TOPIC: DISK ENCLOSURE
Pondering storage options
1st June 2011The combination of curiosity and a little spare time had me browsing online computing technology stores recently. A spot of CD and DVD burning brought on by a flurry of Linux distribution testing reminded me of the possibility. Because I have built up a sizeable library of digital photos, ensuring that I have backups of them is something that needs doing. While a 2 GB Samsung external hard drive is brought to life every now and again for that purpose, the prospect of using Blu-ray discs has appealed to me. After all, capacities of 25 GB for single-layer discs and 50 GB for dual-layer ones sound not inappropriate for my purposes. However, they aren't a cheap option at the time of writing, with each disc costing in the region of £3-4 at one place where I was looking. The cost of BD writers themselves seems not to be so bad though, with a few in the £60-100 bracket; any lower than this and you could end up with a combo drive that reads Blu-ray discs and writes to DVD's and CD's, so a modicum of concentration is needed. As attractive as the idea might be, the cost of BD media means that I'll wait a little while before deciding to take the plunge. The price premium at the moment is a reminder of the way that things used to be when CD and DVD writers first came on the market. It is very telling when discs come packaged in jewel cases, something that you won't see too often with CD's or DVD's.
Another piece of storage excitement that hasn't escaped me is the advent of SSD hard drives. With no moving parts like in conventional hard drives, they bring a speed boost. Concerns about their lifetimes and the numbers of read/write events per drive would stall me when it comes to storing personal data on them but using them for the likes of operating system files sounds attractive, especially with my partiality to Linux perhaps not hammering drives so much. As with any new technology, there is a price premium, even though a drive big enough for hosting an operating system can be acquired for less than £100. As with many of my hardware purchase brainwaves, there's no rush, but this is an option that I'll keep at the back of my mind.
Another appealing notion is the idea of getting a NAS so that files can be shared between a few computers. While I have seen prices starting at just above £70 for single disk enclosures, these generally are a more expensive option than external drives, and that's before you consider the cost of any hard drives. Nevertheless, the advantages of a unit containing more than a single hard drive while operating as a print server for any compatible printer, too. When you get to 4 or 5 hard drive trays, then the cost has mounted, but that could be when they pay their way too. What reminded me of these was a bookazine on home networking that I recently found at a branch of WHSmith's and their attractions are subject to the networking side of things being made to work without a drama. Once that's out of the way, then their usefulness really does appeal.
Mulling over all these brainwaves is one thing, but it doesn't mean that the purse strings will become too loose in this age of economic constraint. In fact, pondering them may serve to staunch any impulse purchases. Sometimes, a spot of virtual shopping serves to control things rather than losing the run of oneself.
Best left until later in the year?
26th January 2010In the middle of last year, my home computing experience was one of feeling displaced. A combination of a stupid accident and a power outage had rendered my main PC unusable. What followed was an enforced upgrade that used a combination that was familiar to me: Gigabyte motherboard, AMD CPU and Crucial memory. However, assembling that lot and attaching components from the old system from the old system resulted in the sound of whirring fans but nothing appearing on-screen. Not having useful beeps to guide me meant that it was a case of undertaking educated guesswork until the motherboard was found to be at fault.
In a situation like this, a better developed knowledge of electronics would have been handy and might have saved me money too. As for the motherboard, it is hard to say whether it was a faulty set from the outset or whether there was a mishap along the way, either due to ineptitude with static or incompatibility with a power supply. What really tells the tale on the mainboard was the fact that all the other components are working well in other circumstances, even that old power supply.
A few years back, I had another experience with a problematic motherboard, an Asus this time, that ate CPU's and damaged a hard drive before I stabilised things. That was another upgrade attempted in the first half of the year. My first round of PC building was in the third quarter of 1998 and that went smoothly once I realised that a new case was needed. Similarly, another PC rebuild around the same time of year in 2005 was equally painless. Based on these experiences, I should not be blamed for waiting until later in the year before doing another rebuild, preferably a planned one rather than an emergency.
Of course, there may be another factor involved too. The hint was a non-working Sony DVD writer that was acquired early last year when it really was obvious that we were in the middle of a downturn. Could older unsold inventory be a contributor? Well, it fits in with seeing poor results twice, In addition, it would certainly tally with a problematical PC rebuild in 2002 following the end of the Dot-com bubble and after the deadly Al-Qaeda attack on New York's World Trade Centre. An IBM hard drive that was acquired may not have been the best example of the bunch, and the same comment could apply to the Asus motherboard. Though the resulting construction may have been limping, it was working tolerably.
In contrast, last year's episode had me launched into using a Toshiba laptop and a spare older PC for my needs, with an external hard drive enclosure used to extract my data onto other external hard drives to keep me going. While it felt like a precarious arrangement, it was a useful experience in ways too.
There was cause for making acquaintance with nearby PC component stores that I hadn't visited before, and I got to learn about things that otherwise wouldn't have come my way. Using an external hard drive enclosure for accessing data on hard drives from a non-functioning PC is one of these. Discovering that it is possible to boot from external optical and hard disk drives came as a surprise too and will work so long as there is motherboard support for it.
Another experience came from a crisis of confidence that had me acquiring a bare-bones system from Novatech and populating it with optical and hard disk drives. Then, I discovered that I have no need for power supplies rated more than 300 watts (around 200 W suffices). Turning my PC off more often became a habit, friendly both to the planet and to household running costs too.
Then, there's the beneficial practice of shopping locally, which can suffice. You may not get what PC magazines stick on their hot lists, but shopping online for those pieces doesn't guarantee success either. All of these were useful lessons and, while I'd rather not throw away good money after bad, it goes to show that even unsuccessful acquisitions had something to offer in the form of learning opportunities. Whether you consider that is worthwhile is up to you.
From laptop limbo to a new desktop: A weekend restoration of computing order
12th July 2009This weekend, I finally put my home computing displacement behind me. My laptop had become my main PC, with a combination of external hard drives and an Octigen external hard drive enclosure keeping me motoring in laptop limbo. Having had no joy in the realm of PC building, I decided to go down the partially built route and order a bare-bones system from Novatech. That gave me a Foxconn case and motherboard loaded up with an AMD 7850 dual-core CPU and 2 GB of RAM. With the motherboard offering onboard sound and video capability, all that was needed was to add drives. I added no floppy drive but instead installed a SATA DVD Writer (not sure that it was a successful purchase, though, but that can be resolved at my leisure) and the hard drives from the old behemoth that had been serving me until its demise. A session of work on the kitchen table and some toing and froing ensued as I inched my way towards a working system.
Once I had set all the expected hard disks into place, Ubuntu was capable of being summoned to life, with the only impediment being an insistence of scanning the 1 TB Western Digital and getting stuck along the way. Not having the patience, I skipped this at start up and later unmounted the drive to let fsck to do its thing while I got on with other tasks; the hold up had been the presence of VirtualBox disk images on the drive. Speaking of VirtualBox, I needed to scale back the capabilities of Compiz, so things would work as they should. Otherwise, it was a matter of updating various directories with files that had appeared on external drives without making it into their usual storage areas. Windows would never have been so tolerant and, as if to prove the point, I needed to repair an XP installation in one of my virtual machines.
In the instructions that came with the new box, Novatech stated that time was a vital ingredient for a build, and they weren't wrong. While the delivery arrived at 09:30, I later got a shock when I saw the time to be 15:15! However, it was time well spent when I noticed the speed increase on putting ImageMagick through its paces with a Perl script. In time, I might get brave and be tempted to add more memory to get up to 4 GB; the motherboard may only have two slots, but that's not such a problem with my planning on sticking with 32-bit Linux for a while to come. My brief brush with its 64-bit counterpart revealed some roughness that warded me off for a little while longer. For now, I'll leave well alone and allow things to settle down again. Lessons for the future remain, over which I may even mull in another post...