Just got back from the store. The psu is a heavy sucker @ 5.8 lbs!

The beast is in. It is huge and I honestly didn't think it would fit, but it did (NJ). The ginormous cooling fan is really quiet. The PATA dvd burner and floppy drives appear to be working (before, using either made it freeze up). Next step is to connect the old hdd drive and see if that boots. If it does, see if xp works any better (but I think it's damaged), asuming it doesn't, or work well enough, essay a repair install (so I don't have to reinstall drivers & apps). If that fails, reformat the partition and clean install.

I might have found a cause for some of my hdd woes: http://www.wdc.com/global/products/features/?id=7&language=1

I'd never even heard of this, but apparently after formatting a new sata hdd from xp, you need to run an alignment utility (wich explains why I always get 'partition doesn't align with cylinders' reports in fdisk -l).

The utility probably won't work too well on my existing layout (numerous ntfs & ext4 partitions, though the table was made in xp) and there's a risk nuking the data on it, so I won't try it there.

XP? 8-O

Bloody hell, drive alignment, I remember having to do that years ago with a large drive and XP. It really was years ago, because that's how old XP is!!! Stop using it.

Bloody hell, XP? The world moved down to Vista, up to W7, down to W8, noodled around for W8.1, and then on up to W7 years ago.

Get with the times daddy-o. Currently I'm nursing a boner over W10.

My pc still has agp, ide and a floppy drive, all in use. I can' t use half the connectors on the new psu. It's like a vintage car.

And they'll all work with Windows 7.

I don't have Windows 7.

Speak to Jim.

Bull /shit/ you still use the floppy drive. Whatever response you come back with I'm refusing to believe it.

Mainly for a backup mbr pointing to my bootloader. I touch it so rarely I have to dive into the rubbish tip that is my real desktop to find the boot floppy I made last September.

I probably will be getting a legit copy sometime in the next 3-6 months, along with new components. At least I can cross a psu and hdd off the bottom line when it comes to that.

Just get Win 10 in that case. But seriously, stop using XP. Windows 7 is 6 years old already.

I don't believe you. Not least because there are about a billion better ways to fix a fucked mbr than using a floppy which, by the time you need it again, is invariably de magnetised and useless.

OK, well you've probably had to to do this fewer times than me, and you won't ever need to do it again anyway.*

Trust me, it's the easiest way to hit a bootloader, boot into linux and restore the mbr after xp nuked it... if your mb is not usb-bootable, like mine.

Saves faffing around with tedious slow boot from a live disk, and chroots.

It's true the boot floppy could die in the meantime, but it's a doddle to recreate (best to test it first though).


*unless you need to resq gran's old pc. Oh wait, gran's vey unlikely to have a dual boot with linux. Never mind.
 

On a proper computer I have never let myself do a single drive dual boot. I didn't trust any OS to live happily with another. I always used a totally separate drive and picked the drive to boot from at POST.

OK.

My arse is way older than six years, and it still works fine.

I bet it's had its moments though.

I somehow doubt it.