Roger That

There is a large parking building as mentioned above but it gets pretty busy and you'll probably end up on the top floor (in the sun) if you don't arrive early, and even that is busy.

There are a lot of abandoned cars there for some reason, which doesn't help.

I get this and similar captchas a lot, particularly on international (i.e. non-Thai) sites.

Thailand has quite a "dirty" IP space I think so any traffic originating from here is treated with increased suspicion.

Yeah, big capacities seem to be expensive or unavailable here, although you might occasionally find some OK deals on Lazada / Shopee.

Best bet is often to import from Amazon US, UK or Germany, then you don't have to worry about import duty, or you can try AliExpress if you know what you're doing.

Lazada on a desktop browser is not a great experience.

I suspect they don't really care, and I can't really blame them as I'd imagine 95%+ of traffic is via mobile app.

Bottom line is; any storage medium whether it be SSD or HDD can fail at any time. Could be in the first month, could be 20 years, you just don't know.

That's why you must always have at least one backup for any data you don't want to lose.

PS - 2.5 inch SATA drives whether hard disk or SSD can be powered by USB (via a caddy / USB to SATA adapter), regardless of whatever was posted earlier...

Even though the number of wearers has definitely dropped quite a lot in the past several months, I still suspect that Bangkok is the most masked-up city in the world.

Even Tokyo seems to have largely ditched them, based on YouTube street footage from the past couple of months.

The world has moved on, Thailand.

Rama II is a complete mess at the moment with the construction going on.

44 minutes ago, tgw said:

I'm talking exclusively about RAID-1, so no data loss should occur, even if parity is lost.

 

the laptop is not the issue.

I'll use Clevo with built-in Intel software RAID. there are 4 internal bays.

(... and a RTX 3080 with 16GB VRAM !)

 

for the external enclosure, it seems nobody manufactures these, as apparently software RAID is the way to go.

 

so an NVMe enclosure with 2 NVMe slots - that will need 2x2 USB 3.2 to fully use the available bandwidth.

 

You talked about replacing the laptop, that was why I mentioned it. If there are 4 internal bays why do you want an external solution, out of interest?

If it's going to be accessed by more than one device then you might be better served by a NAS. Asustor make an all-flash one.

I understand the RAID1 concept, it just seems that these USB connected external enclosures seem to be flakey based on the reviews you see on Amazon etc. The problem is not so much the SSDs, rather the enclosure ????.

Don't think you'll get good answers here but when I looked into this it seemed that external RAID enclosures probably increase the chance of data loss / downtime rather than reduce it.

Do they make laptops with dual internal SSD (and RAID support)? I'd have thought so, but It's not something I've looked into. I suspect that might be a better option than any external enclosure.

Edit: From a quick Google it seems that several Lenovo Thinkpads may have dual NVMe SSD slots. Good luck!

I've been a Windows user all my life but if I were to buy a laptop right now it'd be an Apple (whatever the entry level one is, probably).

You could try buying the whole cable rather than an adapter?

Probably less likely to break.

On 5/18/2023 at 7:09 PM, Yellowtail said:

Check the wattage rating of each device. I know my printer draws quite a bit. 

 

I have this Schnider, it will run my computer and monitor, but not the printer too. 

 

Schneider UPS BV650I-MS 650VA/375Watt ชไนเดอร์ เครื่องสำรองไฟ ระบบ Line Interactive ควบคุมแรงดันไฟฟ้าอัตโนมัติโดย Auto Voltage Regulator (AVR) | Lazada.co.th

Surely your printer doesn't draw that much in standby, though, which I'd have thought is all that matters unless you're printing all the time...?

On 5/13/2023 at 11:59 PM, Tiger1980 said:

I would like to know why Taxi fairs seem to be higher in HuaHin than elsewhere in Thailand. Any idea?

*Phuket has entered the chat*

The desktop experience on both is garbage, they are both 100% app focussed (in line with the local market, I guess).

The search is not great on either. They push things they want to sell, rather than what you want. I assume this is by design.

Generally I prefer Lazada because it accepts foreign cards and I've found the overall experience to be slightly better. Shopee is often slightly cheaper for a given product, though.

I tried to request a refund on Shopee recently for an item I paid for via QR code and the seller subsequently changed the description, making it a different product to the one I ordered. The process to try and obtain a refund was horrendous and not worth the time. I ended up settling for a voucher rather than jump through their ridiculous ID verification hurdles. Won't be making that mistake again.

Hopefully a refund would be more straightforward if I paid on card but I don't know for sure. I seem to recall getting a refund from Lazada in the past and it wasn't as bad.

2 hours ago, Pink Mist said:

According to many articles a VPN can protect and make your transactions safer.

 

Is a VPN safe for online banking? - Surfshark

 

 

That's an article from a commercial VPN provider extolling the virtues of using a VPN. Hardly surprising.

2 hours ago, steven100 said:

yes ... correct,  very small .... it was ok for what I needed up until this damn update came along,  anyway I'll copy everything except windows over to my HDD 500gb ... then i may take it to the shop to upgrade/increase the flash memory from 64GB to max .... and see what else he can upgrade.

I was typing out a long reply about why you need a new PC but I'll just cut to the chase and say...

You need a new PC. Don't waste time and money on trying to upgrade that one.

8 hours ago, Henryford said:

Are HDDs expensive here? I recently bought a 5 TB WD drive from the WD shop on Lazada, about 2500 baht $74. Seems really cheap to me, half the price of those in the UK.

Edit Amazon sells them for $108 in the USA

Is that for an external? Agreed, seems like a good price for a new one.

Hard drives in general seem to be priced similarly to western Europe here, IMO.

Higher end models / large capacities are more expensive than Europe though, that goes for IT equipment in general here in my experience.

Of course they're cheaper in USA, almost all branded consumer electronics are.

6 hours ago, lelapin said:

Do all new flash drives work with Windows 11 or is there something I need to check?

Any (legit) one will work.

Don't get the suspiciously cheap offerings on Lazada, Shopee, they're all fake.

I don't think the value ratio is good on 500GB external drives any more (if they even still make them?). Best to look at 1 or 2TB portable drives from Toshiba, Seagate or WD.

Looks like you can pick up a 1TB Toshiba Canvio from Advice for 1380THB which seems reasonable enough. Or 2TB for not much more...

Bill Gates's greatest accomplishment.

1 hour ago, Spectator2020 said:

 

Sharlyn’s body was eventually discovered on 25 January 2004 outside in the jungle and it was in a very bad state with several people reporting that birds had pecked at it.  There were also reports of injuries to her body.

 

 

Typo or other mistake here and should be 25 January 2005?

49 minutes ago, fdsa said:

unfortunately this is not right, some SSDs are even slower than the HDD.

Go on...?