Is there any way for me to upgrade my computer before making a backup?

I was down to 36 KB free on my 160 GB c:\ drive the other day, I've already deleted over 10 GB of things I really wanted to keep and would prefer to not have to delete anything else.

I was ready to start burning my videos to DVD to free up some space (I received my 100 DVD-Rs and 400 disc DVD player where my 130GB of videos will go leaving me that much free space on my c:). So I burned my first one and test it in the DVD player only to find another problem in Nero, for some reason it reverted to the 1st frame of each of the 7 videos for the menu buttons instead of the frames I spent 30 minutes choosing out of each video, so I'm now installing ULead DVD maker (whatever it's called) onto my printer's card read with nearly 1 GB free (it won't fit in my hard drive).

But I'm now wondering if there's anyway I can upgrade my worst than horrible condition pc before doing this, the problem is I have RAID 0 so I assume as soon as the drives are disconnected from this mobo all my data is gone, so I can't upgrade. I would normally backup to my 90 GB Sony tapes but the nvdia chipset won't let me use my tape drive so it's been a decoration for the 2 years I've had this mobo from hell.

Is there anyway I can upgrade my PC while keeping my data? Or should I try to burn my DVDs with the PC in this condition (it works fine but takes 3-6 hours to convert the videos for 1 disc, I have around 20 DVDs worth to burn).

Now before anyone says it, I very well know a computer can't run properly with 0.000001% free space, I know it's crazy to have to install software onto my printer because of this, and I know I should have a backup (I did backup my most improtant things to my pocket pc), but my current situations prevents me from doing any of that. If the potentially great NeroVision Express program didn't have so many bugs that I have to make a 5 page long checklist of bugs to make sure I worked around them all then I wouldn't be in this mess, but having hundreds of videos to burn, I'm not going through that long a checklist for each, too bad because I really wanted to like NeroVision, hopefully ULead will be better.

Nothing..Nothing..Nothing..will work properly in the situation you describe. Get yourself an external drive and move things on to it..

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Originally Posted by geoscomp

Nothing..Nothing..Nothing..

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Sad but true....

Thats what I thought, if I can get ulead to run from my printer then ill be able to free space by making DVDs, else I'll go buy a hard drive and return it when im done.

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

Thats what I thought, if I can get ulead to run from my printer then ill be able to free space by making DVDs, else I'll go buy a hard drive and return it when im done.

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Why return it when you are done? You obviously need more space, and will prolly need more in the future. USB drives are fast, cheap and reliable. Kinda cool, too... :rolleyes:

If you had fully read my message you would see that my 130GB+ of videos are going in my new 400 DVD chagner which holds nearly 4 terabytes of data and more reliably than hard drives, all that for only $329 which would barely get me 400GB if I got a hard drive, if I change my hard drives, it will be for smaller ones, because 30 GB will probably be more than enough when all my videos are in the 400 DVD player (which will still have at leas 95% free space with my 130GB of videos in it), and I have 160 GB now.

I spent a long time deciding what would be the best storage solution for my videos and I somehow recently came accross these 400 DVD changers (I don't remember how/where), I had seen them 1-2 years ago but not owning a DVD writer back then I never saw any use for them (I have 3 DVD movies), but now that I have a DVD writer, I immediately saw the huge potential this has to help an incredible amount of videos, music and pictures (it supports CDs, SACDs, VCDs, SVCDs, DVDs and supports mp3 and jpg files on CD, but not on DVD for some silly reason, I would have liked to put ~4000 songs per DVD which would allow up to 1,600,000 songs stored in the machine if it was used only with mp3s), it also has a high definition upscaler and digital HDMI/DVI video out at 1920x1080 resolution (6 times DVD resolution). Thats why I choose to get a 400 DVD player for a storage solution, its the cheapest way to hold 4 terabytes and is much more reliable than hard drives which can crash at any time.

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Originally Posted by Guts3d

Why return it when you are done? You obviously need more space, and will prolly need more in the future. USB drives are fast, cheap and reliable. Kinda cool, too... :rolleyes:

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Not to mention if you move data onto a hard drive, then back off, I hope you don't mind the fact that whoever gets that drive next can quite possibly recover all of your data.

I would definately low level format it after if I did that, but I'll figure out a way to get out of this mess without needing another drive. I just got ULead installed onto my harddrive (it was way too slow from the 1GB SD card in the printer). It can't possibly be more buggy than nero so hopefully I'll be able to start making my DVDs soon.

Well ULead sure beats the crap out of Nero, it's 100000 times more user friendly, what took 5 minutes to do in Nero takes 5 seconds in ULead.

Glad to here you found something that works for you.

FYI - I support Nero on over 100 PC's at the moment, and haven't seen or had a single bug reported.

I explained in my other thread how to reproduce these bugs, but the major problem in NeroVision express is that it's extremely hard to use (either a 100 pixel wide slider to select a position in a 2 hour video which gives you like a 5 minutes skip per pixel you move the slider, or you have to frame by frame with the keyboard arrows which can take a thousands clicks to get to the right place, both of these make it extremely irritating and time consuming to remove ads and select the scenes I want for the menus), ULead offers youthe following methods of moving through the video:
-Easily adjustable quick skip buttons that skip back or forward the number of seconds you chose
-Shuttle control allows advancing or reversing video from 0.5x to 32x in either direction
-On screen jog wheel allows you to drag your mouse over it in either direction and the video advances or reverses one frame for each pixel the mouse moves depending on the direction you're moving the mouse
-You can use the scroll wheel on the mouse to frame-by-frame the video (this doesn't work in Nero)

ULead DVD also has a "multi trim" option that allows you to cut out multiple parts of the videos at once, this is great for removing ads from my TV recordings, in Nero, each ad I removes cuts the video into seperate parts, so to remove the ads of a 1 hour program, I need to cut each video in 6 or 7 peices.

Since I have probably over 100 hours of TV shows I want to remove the ads from, this software will save me hours of work by letting me remove the ads so much faster. For DVD authoring, ULead DVD definitely beats NeroVision.

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

I would definately low level format it after if I did that, but I'll figure out a way to get out of this mess without needing another drive. .

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So how are you getting on with making life deliberately difficult for yourself then ? :eek2: - have you managed to figure a way ? Anybody using raid 0, wants another drive present anyway to do periodic backups on, btw newer motherboards let you do RAID 10 (mirror & stripe, with 3 disks - much better balance of risk vs speed ;) so bear that in mind when looking for next time perhaps?)

& another btw, ulead is much friendlier than nero, but its quite a bit slower imho.

I do have 90GB tape drive for backups which nvidia turned into a nice decoration of flashing lights in the front of my PC, once I get a proper motherboard it will actually be able to backup to my tapes, and this is really the only reason I'm upgrading, so that I get a motherboard that works with my tape drive (and I've proveen nvidia chipsets are the problem which is not only why I don't want another nvidia chipset, its why I cant get another nvidia chipset).

What I'll do, since unfortunately ULead can't seem to burn direct to DVD without using the hard drive like nero can (which is how I successfully burnt DVDs with less than 100MB free), so I'll move 10 or so GBs to DVDs but unconverted, leaving me enough space to convert some videos to DVD and delete them, then convert the unconverted DVDs to playable DVDs.

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

I do have 90GB tape drive for backups which nvidia turned into a nice decoration of flashing lights in the front of my PC, once I get a proper motherboard it will actually be able to backup to my tapes, and this is really the only reason I'm upgrading, so that I get a motherboard that works with my tape drive (and I've proveen nvidia chipsets are the problem which is not only why I don't want another nvidia chipset, its why I cant get another nvidia chipset)..

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Ok then if this is the only reason why you want to upgrade, did you ever try a seperate IDE controller card for your tape drives to connect to ? $10 for an additional controller card, might well get you out of the situation you are in now, & mean you don't 'need' another m/b.

& have you ever thought of stopping blaming this on nvidia's chipset, & thought that plain & simple lack of bios support for what is an 'unusual class of atapi communication' (how many folks have got tape drives, hooked up via ide ?) - might well be to blame ? It'd be my number one suspect - & generally motherboard manufacturers don't like this fact & are often quite happy to work on a revised bios in such instances (infact have you flashed the bios on this m/b at all.. ever ?)

Actually upgrading will solve another very iritating issue, as I said in another thread, the line in/aux audio on this mobo plays very weak, so when I want to watch TV I have to put my receiver on volume 36 to get the volume I normally get when it's at 12, so if I forget to turn it back down after watching TV any sound will wake up all the neighbours.

Also, I've tested the tape drive on several PCs, and it only had the problem on the ones with an nVidia chipset. This combined with the fact that each and every update nVidia released further worstened or added problems (one caused the nvidia volume control app to crash immediately when I tried to open it, another caused BSODs whenever I went to cahnge the built in nVidia LAN settings) and at least one rendered my PC completely unbootable.

All these added togheter is why I never want to buy an nVidia product ever again, maybe I got a defective motherboard but these problem's don't sound like a hardware defect. I'm sure if any of you had the same experience I had with nVidia you also would have them on your blacklist. I will never excuse them for adding bugs in each update, causing my PC to not start and preventing me from backing up.

I do realize many people highly recommend the nVidia motherboards, perhaps these bugs only applied to my specific model, but there's no way I'm risking going through all this again, which is why my next motherboard which I will be buying very soon absolutely can't have an nVidia chipset, yes maybe it might work, but with the number of problems I've had I'm not risking it again, again if you had the problems I had you'd be bashing them just as much, this is my 2nd worst mo... nope, this is my worst motherboard I ever had, I was going to say my first PC I built with the Ali Magik chipset was worst, but no, it wasn't THAT bad, even though it crashed daily... or maybe it was.

Given the thousands of people that use Nvidia motherboards/chipsets/products every day without problems, I'm thinking the problem may actually roost closer to home..perhaps Nvidia doesnt like no virtual memory?

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

Thats what I thought, if I can get ulead to run from my printer then ill be able to free space by making DVDs, else I'll go buy a hard drive and return it when im done.

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Oh man the lameness abounds
Your saying you will take a perfectly good product (hardrive) with no defects, use it, then return it as if it wasnt functioning correctly?
And you said you would low level it.
I mean are ya gonna tell them its defective or maybe yer just gonna say" I dont like it?
LAME LAME LAME is all I have to say and i think others would agree, considering we have our own shops and could easily be on the buisness end of a ripoff like that
That man is a 10 on the butt scale

:butt: :butt: :butt: :butt: :butt: :butt: :butt: :butt: :butt: :butt:

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Originally Posted by Ferrit

..Your saying you will take a perfectly good product (hardrive) with no defects, use it, then return it as if it wasnt functioning correctly?
And you said you would low level it.
I mean are ya gonna tell them its defective or maybe yer just gonna say" I dont like it?
LAME..

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That'd cost you a 15% re-stocking fee over here ! & for that I'm prepared to not call you LAME .. least not to your face :devil:

(irrational 'dislike' of products though is not to be mocked [well not too much anyways ! :eek2: ], I mean I feel just the same about soundblaster products & you can't knock them for amount of sales .. so according to your logic, they should all be great, but they are still 'pooh' despite that !!! :flames: {& don't tell me they ain't ! -:p as I won't believe you ! :thumbs2: } )

Guess i should explain confus-er. Here we have a couple stores like London Drugs and Staples and Fututre shop where people can and do just that.
Buy something use it and then take it back.
Those stores rarely would charge you a restocking fee so people tend to take advantage of it

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Originally Posted by Ferrit

Buy something use it and then take it back.
Those stores rarely would charge you a restocking fee so people tend to take advantage of it

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We get that - not computer stuff, but TVs, stereos, etc come to the repair shop as Store Stock from some of the big outlets. Absolutely nothing wrong with some of them them. Sometimes they've got the customer's original docket in the box - they've used them for the school holidays or whatever then got their money back.

The stores put them out on the bargain tables.

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Originally Posted by Ferrit

Guess i should explain confus-er. Here we have a couple stores like London Drugs and Staples and Fututre shop where people can and do just that.
Buy something use it and then take it back..

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I meant if you bought it from me (personally - my bad use of 'over here' ;)) & then said 'it doesn't work'- as we too have some stores who 'don't care' (seemingly about restock costs) but they all tend to be places I'd never buy from in the first place, as they accomodate these costs in the original price - but you can't be serious .. there's never a chain called 'London Drugs' ?!? - I should get me some ! :devil:

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Originally Posted by Ferrit

Guess i should explain confus-er. Here we have a couple stores like London Drugs and Staples and Fututre shop where people can and do just that.
Buy something use it and then take it back.
Those stores rarely would charge you a restocking fee so people tend to take advantage of it

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Exactly. WalMart is famous for that. They actually had to introduce a policy for air conditioners, because people were buying them, using them all summer and then returning them. I couldn't imagine having the balls to do something that blatently ignorant.

But I do see where Ferrit is coming from here, as we used to have a family PC shop, and nothing was more irritating then people like clickhere2surf, who would buy something, use it and then return it. Even if it is returned in working order, you can never sell it again for the original price, so you're out some of your money, which just sucks.

I'd say I'm suhocked, but........

http://www.londondrugs.com/Cultures/...htm?storeid=33

Some people find the re-stocking fee cheaper than renting a similar unit, and if they return it with a sob story, they might wave the re-stock fee. It pushes prices up for the rest of us...