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no video today, we have a problem

No Video Today, We Have A Problem

Crap happens!  To be honest it seems to be ten-fold on a sailboat.  The saltwater eats away at things, the moist air causes them to mold, the sun cooks it, and so on.  Our current tropical location is harsh on almost every aspect of our life.

That said, I’m not sure Mother Nature has anything to do with today’s problem.  I think it boils down to a technological fail.

A Real-Time Update! 

I hope the real-time update wasn’t too confusing. Our weekly episodic videos are always behind ‘real life’, by about a month or so on average.  It’s the nature of filming, editing, writing and living while always on the move.  Of course, when stuff like this happens (good or bad) we like to share a bit in real-time if we can.  Especially when we have a problem we’re struggling to solve…maybe you’ve had the same issue and know just the solution.

As Nikki mentioned, we’re in Linton Bay, Panama.  We’re getting Curiosity in shape for the Panama Canal transit and the adventures that lie ahead.  We’re excited to experience and share it all!  You can always see our real-time location at the bottom of any page on our website, it’s that little map in the footer that says “The Wynns Are Currently At.”

I’m No Computer Guru

I’m serious, if you’re a wiz on the computer and you’ve got some ideas of ways to salvage the drives, or the computer itself let me know.  But keep in mind resources are extremely limited on the Caribbean side of Panama.

If you’re a super researcher and have a favorite laptop for video editing, I’m all ears.  I’m currently in the worst situation for someone trying to buy a new computer:  Limited internet for research, no stores nearby and nobody computer savvy around to chat with (well, that speaks the same language anyway). Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

In the video I mentioned our computer, but forgot the full model number for my multi-drive setup: MSI GS70 2QE-096US.  It’s been a great workhorse for us the past few years.  At this point I’m not sure where to look for a video editing machine besides the few I know: Razer Blade, ASUS or another MSI.  Maybe there’s a killer machine I’m not aware of that comes in a compact and slim case?  The saddest part is, early next year Intel is launching a new chip called Coffee something-or-other, so no matter what machine I buy it will immediately be outdated.

The Hail Mary Worked

I did remove the 1TB internal hard drive and THANKFULLY my Premiere Pro editing files are on there.  So other than downloading Premiere, music, and a few other big programs we should be back in the editing game in a day or two…assuming our spotty internet doesn’t crash while downloading.

We’re tech bummed but we’re not down.  Computers crash and things break, it’s just a bummer when the whole lot goes to crap in the final moments of a project.  Either way we’ll sort it out.  Nikki’s computer is capable of processing and editing video so luckily, we have another machine to get us by until we can get our hands on a new one.

Still Living The Dream

At the end of the day we’re still living the dream.  We’ll enjoy a solid beer while watching the sunset and tomorrow will be a new day, full of new and exciting challenges.  Keep your eyes peeled, if all goes we’ll have the video complete and uploaded mid-week…at least that’s our optimistic goal!  Thanks for joining us!

Camera Used For This Video

 

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Hello there! I honestly don’t know what to say, so I am going to tell you a bunch of random facts instead. I'm a fish eating vegetarian who hates spiders and loves snakes. I almost never took vacations growing up. I wanted to be Pippi Longstocking (still do). I misspell about every other word I write and still struggle with grammar. I love splurging on a good high tea (which is really hard to find these days). And whatever you do, don’t tell me I can’t do something, because then I'll HAVE to do it!

Comments (54)

  • Louis

    I sent you a note but the way my note pad work’s I don’t know if you got it or not , it sounds like you are going through the canal and I asked if you had a destination yet , Nikki you said you would see us down the road , how are you going to do that when you are on the water ? , just kidding and remember to smile God loves you’all ?

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  • From what I could figure out it look’s like you are going through the canal ? and how are you going to see me on the road when you are on the water ? just kidding , do you have a destination yet ?

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  • Bill Sargent

    If there is anything you need please email me. I’ll find it and ship it to you as fast as FedEx will deliver (2-3 days I am assuming). I’m not an expert when it comes to laptops, but better than average on my desktop. I haven’t bought a computer in 20 years or more. I build my own.

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  • JD

    Hey we watch your video’s. I have owned and operated a computer repair company for over 10 years. If you have questions feel free to email me.

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  • Sam Wilson

    Oh, and another thing you may want to consider, is having an external BlueRay drive. This way you can actually make backups to the BlueRay discs and send those (probably cheaper and more reliable than drives in the mail). You can also make backups of programs like Premier, etc., so you don’t have to download those from the internet.

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  • Sam Wilson

    One thing to keep in mind about any kind of external drive situation is that if you lose the drive, you lose whatever is on it. RAID controllers can go bad and sometimes (scary, but I’ve lived it), this can mean losing all the data on the drives attached to it. RAID is not a backup. I know, I’ve worked in data centers. Nobody considers it a backup.

    I would strongly recommend you have some kind of “off-boat” backup. At home, where I have a super fast broadband, I use Backblaze to backup my external drives. $5/mo for unlimited backups. If my external drives ever go bad, I can buy a replacement and download what I lost, or, they’ll actually ship me a drive so I can do the transfer locally–which is a lot faster.

    You might want to consider something similar. Because you obviously don’t have access to regular high-bandwidth internet, I would actually encourage you to find someone (a friend, a family member, someone) that can work with you on this. Basically, you buy a few extra drives. Every so often, you make a backup of your primary drive to one of those extras and mail it to your helper. They’ll hook up the drive to a system that backs it up to a service like Backblaze. Then you coordinate a place where you know you’ll be for a longer period of time where they can ship you back the drives. **OR** They just sell the drives and paypal you back the money and you use it to buy new drives as is convenient to you.

    Happy to discuss if you aren’t finding what you need from the deluge of answers.

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  • Christopher Boondoc

    MacBook Pro, that would be a good replacement.

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  • Ian Brown

    Ow.. That’s painful. Unfortunately, your super-fast laptop experience came crashing down on the weakness that many performance-driven setups experience. RAID-0 (striping) is great for “ZOOM!” but crap for reliability. I use R0 on my desktop with a couple SSDs to store my game installations for fast load times, but that’s it…. nothing of value. Expect to lose anything you keep on a striped volume, and you’ll never be disappointed.

    It’s generally unwise to keep the OS on a striped volume for just this occurrence. I also echo Roger’s recommendation of trying a LiveCD/USB boot disk to see if you can get to all the goodies and recover what you can.

    That said, on to troubleshooting. Remove what you can, noting positions where you pulled the drives from which M.2 slots. Can the computer POST without them? Anything you can safely reseat, do so (SSDs, RAM, Wireless NIC, etc.). Sometimes if there’s an effect called “thermal creep” where components will literally walk themselves out of proper connection because of thermal expansion and contraction. With the additional movement and climate changes, life on a boat may significantly speed up this process.

    With all the drives removed, if the laptop does not post, as a last ditch effort, you may want to try resetting the NVRAM on the BIOS. You can do this by pulling out the battery, and then sticking a paperclip or toothpick in the small hole on the right side of the laptop, just in front of the USB ports and depressing the button in there for 30 seconds. It’s in the manual for the GS70 in section 2-9 (http://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/1773_English.zip). That will clear the BIOS of any error codes or configurations that may be keeping the machine from starting up. You may or may not be able to reinitialize the RAID configuration after this, so as I said… last ditch.

    Beyond this, there’s not much more that you can do in the field with minimum resources or replacement parts.

    You may also want to consider getting a redundant storage NAS for archival or backups. If you’re starting to lose hardware, it could seriously save your bacon in the future!

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  • Rixey Kelly

    Dear Crew, Cheers! The following is a chat I had with B & H Video in New York, in my for-what-it’s-worth-department.
    Jessica D: Hello Rixey Kelly, my name is Jessica D and I will be glad to assist you. Please give me a few moments to begin working on your inquiry.Me: Roger that
    Jessica D: You want a similar MSI computer as well as a Lacia Thunderbolt RAID unit, correct?
    Jessica D: Was the specifications the same as shown below? https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GS70-2QE-Stealth-Pro/Specification
    Me: Well yes I suppose. Wynns have limited internet access and I ‘m just trying to help them match up with what they had. Jason has some external HDD’s for backups right now.
    Jessica D: Understood. Thanks. Give me a few moments please.
    Me: Is the Raid unit as good as anything else out there, at a comparable price?
    Jessica D: That model is popular on the business side, but let me focus on the computer first and then the RAID unit. Give me a few moments please.
    Me: No prob

    (COMPUTER FOCUS, $2,699.00 and can be shipped to Panama) Jessica D: What do you think of the model below? This model is up to date with the latest i7 7th generation Processor, 16GB of RAM, latest 10 series graphics card with a Thunderbolt 3 port to work with B&H # LA6BIG36TBT3. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1306507-REG/msi_17_3_gt73vr_titan_4k_480.html
    Jessica D: Were you able to open the link?
    Me: Yep, I’ve been messaging them and trying to compare tech specs. That second one has some horsepower doesn’t it?
    Jessica D: Yes it does. It will be great for photography and even better for editing video.
    Jessica D: If that’s what they use it for.
    Me: Video by far; weekly vlogs with shorter fill in shorts for their fb crowd. Sony A711 and a Sony Action Cam AS300, also GoPro 4 I think.
    Jessica D: Thanks. I would recommend this model. It has a better graphics card for using heavy video editing programs.
    Me: OK, appreciate all the help! Let me forward all the specs for this second one so they can evaluate. What about something like the Raid storage unit, is that worth evaluating?
    Jessica D: Let me look into it now. Give me a few moments please.
    Jessica D: Thanks for waiting. The Lacie 6Big is a great option but if want to compare to another top brand, I would recommend the Promise model (About $3,700.00 if I remember correctly).
    Jessica D: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1346394-REG/promise_technology_p3r6hd36us_pegasus3_36tb_r6_thunderbolt.html
    Jessica D: This is known to be one of the best RAID units out there for 4K editing.
    Me: I’m chuckling cause I don’t anything about video editing at all, but with your great help maybe I can help these nice people out. Not sure what their budget might be….key question is: can the computer and/or storage unit be shipped out to Panama or other central american country?
    Jessica D: Great question. I didn’t think of that before. The Lacie product can only be shipped in the USA Territory. B&H # PRP3R6HD36US can be shipped to Panama.
    Me: And the B&H # LA6BIG36TBT3?
    Me: Potty break, be right back
    Jessica D: B&H # LA6BIG36TBT3, cannot be shipped outside of the USA. We can ship B&H # PRP3R6HD36US to Panama.
    Me: Hang on a sec…
    Jessica D: Okay.
    Me: Rats! Any ideas how/where they could buy the laptop LA6BIG36TBT3?
    Jessica D: That’s not the laptop. That’s the RAID unit.
    Jessica D: The MSI laptop: B&H # MSGT73T480 can be shipped to Panama as well.
    Jessica D: Sorry for the confusion.
    Me: No problem Jessica!

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  • Rixey Kelly

    Hey, I’m chatting with a specialist at B & H Video, first suggestion was this: https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GS70-2QE-Stealth-Pro/Specification but she is doing some more research on the puter considerations. I also asked about large capacity storage units; Peter McKinnon uses a STFK36000400, LaCie 6big Thunderbolt 3 RAID 36TB unit.
    She just came back with this second consideration: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1306507-REG/msi_17_3_gt73vr_titan_4k_480.html ($2,600.00) I’ll check on being able to ship to Panama and follow up with another message, OK?

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  • Shaun Williamson

    Hey Guys,

    Could you please update the info on Curiosity under “Our Sailboat”. I see you have had a lot done like new enclosure and electronics, etc. Who did the encloser and what did it cost?

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  • Oh man, y’all! I have no tips or helpful info on how to fix computers, only sympathy for the situation. I had a wifi chip go bad in the Bahamas and I thought THAT, that one little chip, was a pain to fix on a boat. (It did take me several months and several attempts to finally get all the parts to fix it…silly Apple and their schmancy screw drivers!) At least y’all backed up the unedited content! Whew.

    Anyway, sorry for all the tech problems when you’ve got lots more to think about at the moment. Hoping the computer gods come to your rescue soon! xo

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  • Brian

    A couple of troubleshooting things you can try. The first thing you should try if the laptop will not boot and has a black screen is to.

    1. Remove the battery
    2. Unplug the AC power cord.
    3. With the battery removed and the power cable unplugged, press and hold the power button down for 30 seconds.
    4. After 30 seconds, release the power button and plug in the AC power cable
    5. Leaving the battery removed try and turn on the laptop.
    6. I f the laptop powers on, shutdown the laptop and reinstall the battery
    7. If the laptop now boots normal you should be good, if not you can try to reset the memory

    Memory – before removing memory ensure that you do not have any static electricity built up on your hands by touching something metal to discharge any static electricity. There are also YouTube videos that will show you how to get to the memory in your laptop.

    1. First try to reset the memory, (removing and reinstalling)
    2. If resetting the memory does not work and you have 2 sticks of memory installed
    A. Removing one stick of memory and boot the laptop. If the laptop will not boot, remove the install memory and reinstall the other stick. If the laptop boots the first stick of memory is bad
    B. If it boots remove the installed one and reinstall the one that was removed. Try booting the laptop again. If the computer will not boot that stick of memory is bad and needs to be replaced.

    Hope it helps

    Brian

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  • I can’t help so I will commiserate.
    You have some techie followers. I can’t keep up.
    Good luck.

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  • Charlie Gunn

    If it really comes down to replacing your 2 yo graphics hot rod of a laptop, we’ve been satisfied with a recent purchase. It’s not quite in the same league as your GS70 but it appears to be adequate for 4k and 360 editing with Premiere and After Effects. Dell XPS 15: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 with 4GB GDDR5, 1 TB SSD, 2 x USB 3.0, USB 3.1 type C, 4k touch screen, 32GB.

    Email me if there’s anything I can do to help.

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  • Ruste Wilke

    I’m a nurse and not a computer person….but I do work in quality and safety and recommend you do what we do for critical systems. Create redundancy. Can you get a second laptop or hard drive and mirror them so that if one hard drive goes, you can just plug in the new one instead of having to take the time to replace all your programs? It would require an extra step each day, and more initial outlay to get set up, but it’s better than being totally ‘out of the water’ when something breaks. Just a thought. I love you guys. Have a great trip through the canal.

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  • Hi Jason, what you can do to recover your computer depends upon how it was originally set up. You mentioned Raid 0, but indicated 3 small disks. Raid 0 (and raid 1 ) are disk mirroring, (or duplexing) with the idea that you have 2 identical disks, which with the right hard ware, you could boot the computer from either, if one had failed. In practise a lot of issues can prevent this. I have seen the 2nd disk not set up with the hidden windows partition which prevents it booting when it is needed. If you have 3 disks, and it is Raid 0/1 then the 3rd disk could be a hot swappable disk to replace either of the main disks in the event of failure. Another potential issue is that the hardware sometimes does not support booting from the 2nd disk in the event of the failure of the first, and you have to physically swap the 2 disks over to have the system boot. However you have to sure that you have raid 0/1 before you start moving disks around, or you could potentially destroy the contents. I actually think that you may have raid 5, which on 3 disks would give you redundancy, ie all the data is written to a main disk, and also a small part of a second disk, so that over 3 disks, you can have a failure of 1 disk, and when that disk is replaced, the system will rebuild that disk using data from the remaining disks. To find out what you have you may need to get into the bios. I am assuming that you are using hard ware raid controller, not a software raid. Try booting the laptop, and on each boot, press a different function key, to see if you can get into the raid controller bios. I work on servers, and I have seen servers crash because the raid controller bios lost its set up, and all that was needed was to reset it up. Warning, if you set it up for the wrong type of raid, it can destroy what you are trying to save. If it is the computer that is faulty, and the disks are actually in tact, then putting those disks in a similar (doesn’t have to be identical) hardware environment should be enough to recover everything.This is ware software raid would be an advantage, as the raid information would be on all the disks, and there would be no setup required. Do you have a ‘live’ CD or USB to boot the laptop from? It might give you a clue where the actual fault lies. If you don’t have one, then you could down load something like an ISO image (look at Linux Mint website) which you could burn to CD/DVD/USB (using Nikki’s laptop) and once burned, try booting your laptop from it. If it does boot, you may be able to mount some of your disks, and see or recover some of the data. If it doesn’t boot, then the fault may well be terminal! Also you mentioned you keep a backup? what format is the backup? I use Backup Exec (now SSR) from Symantec, and that stores everything in a format that means I could mount the backup directly on a VM server as a virtual laptop. (sorry, that is the server side of me, where having almost instant access is necessary!). Sorry this has turned into a rather long post, and not very well structured, (more of a brain dump!). Please contact me if you need more help, but I am not an expert on laptops, and I don’t think I have ever seen an MSI one! Oh and keep up the good work, love your videos, you are living my dream!!

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  • Lee

    Have you tried this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1FVKOEg57c
    So many things to look at it is hard to diagnose from afar. Even a dead CMOS battery can make people think their computer is dead.
    Have you contacted Linus: https://www.youtube.com/user/LinusTechTips
    I would go with Asus for a new laptop. No, I do not work with them or have any affiliation with them. I have two tower computers and three laptops. The ASUS laptop is my daily go to and take everywhere computer.
    Coffee Lake is already out, just hard to find. I doubt you will find the 8700k Coffee Lake in a laptop. Would be too hard to cool. You need the new Z370 motherboards for the Coffee Lake.
    Whatever you get will be outdated in 6 months to a year anyway. Now if you were getting a tower case that is an entirely different breed of cat.
    Have fun. I enjoy your videos. I have traveled 3/4 of the world, but I let other people take me their while I relax.

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  • Philip

    I taught Premier Pro For Years At the University Of N.M. In Taos before the Art Department switched to IMacs and Apple.
    My advise is to get a MacBook Pro with as much memory and solid state storage (inside as well as an external) as possible and switch to Final Cut Pro X.
    You will love it. The workflow of 5he operating system and The magnetic timeline is very intuitive. In fact – with your experience, you’ll freak out why you didn’t switch sooner.
    I also worked as film editor way back when Jesus was in diapers. Then Avid, Pro Tools, Adobe.

    Trust Me. ( I look forward to a reply in 3 months about how switching has given you more time to just create, fish, sail live & love.)

    Stay Well U 2.

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    • Trevor

      I completely agree. With years of working in IT, the mosr ardent graphics and video fols I have worked with all rely on their Mac. My household choice of system is Apple. They are the most capable, easiest to use and fastest I have dealt with when it comes to media processing.

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  • Craig Caldwell

    You should check with the RV Geeks!

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  • Larry Grenevitch

    Hi Guys,
    You should be able to remove the SSD drive 0, which is the drive that failed based on what you said. And then you should be able to turn the laptop back on and it should boot up on the mirrored drive. You may need to make some bios changes to get the backup drive to be the boot drive.

    Or you may need to remove all of the SSD drives and place SSD drive 1 into the drive 0 slot.

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  • Brent Farler

    Setting myself up for arrows here but the $600 pedestrian laptop is 80% of a $1200-$2500 laptop. Add a couple of external drives to back up on and you have a good serviceable setup.use the time you lose to rendering to work on the boat aor snorkel or read something quotable. Or just buy two laptops and keep each mirrored to each other. Spend your money on cameras and experiences.

    Chasing intels next chip is a waste of time, there are people who make their living hyping Chipset XYZ, you don’t so forget about it. They are pandering to gamers anyway. Consider a career in tie dye.

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  • jim

    The quality on the iPhone was good enough until you get back up to speed. In the meantime, count your blessings — you could be this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQx5FTyRaPE

    Thanks for the video!

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  • Charlie Gunn

    That really sucks! But you’re much more chill than I was. This system failure has happened to me a few times. But the most pain was when a content disk failed and I hadn’t properly backed up. You seem to be much better prepared than I was. If you imaged the C: drive recently, you’re in great shape. I suspect you understood that RAID 0 (striping) on SSDs might bring performance gains but there’s an inherent risk in that any component (disk) failure results in total failure of all disks. That’s why you configured Premiere to store the project files on D:, your spinning internal hd. Right? I talked with my wife over dinner tonight about this. I’m the geek but she’s the seasoned video editor, most recently using Premiere. She said that if you had the project files on D: you should be in good shape. That is if Nikki’s laptop has Premiere. You showed us that cool 2.5″ SATA III adapter cable to USB 3.0, so, rock-n-roll guys. Now it’s a “simple matter” of exporting on Nikki’s and then uploading Jason’s edited video. Then to recover Jason’s laptop, apply system image to the three SSDs, or if one SSD really did fail, stripe the remaining two. I agree with an earlier post, don’t be too quick to abandon your computer. It is likely a logical disk error, which is not uncommon, and rebuilding your system disk (or disks in your case) may resolve the issue. I had several BSODs recently on two of the laptops that I depend on for a living. I resolved one with a backed up image. The other magically fixed itself. Haha.

    It all seems so straight-forward sitting here in Virginia with a glass of fine bourbon.

    Been a fan for a while now. Since way back in the RV days. Recently joined Patreon. Love you guys! Best of luck!! Email me if I can help in any way.

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  • Lisa Cantrell

    Hi guys, sad news indeed. Listen, not sure he can help but my brother is completely bilingual and lives in Costa Rica (since ’91). His daughter and son in law live in Panama. He knows lots of people in Panama too though he’s not truly a techie I am sure that if you called him he MIGHT be able to point you in the right direction. Email me and I’ll send his number if you want it. Hlping forthe best

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  • A brief message of warning. There is a disease called Tinker-itis that even technicians suffer from when dealing with a stubborn computer issue. Do or change too many things, and next thing you know, there’s no way to find the original problem bcz you’ve created so many more possibilities.

    Like someone said before, more details are really needed to successfully troubleshoot the poor dead red. What happened as the system went down, and when it tried to come back (how many times and what did you see) before you had nothing. You mentioned the Super raid 2 dying, but how do you know that it’s the raid? was there a message? If the system significantly overheated, which is a “known issue” with some owners of that model, it would display those same behaviors that you described.

    The 99% and almost done thing you mentioned makes me believe that the video was stressing the graphics card/memory/drives to the point of shutdown. The first thing I’d try is to give it some time off to cool down, remove the battery and power cord completely for about 5 hours. Then reapply power *without the battery* in the laptop and see if it wakes up.

    Questions: Have you recently flashed the bios or updated anything? Any new hardware (even usb drives and cables count) or software? Did you notice any types of performance changes recently?

    There were reports that updating the bios could brick MSIs laptops, starting back in 2015. I would hope they would have fixed that issue by now? but ya never know. Even if it is a bios update that happened, it could still be recoverable.

    Possible bios solution #1: Your best bet would be to go to the support page for your laptop and download the most recent bios, follow the instructions and load it onto a usb drive, and run it.

    Possible solution #2: If updating the bios doesn’t solve the problem, then remove all of the drives, including the ssds and apply power. If you get nothing on screen and there are no beeps/sounds, you have a major hardware issue like the motherboard or circuitry.

    Recommendations: Don’t get the latest, greatest, anything unless you enjoy paying too much money to test out someone’s new bugs for them. My computers are usually a generation behind everything, intentionally, including software. I give software about 3-4 months to work their bugs out on someone else’s valuable work, then I’ll update. Hardware I let shake out a little longer, about 8 months, to see who blew what and used pieces of a coke can to sodder their chips. Last, but definitely not least, trust the user and buyer reviews. If it’s half a dozen of one, or six of another, take the one that the users say is awesomesauce.

    Good luck you guys 🙁 Wish I could hop on a boat and be there to help 🙂

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  • Fred

    So sorry to hear about the computer woes. I think that someone once said “Blessed are the pessimists for they have created backups.” So, you’re blessed….
    It happened to me a couple of weeks ago. Main drive was really flakey. Once that was resolved, I discovered that the second drive where I keep all my data was no longer readable. I had two backups of the data as well as cloud storage for data, so I got the laptop back on line and then was able to restore everything.
    Fortunately in my case, civilization is close by and parts are available.

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  • Paul Berliner

    So sorry to hear about your computer woes! I’m sure you will be back up in no time. In the meantime left you a little something in your tip jar. XXOO to the entire crew..

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  • David Burnett

    Sorry to hear of the problems. For what it is worth I always go for HP EliteBook – business machines that seem to just keep on keeping on. Also re file back-up I carry a WD 1TB portable when travelling, plus a 2TB back-up drive. The 1TB is backed up onto the 2TB, then when home, that goes onto a WD 4TB partitioned desktop drive. Assuming noting crashes, I therefore have four copies, and if something does crash, I have at least two copies.

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  • No BIOS screen is tough, but try this disconnect the battery since you have the back off anyway, then hold the power button down for 30 seconds or so. Then attach the battery and try the power button. Also try with the battery disconnected and just the AC (sometimes batteries can be the issue).

    As others have said RAID 1 is the way to go!

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  • Lisa and Oliver Preuss

    Hello Wynns, feel free to buy a new computer in Panama, it’s an excellent place to buy electronics at a decent price. We live in Guatemala, where we can also buy good stuff, but Panama is a good option.

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  • mary

    Sorry to hear about your computer! Looks like I will be bringing one with me. 🙂

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  • Rai Karklns

    I guess you have tried restor to an earlier time and reboot (F8 or F12) to start using safe mode or “last good configuration”, I have had this even on high end Alienware but it was always windows (often a frackin windows update that is going on in the background and you have switched on an off too many times in between),
    Are you on cant even boot up mode or repeating blue screen of death.
    With my Alien it was the SSD and video card suddenly not being friend and had to put in a new SSD the next headache was getting new windows licenses and updating drivers CAREFULLY. Turn off window updates unless you have a few good days in civilization. Learn how to install them as well. Worst case can Fedex or Amazon ship near you?

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  • maurice harvey

    awesome sad news about your laptop…they let me down as well so I moved to a pc instead..they let me down as well but a new harddrive replacement fixed that …what I’ve learnt is don’t over fill your harddrive or it will crash..my 2tb harddrive has 1.69 freespace of 1.81 plus I have 2 external harddrives for all the crap that doesn’t need to be in local disc of :C

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  • Jeremiah Jackson

    Like Bob Sholtes said, you can disable RAID in the bios. This video has a good tutorial on how to turn on RAID (which should help you disable it). https://youtu.be/1md2eUqKrKo (Hit delete during startup – Advanced Tab – Change SATA to AHCI instead of Raid) This would allow you to use the good drives individually. The real issue is you would need to re-install windows and your software, which I doubt you have the media for.

    You computer is fixable though, so don’t throw it away. It would be worth getting new drives for it and getting it setup again, even if you purchase a new one as a backup computer. I would also suggest purcahsing Acronis True Image for $50. It would allow you to backup your computer as a bare metal backup. This means you could restore the entire computer including the OS and software from a backup disk. In the future if you have a drive failure, all you would need to do is put in a new drive and restore the entire computer using Acronis. https://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/

    Let me know if I can help in any way.

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  • Nikki

    Highly recommend the Surface Book for your video editing. No raid configuration, but solid hardware and the best tech support of any I’ve worked with in over 35 years of tech support. The Book has the highest resolution screen you can get, and they split the configuration so that the second battery is in the keyboard. When you don’t need the keyboard, it becomes an extremely light tablet. The docking station gives you plenty of ports, too. I think Nikki’s using a Surface, so you’d be familiar with how solid these machines are.

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    • Allie

      Wow – interesting to hear the Surface Book may be a solid choice. I have a Surface Pro 3 and 4 and they have both been flaky and irritating – by far the most buggy Windows machines I’ve owned (which I find ironic given they are made by Microsoft). When they work it’s great; the concept is fantastic, but the implementation is not. I never would have considered another product in the Surface line as I assumed it would be plagued by all the same odd issues. Maybe when I’m next in the market I’ll have to take a look at the Book.

      For the Wynn’s, it’s not at the level of the gaming PCs you tend to buy, but I’ve been using two drive laptops for photo editing since 2005. I just bought my current one this year, so the first two each lasted >5 years (and are still going, just getting behind spec-wise relative to image processing work. They are all HPs and very reasonably priced machines (in the $1100-$1500 range all three times, I believe). I feel they’ve held up well for the price and have been good options for two drive bay systems.

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  • DAN France

    Should really consider a compact hardware raid. I would never run raid zero as it has no redundancy raid 1 mirroring neither as it’s slow although raid 5 does both increases speed and has redundancy. Granite Digital has some good products as do others also I would consider more ease of use and compactness of a MacBook Pro. Either way Raid 5 on a external box would be much better.

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  • Connie Woods

    Awe! You know the most important thing for me is, your ok and a tiny (large data) can be shared anytime…love seeing you live even for a moment. 3 days, now that’s way to long Jason. Go have a cold one and enjoy your time there…..I totally get it…I’d hate for y’all to spend alot of time on electric things and not relax and do travel stuff……Big Love! Hang in there!!!

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  • Joe the Computer Guy

    Ouch. I won’t pour salt in the wound. RAID 1 is what you want for redundancy. RAID 0 is striped and for speed enhancing.
    But if you are not getting to a BIOS screen it might not be the drives at all.
    I believe I did say you could us a Computer Guy on board 🙂
    I know someone who is retired and available BTW should you change your mind…

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  • Bill Gentry

    To me gaming most laptops from MSI and Gigabyte are comparable and have the power to handle any job. I have both an MSI and a Gigabyte device and like the Gigabyte way better. No faulty drivers like you almost always get from MSI anymore and a bigger keyboard too. At least the Gigabyte I have is also way easier to swap memory and drives than the MSI. MSI seems more and more like they don’t want you upgrading anymore. Good luck!!!

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  • Mark Gaking

    So sorry about the demise of your computer, how untimely. Just a thought if you have to purchase a new computer. Our family has been using Apple computers for years and they have never let us down. Nothing is perfect but they seem very reliable to us. My two cents. Hope you can get back up and running soon.

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  • David Conger

    Hang in there, deep breaths. I’ve owned every PC ever made and every OS. If it’s just one of those M.2 drives that went dead then pull it out. The computer may work fine (albeit you will have to re-install Windows since your 3 drive RAID 0 is now 2 drive and will need to be re-setup.
    I wrote this quickly to say do nothing yet until this is debugged.Key to getting things back is not rushing to do things. Just keep debugging. eMail me directly with what you’ve done so far. I saw the video.
    I’m also the person who wrote you I used to sail the Caribbean on a 41′ Lagoon 420S2 for 2 years. Yes, I can totally imagine your situation with computers right now. I can try and help. Hang in there it’s always darkest before the sunrise. Right now is like that 3am when you are dying for the first glow of sun on the Eastern Horizon. It will get better.

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  • Bob Beltz

    All depends on exactly what didn’t work. If it won’t boot, unplug hd and plug it back in. Connections corrode a tad. Much more detail is necessary to effectively troubleshoot.

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  • Bob Sholtes

    Sorry to hear about your troubles. I’m guessing you had your operating system installed on the RAID 0 SSD’s and the 1 TB HDD is for file storage only, correct? If so, unfortunately there isn’t much you can do since taking the faulty SSD out will still leave you with an invalid OS installation. If you happen to have a way to reinstall the OS, that could be your best option – even consider using a single SSD and disabling the MSI Super Raid 2 feature.

    For future recommendations, one intriguing option might be the Intel NUC’s. They are really only the PC box (which are tiny) so you would need an external keyboard, mouse and monitor (which it looks like you may already have.) There are a couple of NUC models using the 7th gen Intel i7 CPU, with 8th gen models slated for Q2 2018 release I believe. One of the nice things about the NUC is that they can run on 12 V PSU, so you could avoid the losses associated with the inverter and then the AC to DC brick on the laptop.

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  • Alex Todd

    I’m not savvy enough to recommend any hardware solutions, but maybe some of the other sailing vlogs might have some tips/tricks on how to keep gear and data secure and working?

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  • CJ Viggers

    Hi from s/v Holiday L43! Super bummed for you I know how it feels unfortunately many times. On the bright side you get to shop for new computer! Always exciting! I may be able to help a bit as we are headed your way in a couple of months and would be happy to bring any electronics or parts you may need from the states. We are almost done with our to-do list and will be heading out in about a month so feel free to drop me a line if you need us to bring anything. I see Salida (Leopard 42) in the background, say high to Craig and Liz for us if you get a chance. They are great people. Hoping things work out for you. Cheers, CJ & Giselle

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  • George Hofmann

    I don’t know if this will be helpful or not…..when you have telephone call 18005551212 and get telephone numbers on the enterprize ( 1 800 ) net work and shop by phone. Either Amazon for almost all computers and 1800 6927753 for Apple products. (If you need technical questions answered, it may necessitate a few different calls so charge up the ‘ol SIM card. I sincerely hope this helps; we all need OUR Curiosity.

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  • OH Sucky guys! I was wondering what happened. Lol I know nothing. I can’t help you. I’m sure you will find someone that can. Thanks for the heads up, happy to see you are cool and safe! GOOD LUCK!!

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  • Roger B

    Heavens! Sorry about your challenge. Now my Sunday can’t be completed without your video. I look forward to whenever you have things fixed and back to normal.

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  • Pam McClure

    Awww. I hope someone can help you. I’m afraid it isn’t me. All I know is “reboot” or run to the store for a new one. ?

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  • Jeff Stichler

    Bummer about the laptop. I know you’re not wanting to build one, but this site is really informative about specifing what components are most important for certain tasks and it might be worth a read while you’re shopping. There are PCs out there with the Coffee Lake processors but they are still pretty hard to find in stock. Good luck and we love the videos!
    http://www.logicalincrements.com/articles/videoediting

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