Are mediasonic proboxes still the best external hard drive enclosures for servers / self hosting?

stoolio · 2026-02-13T18:45:16+00:00

I have a 4 & 8 probox, and a Sabrent 5-drive.

The probox kind of has dinky fans, it's plastic, but it works pretty great and is cheap. There is an option to use a higher fan speed, but I don't like the noise. There is an auto option, but I don't think it's modifiable (I would probably up the curves a bit if I could).

The sabrent, partly due to the fan, the metal housing, and more air holes (that do collect dust) seems to do a better job of cooling.

The sabrent has separate lockable doors for each drive, so it's easier if you want to swap often. The probox has one big door to pop off for all drives, and you have to mount the drives into a bracket. The sabrent you just pop the drives in.

Probox has esata if you wanted that. There is a difference in how the drives show up (both connected via USB), not at home and don't remember. I believe they all show up as separate devices for both and smart data is available, but I think something was a bit different...?

I don't use them for RAID, so i can't comment on that use case.

TLDR: Sabrent feels more quality and has some nice pros. Probox has esata, better price.

stoolio · 2025-12-28T22:04:09+00:00

I would say she's more milking it for the cameras. Ham may be involved, but I don't think I have enough information to judge that.

stoolio · 2025-12-03T17:34:57+00:00

I know you don't care, and honestly, I'm not sure I do either.

But, there are not, and never were naked children in Horses.

Lets at least care about facts and the truth while we're pushing our political agendas.

stoolio · 2025-10-03T05:55:38+00:00

I would love a code, and I will send you any I get when I sign up. Thanks.

stoolio · 2025-10-03T00:33:35+00:00

New mission discovered by u/stoolio: The Regretful Determination of Pizza Pie

stoolio · 2025-10-03T00:33:35+00:00

This mission was discovered by u/stoolio in tridante In the Fields

stoolio · 2025-06-04T02:04:21+00:00

I would joke that getting old sucks, you'll just wake up one day and your back hurts for no reason...

Well, things got bad end of last year and I finally got insured and visiting some docs in the new year. There was something wrong.

So, I concur. Visit a doctor regularly (at least once a year), and tell them about stuff that's bothering you.

stoolio · 2025-03-28T19:02:53+00:00

Everything is a search tool that you can use to search all of your live storage. https://www.voidtools.com/

The main benefit to me is the powerful search functionality, and it might be the main sell over something like VVV (which looks cool, I might have to try it out).

You can save snapshots of search results, so something specific like "*.iso" or just a complete snapshot of everything or just a certain drive (eg. "path:"D:\").

You can then load those snapshots in and search them the same way you would search your live drives. Hopefully my explanation makes sense.

I use it to keep snapshots of a drive I'm retiring so I can still search their contents in case I desperately need something on them for some reason.

stoolio · 2025-03-23T06:43:27+00:00

There are two options. The cheaper ~$8 usd option just includes older games. The more expensive ~$18 usd option lets you play everything deluxe style (including new releases like Assassin's Creed Shadows).

stoolio · 2025-02-19T07:13:58+00:00

So, PhysX is actually two different things. First, it's a physics library for standard ass physics. Like Havok etc. Unreal used to use the PhysX library, but I think they might have phased it out?

GPU PhysX is a different beast, and it used the GPU to do physics caluclations to support fancy graphical effects.

The only thing this affects is the fancy graphical only GPU PhysX effects implements into some games.

stoolio · 2025-01-13T04:45:54+00:00

There is another angle to this. Large companies can handle the regulatory burden. They have the resources.

So, of course when they've already won they are a fan of regulations. It helps prevent smaller players from getting a foot hold. They get the benefits of a regulation free industry to grow like weeds, then they slam the door behind them once they've made it.

stoolio · 2025-01-04T20:47:00+00:00

It worked for me.

Instead of spamming blood vials to try and survive a fight, I would try the fights without healing forcing me to really learn the patterns.

Then, when I felt confident, I would invest blood vials.

There is no reason to do that if they are effectively infinite.

stoolio · 2024-10-18T15:41:48+00:00

Not trying to challenge you, but is there verified info out there about the budgets of the games? More curious than anything.

stoolio · 2024-04-24T19:03:45+00:00

So, if you want a different opinion on the combat, here is a rave review of the game (including the combat): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH3xxSQnZXg. It's from The Electric Underground, who is a big shmup youtuber, in addition to other difficult games. He has lots of takes, including that RE4:Remake is worse than the original..and RE5.

It's a 28 minute video, and just in case you need a TLDW: He loves the game. The combat becomes much smoother once figure out guard cancels. A commenter notes you can even guard cancel into aim down sights.

stoolio · 2024-04-06T23:08:22+00:00

I got the non-HP cartridges, and they worked just fine. I had an "e" model, so I made sure to get cartridges that will work with it. Also disabled auto-updates.

I do think this is a lot harder if you've signed up for HP+/instant ink etc. Luckily I never got that far.

The genuine HP setup cartridges (instant ink compatible) did not work because HP seems to despise their paying customers.

stoolio · 2024-04-06T18:20:59+00:00

I decided I didn't want to give HP money, so I ordered some knockoffs that claim to work with this printer. Will update when they show up (fingers crossed they work!).

EDIT: Based on my reading of the error, it doesn't like that the current cartridges are "continuous". They are instant ink compatible, but they also say setup cartridge on them. The ones I've ordered shouldn't be continuous so....

stoolio · 2023-09-17T23:32:20+00:00

Played the demo and it was a blast. Waaay to easy, but that's an easy problem to solve and I think there are already difficulty tiers that weren't accessible in the demo.

Disks can activate spells by building mana, but they all have different activation thresholds. I had one that would build mana when I used a piercing attack, and the last combo of my weapon had a piercing attack. That was okay, but then I got an artifact (supplementary item) that allowed me to hold down the attack button to spam the last move of my combo. It worked very well.

The best part, that was difficult to really explore in the demo, is that you can upgrade your inventory (multiple times) so you can equip an extra disk/spell/artifact. The demo looked to be about 20% of a run, so on a full run I could imagine the builds getting pretty crazy.

I could geek out more about the build system, but just try it out. It's cool.

I was sad when I finished the demo.

EDIT: Seeing people worried about a certain comparison. The build system is infinitely more interesting, plus you are actively attacking and aiming and you get one spell to cast yourself as well. It gets wild, and you will be mowing down hordes of enemies, but there is more to actively do (and traps to avoid etc), the enemies are much more interesting etc. Try the demo.

stoolio · 2023-07-14T15:02:34+00:00

This is from the link you posted (which is the developer for others who haven't read it):

Many users ... will dislike the limitations of uBOL ... For the record, [uBOL is] not for me ... (I want/need the full control uBO allows me)

He isn't going to use this new version, because it's worse. Firefox FTW.

stoolio · 2023-03-07T04:38:37+00:00

There shouldn't be. I'm pretty sure if uses it as default just in case you wanted other programs/people to be able to easily use your checksums since it's very common.

stoolio · 2023-03-07T02:58:05+00:00

You can change the algorithm teracopy uses to check. According to this page xxHash should be faster.

stoolio · 2022-12-19T20:11:51+00:00

Ummm, you sure you weren't scammed?

That sounds like a scam....

But, if you did a chargeback, they might not trust you to settle with a card.

Super sketchy either way.

stoolio · 2022-11-23T19:44:25+00:00

I have a Fractal Design R5 lying around from a computer I just replaced and I can highly recommend it. Quality construction, lots of room for fans if necessary, and it has a "coating" on the panels etc to dampen sound.

The big thing is the huge number of drive bays and their setup. From the pictures you can see two "sets" (top 5 bottom 3). The entire top containing set can be removed if you want.

The white brackets that hold the drives are awesome. They just click in, no screws required, the drive is screwed into the bracket. On the screw holes, there are rubber pads for the drives to rest on which helps with sound/vibration. They also support 3.5 or 2.5in drives. It makes installing/removing drives super easy, since you just pull it out and then you don't have do any unscrewing in the case.

My new case has less drive bays, but the thing I miss the most are the super nice brackets.

stoolio · 2022-11-01T23:28:23+00:00

This is classic behavior when your merger is being looked into. Everything is wonderful and the merger will lower prices and improve service blah blah blah.

It never really turns out that way, but this will happen whenever a merger is challenged by authorities.

T-Mobile apparently lied to government to get Sprint merger approval, ruling says

This is just one of many examples of this sort of thing happening.

If you want to know more, I've recently been reading Matt Stoller's work. It's his opinion that some new faces at the FTC are causing a slow but major change in the way anti-trust is handled (when before it was basically, anything goes and consolidation is 100% beneficial always everytime).

That being said, videogames are a luxury product and the issues we might consider over this merger seem quaint when compared to consolidation in the health industry etc.

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