I am running my computer without a hard drive.

Patience.

Can you recover the data from them?

Ouch. That hurts.

What do you do for storage, pencil and paper? :-)

[maybe a USB drive ...]

@dog: The Internet! Who needs a hard drive?

j3h: You don't think FTP, SSH2/SFTP, WebDAV, web & bittorrent servers (etc, etc ...), have hard drives?

they might, but he doesn't.

I guess the answer to: "Who needs a hard drive?" is "in practice, anyone who is providing you with economical, fast-access, persistent storage if you don't personally own a working hard drive (over the internet, or otherwise)."

Is complex file modification over IP very quick?

If you had an Internet2 connection, it should be plenty fast. ["February 20, 2006: The speed record is broken. Data is sent at 8.8 gigabits per second over a distance of 30,000 km for a period of 45 minutes."] If you don't run a ~billion dollar company, though, Internet2 might be tricky to obtain. So it doesn't meet the 'economical' criterion that I proposed in the earlier comment. Upper tier business level IP speeds are not too shabby, though.

talking -> -> |hat| -> -> talking

:-)

Yeah, some kind of extremely tricked-out RAID array might be able to handle 1 Gb/sec [this one does 300 Mb/sec], but there would probably be other bottlenecks. And I suppose your point is that you don't want your data spewing all over the floor if the system needs a micro-pause for some reason.

OK, thanks.

I own a computer that I am currently running without a hard drive. It's a router.

[who used to disagree]

Wise Wyscan has convinced me to change my vote.

(My router does have a hard drive, but any number of my computers don't.)

D'A

What's that technology that was reported a few years ago about wobbling some nuclear material and having something wobble remotely along with it magically without any connection? Something done woth lasers.

however, not every computer i own is int he class of ones i call or would think of as "my computer".

the one built into my car, for instance, which monitors the engine and has no user-serviceable parts, is my car's computer -- despite also, technically, being mine. the one that i used in high school for my calculus class was my calculator, not my computer. and so on.

there is such a thing as an excessive level of pedantry, and that one makes it nearly impossible to phrase this question such that the intended meaning -- clear already, i would argue -- impossible or nearly impossible to express.

Vynce: "not every computer i own is in the class of ones i call or would think of as 'my computer'."

That observation occurred to me, as well.

BTW, gave you "royalties" cred for claiming on your pedantry comment. -LD