Backups running fine
I bought the TeraStation, and installing it was really easy. The SMB performance is rather bad, I get only 50% link utilization on a 100 MB LAN, but I now have ample space for the recovered data from my old drive and the backups from my PC.
I am really quite impressed with the TeraStation. If it performs reliably in the future, I will be recommending it as a backup solution for home use. Eventually I may also look into an off-site solution using TeraStations and something like OpenVPN.
For backups I am evaluating Acronis True Image 8.0 and Techsoft MirrorFolder. True Image seems to run fine, but MirrorFolder is giving me some trouble with fast user switching.
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2005-04-26PSU is fine
OK, so I had to learn details about ATX power supplies the hard way, didn’t I. ATX PSUs do not power up if there is something fishy with the motherboard. In this case, it included an extra USB connector from the case. Turns out that it’s not enough that pin diagrams match, they also have to match reality.
My PC now works fine, it’s considerably quieter and cooler than before. Restoring stuff to a state resembling the way it was before the hard drive crash will take weeks. I will have to get some dedicated hardware for backups in the future, the ones I had were broken or incomplete. The Buffalo Terastation looks like an interesting candidate. 750 GB of RAID5 on a gigabit NAS unit.
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2005-04-25Broken hardware
Last year, I had the dubious pleasure of losing five hard drives. Three I owned, two others I used. I thought I had used up my quota of broken drives for a while. Last weekend, my PC hung completely on shutdown, which is not unheard of. When I rebooted, Windows failed to boot because of a broken system registry. After digging around a bit, I realized that the drive was failing - fast. Managed to grab some kind of an image of the remaining file system, though. Eventually even the S.M.A.R.T. status of the drive went to critical, but boy was it late!
Last year, I suspected that one failure was heat-related, so I considered upgrading my PC enclosure. Never got around to it, but now I bought a new one when I grabbed a new 200 GB hard drive for a system drive. Turns out the 200 GB ones have the best price per GB these days.
I installed the new hard drive, partitioned it, installed XP, recovered some data. I even went on to install some critical software (read: Battlefield Vietnam), before I decided to play it safe. That is, I went on to swap enclosures before I had spent hours installing all the stuff I need and want. Good thing I did it, because now the bloody thing won't power up. Even worse, it won't even give me an ATX activity light.
I hope I just have a dud power supply, but with my luck, I have blown the motherboard as well. Stay tuned for more sad details as they unravel.
PS. I got the Antec Sonata.
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2005-03-21X-bit’s Guide: Contemporary LCD Monitor Parameters and Characteristics
While considering what LCD to buy, or at least try out, I kept running into tests describing how worthless the manufacturers’ data is. Then I found an excellent article about contemporary LCD monitors on X-bit labs.
From best to worse, current LCD technolgies rank as follows. S-IPS, PVA, MVA, TN. Unfortunately TN monitors are cheap and have a very fast “apparent” response time, so they have almost taken over the market for low-end LCD’s. S-IPS are great, but a bit slow. MVA and PVA suffer from bad response times between shades of gray, and TN just sucks in color reproduction and viewing angles. If you need to work with color beyond surfing the web, avoid TN.
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2005-03-18Eizo FlexScan L778
So it turns out that the L797 really is nice, but does cost a fortune compared to other 19" LCD’s. More than I can reasonably spend, anyway. I decided to order the FlexScan L778 instead. Color reproduction is probably much worse, but it will allow me to get rid of two CRT monitors and a pair of separate speakers. The response times for the L778 seem to be quite good, due to technology that Eizo has borrowed from LCD TVs.
If the color reproduction isn’t good enough, I can always send this one back and reconsider investing in the L797.
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2005-03-08Eizo FlexScan L797
Every now and then I have been looking for an LCD monitor that would match my needs. I want a monitor with good color reproduction for working with digital images. Unfortunately, I also want to be able to play FPS games with it. Combining the two has not seemed to be possible sofar, because good color fidelity has meant bad response times.
Enter the Eizo FlexScan L797. According to the press release Eizo targets graphics professionals with this 48 cm (19") S-IPS LCD display. However, For applications such as 3D CAD that require frequent zooming in/out and rotating of images, the fast response time eliminates ghosting or streaking, even in detailed linear drawings. It comes with a response time that is listed as 20 ms (typical), but Eizo claims that this response time is valid for almost all transitions. That is actually better than many ordinary 12 ms displays. If the claim is correct, I believe Eizo may just have a winner on their hands.
I have not yet been able to locate a unit on display anywhere, as availability seems to be fairly poor in Finland. Prices in Germany right now are slightly above the 1.000 € mark, which unfortunately means it is going to be ridiculously over-priced in Finland at first.