March 31st was World Backup Day - a day for reminding people that there are very few sounds more scary than the Click of Death coming from a hard drive inside your computer on which you have critical data files.
I've been pretty good at keeping duplicate sets of my media files, with a couple of obvious flaws in execution. First, I've been backing up on the fly, and while everything has been archived, it's not exactly organized well. Second, my backups have been essentially one-to-one, which doesn't take advantage of RAID architectures, is more labour intensive than it needs to be, and uses up more hard drives.
So, unRAID.
Everything I've read about unRAID suggests that it's a far better approach (cheaper, too) than buying a dedicated proprietary backup solution. Plus, it lets me tinker with putting a computer together, which I haven't done in a while - including having to pick and source components that will work together well and support unRAID's requirements.
The server's up and running now with two data drives and a parity drive - the basic, free unRAID configuration. I haven't copied much over to it yet, but it seems to be running well so far. Fingers crossed!
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
HP and Microsoft follies
So, Saturday.
Started out by clearing the snow out of the driveway, after the dumping we got on Friday. Easy enough with the snow blower. For an encore, I fixed the lock on the garage door, so that we can keep the snow blower.
Enter girlfriend and her laptop. "I think I have a virus," she said as she handed it to me.
Upon boot-up: "Product information not valid. The following product information programmed into the system board is missing or invalid..."
Okay, hit enter to continue, get to the Windows 7 desktop. No more close-up picture of shaggy dog #1 - the desktop has gone black, with the message in the corner saying that the version of Windows isn't genuine. Crap.
Twenty minutes of diving through the Internet hive mind later, I have it sussed. HP pushed a BIOS update to the laptop, which somehow managed to wipe the product information. Since the Windows 7 check for genuine-ness depends on finding that product information, the laptop failed the check.
Basically, HP's sloppy pushed updates + Microsoft's consumer-hostile DRM = aggravation for me.
Anyhow, I fixed it. One of the great things about the Internet is that any problem you might have has most likely been had by at least a few other people, and if it's at all solvable, at least one of them has solved it and has talked about it somewhere online.
[Here's the how: There's a DOS utility from HP that can be used to re-write/re-generate the missing product information into the system board. Copy the utility onto a bootable USB key, change the boot-up sequence on the laptop to check the USB key first, re-boot the laptop from the key, run the utility. Provide all of the missing info (one piece of which is hidden on a sticker tucked into the laptop battery compartment). Exit, shut down, remove key, restart.]
Started out by clearing the snow out of the driveway, after the dumping we got on Friday. Easy enough with the snow blower. For an encore, I fixed the lock on the garage door, so that we can keep the snow blower.
Enter girlfriend and her laptop. "I think I have a virus," she said as she handed it to me.
Upon boot-up: "Product information not valid. The following product information programmed into the system board is missing or invalid..."
Okay, hit enter to continue, get to the Windows 7 desktop. No more close-up picture of shaggy dog #1 - the desktop has gone black, with the message in the corner saying that the version of Windows isn't genuine. Crap.
Twenty minutes of diving through the Internet hive mind later, I have it sussed. HP pushed a BIOS update to the laptop, which somehow managed to wipe the product information. Since the Windows 7 check for genuine-ness depends on finding that product information, the laptop failed the check.
Basically, HP's sloppy pushed updates + Microsoft's consumer-hostile DRM = aggravation for me.
Anyhow, I fixed it. One of the great things about the Internet is that any problem you might have has most likely been had by at least a few other people, and if it's at all solvable, at least one of them has solved it and has talked about it somewhere online.
[Here's the how: There's a DOS utility from HP that can be used to re-write/re-generate the missing product information into the system board. Copy the utility onto a bootable USB key, change the boot-up sequence on the laptop to check the USB key first, re-boot the laptop from the key, run the utility. Provide all of the missing info (one piece of which is hidden on a sticker tucked into the laptop battery compartment). Exit, shut down, remove key, restart.]
Saturday, January 7, 2012
The Damsel, The Dame, and The Blackbird
The University of Chicago Press is following up on its re-issues of the classic and long out-of-print Parker novels by Richard Stark (a pen-name of mystery grand-master Donald E. Westlake) with new editions of other novels that Westlake wrote as Stark. In addition to the Parker novels, Westlake wrote four novels that focused on one of Parker's occasional partners in crime, Alan Grofield.
Per Wikipedia: "A career criminal and professional thief, Grofield is a devilishly handsome and charming womanizer whose main passion in life is the stage. In fact, the only reason he steals is to keep his summer stock company running, and if he were ever able to make enough money through his legitimate artistic efforts, he would have no trouble giving up his life of crime. Unlike his frequent companion Parker, Grofield is a somewhat inconsistent character, and his adventures run the gamut from hard-boiled crime stories (Lemons Never Lie) to more fanciful, James Bond-style globetrotting and intrigue (The Damsel, The Dame, and The Blackbird)."
While Lemons Never Lie is still in-print as part of Charles Ardai's Hard Case Crime imprint, the other three Grofield novels have been difficult, or at least expensive, to track down - at least until mid-April.
Pre-order links are live now at Amazon.
Per Wikipedia: "A career criminal and professional thief, Grofield is a devilishly handsome and charming womanizer whose main passion in life is the stage. In fact, the only reason he steals is to keep his summer stock company running, and if he were ever able to make enough money through his legitimate artistic efforts, he would have no trouble giving up his life of crime. Unlike his frequent companion Parker, Grofield is a somewhat inconsistent character, and his adventures run the gamut from hard-boiled crime stories (Lemons Never Lie) to more fanciful, James Bond-style globetrotting and intrigue (The Damsel, The Dame, and The Blackbird)."
While Lemons Never Lie is still in-print as part of Charles Ardai's Hard Case Crime imprint, the other three Grofield novels have been difficult, or at least expensive, to track down - at least until mid-April.
Pre-order links are live now at Amazon.
It's been a busy three years...
New year's resolution: post to the blog more often.
Considering that it's been three years since my last post, that should be an easy one.
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