TheMightyEthan Posted September 28, 2012 Report Share Posted September 28, 2012 @Mal: My first step would be to try a different HDD/SSD if you have one laying around. If the problem persists then it's not the SSD, and if it goes away then it is. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Jack Posted October 9, 2012 Report Share Posted October 9, 2012 I have a question about downloading PC games. It's mostly for curiosity's sake but I'd like to know anyway. So the system requirements for X-Com said it takes up 20 GB. I deleted some stuff to make some room for it and ended up with between 50-60 GB of free space by the time steam finished preloading it. Then when I unpacked it, my free space briefly shot down to 39 GB before it went back up to 49.9 GB. The final installed game is a little over 13 GB. So what's up with the extra 7 GB? Does the computer need 7 GB just to unpack it? Is that a figure they put in mind for future DLC? Do the devs just overestimate the system requirements to give themselves a buffer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MasterDex Posted October 9, 2012 Report Share Posted October 9, 2012 A bit from column A, a bit from column C, and things like DirectX, .Net framework that may or may not be installed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted October 9, 2012 Report Share Posted October 9, 2012 Windows also likes to have 15% of a hard drive as freespace too. But yeah it's mainly an overestimate so you have enough space. I wish steam would give a download size though so I know how much/little it'll need. Though I know it's an issue with Source games as they download different amounts depending on which you already have installed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheFlyingGerbil Posted November 6, 2012 Report Share Posted November 6, 2012 (edited) well, I'm on my Mum's laptop because I tried to install Windows 8 on mine and it's completely borked.I bought the upgrade download from MS and I tried installing from a USB stick, did a custom install cos I wanted a fresh start. It seemed to install fine and said it needed to restart, and I was really pleased how easy and fast it was, but then the Windows 7 bird startup screen showed and I thought, 'uh oh'. It said windows needed to repair itself, couldn't find a problem and should restart, and it just keeps doing that in a loop. The windows 8 repair on the insallation USB stick doesn't find anything either. All I can think to do now is reinstall windows 7 but I'm loathe to do that. edit: If I choose to boot from my second hdd, it seems to be loading fine. The thing is, I don't and never have had an OS installed on my second HDD, so I have no idea why it would boot from that disk. Edited November 7, 2012 by TheFlyingGerbil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted November 7, 2012 Report Share Posted November 7, 2012 Did you format before installing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheFlyingGerbil Posted November 7, 2012 Report Share Posted November 7, 2012 I didn;t the first time I tried installing it, I did the second time. It ended with the same result. I just need now to work out how to get it to load from my main HDD the OS is installed on and to stop it thinking i have three installs of windows 8. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eleven Posted December 7, 2012 Report Share Posted December 7, 2012 I was wondering: As a Windows user, I format my drives in NTFS, including external Hard Drives. For the sole reason that they support files > 4GB (backup of Steam games, Movie rips, etc). Problem is, I have to move files to my other external drive formatted in FAT32 so I can plug it in to my PS3 or any other computer, using Linux or Mac. Now FAT32 is supported by all, but why is it that we still have this 4GB file size limit? Actually, I don't really need to know the answer to that, it just seems to me that we should have something better than that by now. What I'd really like to know though, NTFS can be used in Linux, but what about on a Mac? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted December 7, 2012 Report Share Posted December 7, 2012 Hmm... what does the PS3 read? Does it only do FAT32? I'm kind of curious as to what you need to accomplish. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eleven Posted December 7, 2012 Report Share Posted December 7, 2012 (edited) Oh. I got a Mac Mini for stuff I need to do. So in addition to having just the PS3 read my HD, I now have a Mac I have to consider when deciding how external drives are formatted, which got me to thinking why is there still a limit on a FAT32 drive and why is there nothing better than that that is universally supported. I just want to format my hard drives in some universal format where I could store files > 4gb. The PS3 reads only FAT32 disks, to answer the question. I solved that problem by just streaming stuff to it. Edited December 7, 2012 by eleven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuchikoma Posted December 7, 2012 Report Share Posted December 7, 2012 It's a technical limitation of FAT32. And if I remember right, OS X can read a modern NTFS volume, but will not alter files on it. If you're only storing large files, you could also split them up with various utilities such as archivers (WinRAR, probably 7zip) and just expand them to an NTFS drive temporarily? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eleven Posted December 7, 2012 Report Share Posted December 7, 2012 Yeah, that's an option. It's useful for storing backups, but not media or disc images though, as you've said, for storing them only. But I guess those are uncommon enough. The thing is, I may have to reformat my drives, and I wanted to see if there is a better option than FAT32. I had hoped I would just be able to mount my NTFS drive on a Mac and I don't have to move my files around. It's not like NTFS is new. It's been around for a while there should be reliable solutions for it (I did search and it looks like there is one, but I don't know how reliable, as people are still saying you can't do that on a mac). It's my fault for not sticking to the standard! Goddamn proprietary shit ruins everything I swear if I ever own a gadget like... oh wait nevermind. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted December 7, 2012 Report Share Posted December 7, 2012 NTFS is owned by Microsoft, that's why it's not well-supported on other platforms. Like fuchi said, the 4 GB file limit is a technical limitation of Fat32. It just cannot support larger files, and in order to do so we'd need a new standard. I don't know why there hasn't been one developed though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuchikoma Posted December 7, 2012 Report Share Posted December 7, 2012 (edited) You could also partition a disk to have a bit of one format, a bit of another... I have one for instance that's 80GB of FAT32 to backup my PS3, and the rest in HFS Plus(?) for Apple's Time Machine backups. If you find an extension (is that term current?) to work with NTFS on your Mac, I don't see why it shouldn't work... I think it's pretty easy to port from Linux to OS X (BSD) as I understand it, and there are working Linux drivers that can manipulate NTFS. I used one just the other day to edit a Win7 registry file from a Linux boot disk. Edited December 7, 2012 by fuchikoma Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted December 7, 2012 Report Share Posted December 7, 2012 (edited) I was going to mention partitions myself. It's really the only viable way to work with all of these different things at once without the limitations of FAT32. I used one of the NTFS writing apps a few years ago and it wasn't very good... but I'm sure they've improved a lot since then since it was on OSX 10.4 or something. Edited December 7, 2012 by Faiblesse Des Sens Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted December 8, 2012 Report Share Posted December 8, 2012 FAT32s 4GB limit is right their in it's name, it's 32-bit. Same as 32-bit OSes only supporting 4GB's of RAM. It's in huge use because it's so old, and only recently been kinda less useful with the advent of large ISOs and HD video. Back when FAT32 came out 4GBs files were about as likely as we think of 4TB files today. As mentioned NTFS is Microsoft's own format, though many Linux's have r/w of it. I would have assumed OSX does given it has Bootcamp (wiki implies recent versions of OSX have NTFS r/w capabilities but requires fiddling with non-trivial settings to enable..which sounds about right). I'm to understand ext2 is supported by most OSes, though that doesn't include PS3 (personally I have a 16GB pen drive for quick copies to PS3, and just stream everything else right from Windows PC. Format a hDD as n when I want to do a back-up of it). Which is the other option, get a NAS or something instead and then it won't matter what formats the computer system uses, the NAT should still dish it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheFlyingGerbil Posted December 17, 2012 Report Share Posted December 17, 2012 (edited) What difference does it make if you download a 64 or 32 bit version of a digital audio workstation (reaper)? Is it just the amount of memory it can use? It seems like there would be less problems with the 32 bit version in getting it to encode to MP3s just from a bit of reading, and I think he only has 4GB of RAM anyway, so is it safer to stick with the 32 bit version? edit: never mind, think I'll stick with the 32 but version for him, it's most compatible with any add-ons he may want to try. It needs to be foolproof as I'm the best he's got to help if he runs in to problems, heaven help him! Edited December 17, 2012 by TheFlyingGerbil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted December 17, 2012 Report Share Posted December 17, 2012 Yep. General rule is that if you have 4GB of RAM or less just stick with 32-bit stuff. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strangelove Posted December 18, 2012 Author Report Share Posted December 18, 2012 http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-SpinPoint-5400rpm-2-5-Inch-HN-M101MBB/dp/B0053YLTBC/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pdT1_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2OOX424S4Y4R6&coliid=I2C8SVQ1JQ7T07 $77.99 for a 1TB HDD, is that the best price Im going to find for that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted December 18, 2012 Report Share Posted December 18, 2012 A quick comparison to NewEgg shows that the price is solid. However, Amazon reviewers aren't nearly as dilligent as NewEgg ones so you might want to find the same drive on NewEgg and see what people think of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strangelove Posted December 18, 2012 Author Report Share Posted December 18, 2012 Yeah. Its 3 stars(eggs). Ugh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted December 18, 2012 Report Share Posted December 18, 2012 Sort it by time of ownership and read what people say. Also with HDDs you should care about the warranty so see what people say about that. That's also one reason you might want to go with NewEgg over some third party on Amazon. Compare stuff like that. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrowKnow Posted December 28, 2012 Report Share Posted December 28, 2012 (edited) So.. I plan on upgrading my mobo, cpu and ram Current Specs: CPU: Phenom X4 9850 Mobo: MS-7548 (Aspen) GPU: XFX Radeon 6870 RAM: 8gigs PSU: Antec EarthWatts 650W Case: BitFenix Merc Alpha Black Mid ATX to PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Canada Computers) CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS5X Performa CPU Cooler ($4.99 @ NCIX) Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($129.99 @ Canada Computers) Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($34.99 @ Canada Computers) Total: $369.96 (Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.) (Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-12-28 00:09 EST-0500) Thoughts? Edited December 28, 2012 by CrowKnow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted December 28, 2012 Report Share Posted December 28, 2012 I have a 6850 and I'm looking at a similar upgrade, actually. I'll need to throw in a case though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luftwaffles Posted December 28, 2012 Report Share Posted December 28, 2012 I think the 2500K is a generation old now. I have the same CPU and love it, but there might be the 2550k (think that's what its called) that'll give you slightly better performance for about the same amount. Same socket too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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