On 15 Sep 2025, Nightfox said the following...

I don't mind having an optical drive inside my PC, and I actually
somewhat prefer that. If I used an external optical drive, then every time I'd want to rip a disc, I'd have to go get it and plug it in, and then when I'm done, unplug it and put it away. And my PC has plenty of SATA ports.. I only have one other drive using a SATA port, which is a HDD (and my boot drive is an m.2 SSD, which uses its own port).

yeah, i usually keep the drive on my desk, and attached (though i turn it's power supply off when not in use) .. which seems silly, but i do use every single sata port (all six!) and both of the nvme ports. not quite to the point where i've started collecting external hard drives and powered usb hubs to daisy-chain all that stuff together but.. ;)

It actually seems odd to me that it's difficult to find a new PC case these days with exposed 5.25" drive bays, or even 3.5" drive bays. In addition to an optical drive, I usually like to have an internal card reader as well. I have several devices that use an SD card for storage, and I've found it useful to be able to have an internal card reader for those in my PC and not need yet another external thing to plug/unplug
when I need to use it.

amazon has lots of them.. from Antec for example. i think they just keep manufacturing the same old designs. might not work if you have to use a giant cooling solution to keep a 12 core cpu happy though. for a while i wanted to get a rackmount case, but it's a bit impractical for a desk unless you build the rack above or below it (or have lots of other gear that needs to go there too).

In the past, I've had smartphones that had a micro-SD slot, and I'd use a micro-SD to SD adapter to use in my PC's card reader to copy files
to/from the micro-SD card for my phone. However, many smartphones these days don't have a micro-SD slot anymore, which I think is a bummer.. My

for now, with the right version of android, you could use Termux and start an sshd from the prompt.. then connect over the network to your phone with sftp. i didn't catch if you were a linux user, but jmtpfs works pretty nice too if you just plug in the phone (usb again.. yeah)

since we're on the topic of optical media, i thought this was pretty interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJzpp_Xr3SQ

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Re: Re: random stuff. was: Ripping DVD/BD in Linux
By: fusion to Nightfox on Mon Sep 15 2025 08:23 pm

It actually seems odd to me that it's difficult to find a new PC case
these days with exposed 5.25" drive bays, or even 3.5" drive bays. In

amazon has lots of them.. from Antec for example. i think they just keep manufacturing the same old designs.

True. I was thinking of newer cases, but there are older PC cases you can still buy. And when I built my current main desktop PC in 2019, I found a case that I wanted, and later I realized the case was released in 2012. :)

Recently though, I've heard there have been at least a couple newer PC cases introduced that have 5.25" bays, so that's a plus. Off the top of my head though, I don't remember the brands.

might not work if you have to use a
giant cooling solution to keep a 12 core cpu happy though. for a while i

My 2012 PC case is fairly spacious and has room for a liquid CPU cooler (which I'm using) as well as plenty of room for a big GPU. It's a full tower case, which is probably the biggest PC case I've ever had - It's fairly bulky, and in the future, I think I'd somewhat prefer to have a smaller PC case again. My current case is a Corsair 750D Airflow Edition:

https://shorturl.at/RU45d

I moved about 5 years ago.. My PC was previously in an upstairs room, and now I'm in a 2nd-story apartment. At my age, carrying my fully-assembled PC in that case downstairs to my car and then back up a flight of stairs again (to my apartment) wasn't entirely enjoyable. :)

wanted to get a rackmount case, but it's a bit impractical for a desk unless you build the rack above or below it (or have lots of other gear that needs to go there too).

Yeah, currently I have my main PC on the floor, on top of a rectangular piece of particle board from a computer desk I used to have years ago. I have my PC on the floor since it won't fit in the tower compartment of my currnet computer desk. :)

In the past, I've had smartphones that had a micro-SD slot, and I'd use a
micro-SD to SD adapter to use in my PC's card reader to copy files
to/from the micro-SD card for my phone. However, many smartphones these
days don't have a micro-SD slot anymore, which I think is a bummer.. My

for now, with the right version of android, you could use Termux and start an sshd from the prompt.. then connect over the network to your phone with sftp. i didn't catch if you were a linux user, but jmtpfs works pretty nice too if you just plug in the phone (usb again.. yeah)

With an Android device, you can still copy files to it fairly easily by plugging it into your PC via USB. It's not like a USB card reader though - Android provides some kind of API or something that the OS has to use to communicate with it to show the files and transfer files back & forth. You can browse the phone with the OS's file explorer (at least in Windows), but behind the scenes it uses some different file browsing & copying functionality.

since we're on the topic of optical media, i thought this was pretty interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJzpp_Xr3SQ

That's interesting.

Nightfox