One of my online friends (from a bodybuilding forum and Facebook) posted a most excellent video by Miche Braden doing a 1920's-style New Orleans jazz cover of GNR's Sweet Child O' Mine. Now, this has next to nothing to do with data, I suppose, except that the interlude DID give some inspiration to this posting:
"Where do we go now?"
After the previously reported catastrophic HDD crash in a Secret Underground Lair (SUL) computer, I had to ask myself a few questions about the internal security of the SUL's data. After all, there are firewalls, as well as other hardware, software and usage protocols in place to minimize external threats. Equipment failure, however, is another topic altogether. I was quite fortunate to "only" lose a year's worth of exercise data- the daily inputs from my pedometer. Still, I was under the impression that modern HDDs are supposed to have software/firmware that warns the user when failure is imminent- to have taken this for granted was a mistake on my part. So, to minimize future distuptions, I purchased an external HDD with automated backup software. This solves part of my backup issue. The other problem is redundancy.
In my previous blog, I had started to talk about a RAID-5 solution, except that Win7 does not natively support (for some as yet unknown- to me- copyright issue) RAID-5. And, as I do not want to make an investment in a RAID controller or a NAS solution, my next best choice was a secondary HDD dedicated to backup. So, we purchased an external 3TB HDD, which seemed to be the Goldilocks solution for me (2TB seemed anemic, and 4TB seemed a bit pricey). This got me to reminiscing about my days working for a computer reseller.
Back in the day when HP and Compaq were separate companies, I worked for a small reseller in suburban Chicago named Corporate MicroSystems- their logo was a teal 5.25" floppy. I did a lot of Compaq fileserver configuration quotes when I was there; at the time, I could probably put a quote together in my sleep. I distinctly remember wishing for a server that had 1TB of storage; the system that I just fixed has around 6.5TB of storage (for reference, a neat Apollo 11 article).
So, as I write this I'm putting the finishing touches on my backup. An additional, previously unmentioned complication to the backup is that their are multiple original sources. The database currently resides on a flash drive, and my music library is on another external HDD. If I were really intent on creating a bulletproof solution, I would burn all of the data to Bluray or DVD and do offsite storage- its actually fairly inexpensive to do that, and I may consider it some day.
Until then, I am hochsoeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Friday, February 7, 2014
One simply does not RAID the SUL
Yes, this is yet another variant of what I consider to be the Aragorn meme, the one from I believe the third Lord of the Rings movie in which he says, "One does not simply walk into Mordor".
This past Monday, I was going to watch a movie on one of the PCs in the Secret Underground Lair (SUL). This particular Win XP PC did not have the necessary CODECs to view DVDs, so I downloaded the VLC player and inserted my movie Bolweiser (the English release was called "The Stationmaster's Wife). I think I was prompted to reboot after the VLC install, and when I did, the PC refused to restart. Whatever, I thought, and popped the DVD into a Win 7 PC which had no problem playing the movie. I watched a good part of the movie, and was moderately disappointed- I'm not a videot, but I like to be entertained when I watch a movie. This might have been a bit high-brow for me... dunno, but in any case it was a movie that had been on my "to watch" list which I could now safely scratch off!
In any event, the following morning I rebooted the PC. Nothing. I rebooted into the setup mode, and ran diagnostics on the HDD- I think it failed in ~5 seconds. Now, I'm not particularly cynical, but I was under the impression that modern HDDs had diagnostics built in which gave a user a warning when they were failing? Well, maybe some do, but not this one.
What could I do? In light of the impending end of Win XP support, and having already scheduled this PC for a Win 7 upgrade, not a single tear was shed. I reran the test in Mr. T's presence for his edification (as we share this PC), and then ordered a 1TB Western Digital drive from Amazon (*their #1 best seller in HDDs, apparently). Not long after doing this, I considered adding a RAID to this system, a Level 5 RAID. After doing some research, I was disappointed to discover that a software RAID 5 is not supported in Win 7. Four letter words! (*for non-native English speakers: most obscenities in English seem to be spelled with four letters, so if one sees a reference to a "four letter word", it generally refers to an obscenity).
Ack! Truth be told, my backup on this PC had been a bit sloppy... most of my "important" data was backed up or duplicated elsewhere. The only real data I lost was ~15 months of pedometer data. Not huge, but still a bummer.
The new drive arrived late Friday evening, just as I was getting ready for work. I unpacked it and took it to the Secret Underground Lair, giving it the opportunity to adjust to the ambient conditions. When I got off work on Saturday morning, I installed it in the drive cage, connected the power and data cables, and then buttoned up the PC. I then installed a fresh copy of Win 7.
So here I sit, approximately twelve hours later posting my first blog entry on a Win 7 box. All is good- Avast, Steam and Chrome are installed. The widely-reported non-availability of the software implementation RAID 5 on Win 7 is a bit of a blow, but since I don't want to spend another +100 USD on a decent quality RAID controller, I'm going to Plan B: permanently attached external backup, with optical backups as needed.
Alas and alack, as data and life intersect, I have no new juicy data news to report; then again, maybe my misadventure in BackupLand will be a warning and a lesson for someone... before you, too, lose fifteen months worth of pedometer data!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
This past Monday, I was going to watch a movie on one of the PCs in the Secret Underground Lair (SUL). This particular Win XP PC did not have the necessary CODECs to view DVDs, so I downloaded the VLC player and inserted my movie Bolweiser (the English release was called "The Stationmaster's Wife). I think I was prompted to reboot after the VLC install, and when I did, the PC refused to restart. Whatever, I thought, and popped the DVD into a Win 7 PC which had no problem playing the movie. I watched a good part of the movie, and was moderately disappointed- I'm not a videot, but I like to be entertained when I watch a movie. This might have been a bit high-brow for me... dunno, but in any case it was a movie that had been on my "to watch" list which I could now safely scratch off!
In any event, the following morning I rebooted the PC. Nothing. I rebooted into the setup mode, and ran diagnostics on the HDD- I think it failed in ~5 seconds. Now, I'm not particularly cynical, but I was under the impression that modern HDDs had diagnostics built in which gave a user a warning when they were failing? Well, maybe some do, but not this one.
What could I do? In light of the impending end of Win XP support, and having already scheduled this PC for a Win 7 upgrade, not a single tear was shed. I reran the test in Mr. T's presence for his edification (as we share this PC), and then ordered a 1TB Western Digital drive from Amazon (*their #1 best seller in HDDs, apparently). Not long after doing this, I considered adding a RAID to this system, a Level 5 RAID. After doing some research, I was disappointed to discover that a software RAID 5 is not supported in Win 7. Four letter words! (*for non-native English speakers: most obscenities in English seem to be spelled with four letters, so if one sees a reference to a "four letter word", it generally refers to an obscenity).
Ack! Truth be told, my backup on this PC had been a bit sloppy... most of my "important" data was backed up or duplicated elsewhere. The only real data I lost was ~15 months of pedometer data. Not huge, but still a bummer.
The new drive arrived late Friday evening, just as I was getting ready for work. I unpacked it and took it to the Secret Underground Lair, giving it the opportunity to adjust to the ambient conditions. When I got off work on Saturday morning, I installed it in the drive cage, connected the power and data cables, and then buttoned up the PC. I then installed a fresh copy of Win 7.
So here I sit, approximately twelve hours later posting my first blog entry on a Win 7 box. All is good- Avast, Steam and Chrome are installed. The widely-reported non-availability of the software implementation RAID 5 on Win 7 is a bit of a blow, but since I don't want to spend another +100 USD on a decent quality RAID controller, I'm going to Plan B: permanently attached external backup, with optical backups as needed.
Alas and alack, as data and life intersect, I have no new juicy data news to report; then again, maybe my misadventure in BackupLand will be a warning and a lesson for someone... before you, too, lose fifteen months worth of pedometer data!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
STEM DIY?
Considering my less than stellar academic background, I'm probably close to the bottom of the list of folks whom one would envision to be an ardent STEM supporter. This is especially true considering my choice of academic pursuits. I don't think I regret the study of history and languages, as both are important in helping one understand the world and to interact with it, but quite honestly don't do much for one's career... or pocketbook! In fact, apart from a brief foray into pre-digital (silver-based) photographic technology, I had done everything in my power to avoid STEM-related education for myself.
Once again, its time for me to take a step back and talk briefly about STEM. STEM is an acronym which stands for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics. It seems that here in the United States, we are sorely lacking in preparing college bound students for college-level math and science. According to the National Math + Science Initiative, 54% of high school graduates are not ready for college level mathematics, and 69% are not ready for college level science (for what its worth, I am also not a huge fan of the massive government-educational complex).
So, today's topic is addressing the person one sees in the mirror every morning- how to make the world a bit more educated in STEM by doing a bit to educate the person in the mirror. Where to start? Being very frugal, I'll start with the best place there is: free. I'm posting a couple of free educational resources right now that may help someone (or help someone to help someone else) to get some free skills training in Technology- specifically, computer programming. As time and space permit, I will add more in future blog entries.
One of my very favorite programming sites is W3 Schools. W3 Schools online tutorials are very web-centric, with coursework in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, PHP and JQuery. These are mostly webcentric languages, but the way W3 Schools is set up, the student starts writing code almost immediately, and can instantly see the results of their efforts. The site has a code window on the left (where code is entered) and a website preview window on the right (at least the HTML/HTML5 lessons are set up this way- I have not explored the others). And it couldn't be simpler: write the code, click the "Submit code" button, and the preview updates with the new code. Cool!
Interested in developing for Microsoft-based applications? Well, there's a website for you- check out Visual Studio Express! Here you can download the latest (lite) versions of some of Microsoft's most popular dev products, and then get up close and personal with them. While I'm on the topic of Microsoft, they offer very many free training opportunities... I suppose it behooves them to do so, because then they can sell more! Another Microsoft free site is the Microsoft Virtual Academy. I have not explored this site, but it looks promising.
That's all I've got for now. I'm still accumulating data, but not doing much with it (this week at work, I logged six days + overtime!)
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Once again, its time for me to take a step back and talk briefly about STEM. STEM is an acronym which stands for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics. It seems that here in the United States, we are sorely lacking in preparing college bound students for college-level math and science. According to the National Math + Science Initiative, 54% of high school graduates are not ready for college level mathematics, and 69% are not ready for college level science (for what its worth, I am also not a huge fan of the massive government-educational complex).
So, today's topic is addressing the person one sees in the mirror every morning- how to make the world a bit more educated in STEM by doing a bit to educate the person in the mirror. Where to start? Being very frugal, I'll start with the best place there is: free. I'm posting a couple of free educational resources right now that may help someone (or help someone to help someone else) to get some free skills training in Technology- specifically, computer programming. As time and space permit, I will add more in future blog entries.
One of my very favorite programming sites is W3 Schools. W3 Schools online tutorials are very web-centric, with coursework in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, PHP and JQuery. These are mostly webcentric languages, but the way W3 Schools is set up, the student starts writing code almost immediately, and can instantly see the results of their efforts. The site has a code window on the left (where code is entered) and a website preview window on the right (at least the HTML/HTML5 lessons are set up this way- I have not explored the others). And it couldn't be simpler: write the code, click the "Submit code" button, and the preview updates with the new code. Cool!
Interested in developing for Microsoft-based applications? Well, there's a website for you- check out Visual Studio Express! Here you can download the latest (lite) versions of some of Microsoft's most popular dev products, and then get up close and personal with them. While I'm on the topic of Microsoft, they offer very many free training opportunities... I suppose it behooves them to do so, because then they can sell more! Another Microsoft free site is the Microsoft Virtual Academy. I have not explored this site, but it looks promising.
That's all I've got for now. I'm still accumulating data, but not doing much with it (this week at work, I logged six days + overtime!)
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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