it was
dumped on the doorstep with no indication, perhaps I was chatting with
a bot?

You are tilting at windmills. The idea that someone would complain about
receiving their delivery is so alien to the customer service rep that
they didn’t even understand that’s what you were saying (possibly
compounded by English being their second language and Amazon not paying
them enough to care).

Perhaps, my choice.

People on this NG are being remarkably polite to you, but you can bet
they're sniggering quietly.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Post by Richard Kettlewell

Post by Jeff Gaines
In fact as I told them several times i did receive the order, it was
dumped on the doorstep with no indication, perhaps I was chatting with
a bot?

You are tilting at windmills. The idea that someone would complain about
receiving their delivery is so alien to the customer service rep that
they didn’t even understand that’s what you were saying (possibly
compounded by English being their second language and Amazon not paying
them enough to care).

Bloody hell Richard, you are even grumpier and cynical than me this
merry Christmas!
--
“it should be clear by now to everyone that activist environmentalism
(or environmental activism) is becoming a general ideology about humans,
about their freedom, about the relationship between the individual and
the state, and about the manipulation of people under the guise of a
'noble' idea. It is not an honest pursuit of 'sustainable development,'
a matter of elementary environmental protection, or a search for
rational mechanisms designed to achieve a healthy environment. Yet
things do occur that make you shake your head and remind yourself that
you live neither in Joseph Stalin’s Communist era, nor in the Orwellian
utopia of 1984.”

Vaclav Klaus

[GB]

Post by Jeff Gaines
I'm not. I am complaining about their delivery method. They deliver
perishable goods nowadays and different considerations apply, I have had
refunds on two which were dumped on the doorstep and so inedible.

CS can give you a refund. They can also tweak your delivery options on
their website (same as you could do).

What they can't do is change their delivery methods, so "complaining
about their delivery method" to CS won't work.

Try emailing the UK managing director.

[Raj Kundra]

Post by Jeff Gaines
Good afternoon all, I need to stop eating for a while so I thought I'd
ask a couple of computer related techy questions!
Firstly I had a frustrating online chat with an alleged human at Amazon
yesterday about a courier who walked up my path, reached the front door
then turned round and went back to his van. I dashed out as I was
expecting a delivery and he said "oh" or something of that ilk, opened
the back door of his van and got my package out. If I hadn't seen him it
would be back at a depot somewhere. I want to communicate with Amazon
about this and the Amazon chat bot/human has given me an email address
allegedly for customer service. I wanted the transcript but apparently I
have to go back to chat and read it. Is there a way of down-loading it
does anybody know? I suspect it's a template with the conversation held
on a database so the answer is probably "no". In the meantime I printed
the screen, scrolled down, printed the screen etc. and have 5 x .pngs of
it.
Second one is I would like a computer case that has removable hard
drives accessible through individual doors on the front, preferably with
a back plane so drives can be slid in and out, something like this (link
https://www.amazon.com/Generic-ZhenLoong-Computer-Workstation-backplane/
dp/B0DH4LYCFK
Ali Express has some but shipping is as much or more as the case! Don't
mind a used server to strip down as long as it will take an ATX board.
Happy New Year!

I am sure HP Z Series workstation has that option.
Also Dell used to do one, but I can not remember the model.

[Joe]

On Fri, 27 Dec 2024 21:16:36 +0000

Post by Raj Kundra

Post by Jeff Gaines
Good afternoon all, I need to stop eating for a while so I thought
I'd ask a couple of computer related techy questions!
Firstly I had a frustrating online chat with an alleged human at
Amazon yesterday about a courier who walked up my path, reached the
front door then turned round and went back to his van. I dashed out
as I was expecting a delivery and he said "oh" or something of that
ilk, opened the back door of his van and got my package out. If I
hadn't seen him it would be back at a depot somewhere. I want to
communicate with Amazon about this and the Amazon chat bot/human
has given me an email address allegedly for customer service. I
wanted the transcript but apparently I have to go back to chat and
read it. Is there a way of down-loading it does anybody know? I
suspect it's a template with the conversation held on a database so
the answer is probably "no". In the meantime I printed the screen,
scrolled down, printed the screen etc. and have 5 x .pngs of it.
Second one is I would like a computer case that has removable hard
drives accessible through individual doors on the front, preferably
with a back plane so drives can be slid in and out, something like
https://www.amazon.com/Generic-ZhenLoong-Computer-Workstation-backplane/
dp/B0DH4LYCFK
Ali Express has some but shipping is as much or more as the case!
Don't mind a used server to strip down as long as it will take an
ATX board.
Happy New Year!

I am sure HP Z Series workstation has that option.
Also Dell used to do one, but I can not remember the model.

My old (~10 years) HP/Proliant microserver has pluggable drives, but
not hot-swappable, power has to be off.

[Jeff Gaines]

On 27/12/2024 in message

Post by Joe
On Fri, 27 Dec 2024 21:16:36 +0000

Post by Raj Kundra

Post by Jeff Gaines
Good afternoon all, I need to stop eating for a while so I thought
I'd ask a couple of computer related techy questions!
Firstly I had a frustrating online chat with an alleged human at
Amazon yesterday about a courier who walked up my path, reached the
front door then turned round and went back to his van. I dashed out
as I was expecting a delivery and he said "oh" or something of that
ilk, opened the back door of his van and got my package out. If I
hadn't seen him it would be back at a depot somewhere. I want to
communicate with Amazon about this and the Amazon chat bot/human
has given me an email address allegedly for customer service. I
wanted the transcript but apparently I have to go back to chat and
read it. Is there a way of down-loading it does anybody know? I
suspect it's a template with the conversation held on a database so
the answer is probably "no". In the meantime I printed the screen,
scrolled down, printed the screen etc. and have 5 x .pngs of it.
Second one is I would like a computer case that has removable hard
drives accessible through individual doors on the front, preferably
with a back plane so drives can be slid in and out, something like
https://www.amazon.com/Generic-ZhenLoong-Computer-Workstation-backplane/
dp/B0DH4LYCFK
Ali Express has some but shipping is as much or more as the case!
Don't mind a used server to strip down as long as it will take an
ATX board.
Happy New Year!

I am sure HP Z Series workstation has that option.
Also Dell used to do one, but I can not remember the model.

My old (~10 years) HP/Proliant microserver has pluggable drives, but
not hot-swappable, power has to be off.

That's the sort of thing I want (I already have three) but with the
capacity for, say, 8 readily accessible drives.