disaster! - no really it is!

[arthur.daley]

I was in two minds about whether to put this in the software section but thought I might get a better response here. Had a quick trawl through the various forums looking for relevant information but surprisingly turned up very little.

After a year of being out of dye sublimation and doing very little I went to knock out a couple of mates rates mugs in preparation for seeing if I can start drumming up a worthwhile volume of paying work. However the SSD* in my desktop PC has just failed - 2 weeks out of warranty ( Data is all safely backed up but not the OS. I have another SSD to put in and I am about to run Dells recovery software to reinstall a factory copy of Windows 10. I have all of the software I need on disc to get a basic usable system up and running

So far so good

However, I now discover that Powerdriver is no longer available from Sawgrass (I know there are 'better' ways of printing from my 7100 but Powerdriver does everything I need it to and is so easy to use).

I don't suppose anyone happens to have a copy of Powerdriver they could make available?

The Sawgrass web site isn't exactly clear about this but it implies that I would have to use its design software to print - which as well as being really inconvenient and another piece of software to learn, is something you have to buy/rent? Is this really the case or have gotten the wrong end of the stick?

Of course I won't be able to get any sense out of Sawgrass until at least Tuesday and it would appear that the excellent team they had in Sheffield are no longer there and I will have to deal with Sawgrass USA - bugger.


Anyone able to help????

Never rains but it pours (




*if you are reliant on SSDs in your systems and don't know how they or any of the other flash type drives available work and how they fail, you would be well advised to consult google and gen up on the subject. It was a real eye opener and not in a good way (




regards


Arthur


"some days you are the dog, some day you are the lamp post"

[quadrant]

Hi Arthur,

Is this what you are looking for:
https://isub-supplies.co.uk/self-support/powerdriver/

Regards,
David

[arthur.daley]

Hi

Thats exactly what I am looking for! Thanks for the heads up, much appreciated.

Now if only I could get the piece of junk Dell peddle as their recovery software to work!



regards


Arthur

Hi Arthur,

Is this what you are looking for:
https://isub-supplies.co.uk/self-support/powerdriver/

Regards,
David

[arthur.daley]

I may have been a bit premature in saying 'so far so good'

Installation all going well until I get to the bit where I am supposed to register Powerdriver with Sawgrass. I click the box to get the registration code but it just generates an error

[ATTACH=CONFIG]6612[/ATTACH]


Am I once again stuffed until Sawgrass opens on Tuesday?

[webtrekker]

SSD's are great when they work, but fail without notice, unlike HDD's which usually throw up errors well before a complete fail.

[arthur.daley]

I never realised they were dye based devices and as such, prone to instability. Whilst poking around on the Dell support web pages I came across an item where Dell explained how they worked and the problems with them - seems they literally wear out if the drive persistently writes to the same parts of the drive. They also reckoned that 3 years was as much as you could hope for with an SSD

SSD's are great when they work, but fail without notice, unlike HDD's which usually throw up errors well before a complete fail.

[raydavies]

"...seems they literally wear out if the drive persistently writes to the same parts of the drive".

It's my understanding that this is not such a problem with bigger SSDs which is why I swapped my 250GB, for a 1Terrabyte SSD.

Ray

[arthur.daley]

thats pretty much what Dell recommended. The software controlling the SSD spreads the data across the whole drive to reduce the wear and tear on the dye layer - the idea being that if you only have a finite (but not precisely known in advance) number of read write cycles you get a longer life out of a bigger drive. I have replaced the now dead 250 Samsung drive with a 480 Kingston.

[arthur.daley]

Well after many hours of cursing and swearing I discover that the recovery and repair software from Dell, which is supposed to load up an OS with all the drivers to exactly match the custom configuration of my PC when it left Dell, doesn't actually work. Found a trail of woe from dozens of disappointed Dell owners who couldn't get it it to work. I just wish I had discovered the wailing before I sent umpteen hours fannying about (

At least the direct download from Microsoft actually worked - eventually.

Started once 'er indoors had gone to bed and I could finally get some peace and quiet at 11pm last night and by just before 6am finally had a working computer. Lesson learned - I really should have taken it to some spotty kid on the estate and put £25 quid in his sweaty hands and left him to it! Only thing is god knows what else he might have embedded into the OS!

Hi

Thats exactly what I am looking for! Thanks for the heads up, much appreciated.

Now if only I could get the piece of junk Dell peddle as their recovery software to work!



regards


Arthur