What did you do today? (2014)

[Gray62Participant @gray62]

Fitted the 3 phase motor and Inverter package purchased at Sandown to my 10 yr old Warco GH1330. I hadn't realised quite how ropey the single phase motor was, it's now so quiet and smooth, I regret not doing the conversion earlier. Rewired so I retained the use of the emergency stop on the foot brake and the saddle mounted direction control. Hoping the bits for the tacho turn up this week, then it will all be finished off over the Xmas break.

Great advice from the chap on the Power Capacitors stand, who took the time to discuss my requirements and advise on the most suitable package. I've go their IMO iDrive inverter with a TEC motor, as I won't be running the motor much below 40% speed as I will still make use of the gear head it was considered unnecessary to go for the more expensive cub or jaguar inverters as I wouldn't make full use of the extended torque capabilities at the lower end of the speed range. Running the machine this way also avoids any issues with motor cooling

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

My Hard Disc failure has caused no end of problems, i was on XP but now there is no support so I have changed to WIN 7, A new hard Disc and I started the installation and hit every problem possible. Drivers out of date or not compatable with Win 7. Remembering passwords that suddenly are no use anymore and of course the Windows upload of files that took nearly 6 hours. Eventually I have a working PC again and now have to become familiar with the new layout and workings of Win 7. I just hope its all worth it!

Clive

[chris stephensParticipant @chrisstephens63393]

Hi Coalburner, that would be Pete Moss, a very helpful and patient young man.

chriStephens

[NJHParticipant @njh]

Clive

They always say it's not IF you will get a hard drive failure but when!

I ran Win 7 successfully for some years and I'm sure that you will get on fine with it once all settles down and you become familiar with the new OS.

A recent " Blue Screen of Death" on my Windows 7 machine made me think of changing and, after prompting from all my kids, I changed to a Mac and the intricacies of OS X ! It is slowly coming together.

My advice is to buy an external hard drive ( they are as cheap as chips these days) and regularly back up all your important stuff there. You will then have a head start if ( when?) all goes pear shaped again in the future.

Remembering passwords? The trouble is that, if you don't use them for a while, you are likely to either forget or maybe not quite remember them and, whats more, everything seems to want a password these days They tell us not to write them down but, if you only use your computer at home, I think there is more risk of forgetting the PW(s) than of someone else finding your list of passwords.

Norman

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Trouble in paradise already as my mob. number is wrong in Google. Someone else is getting my security code.

Clive

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Trouble in paradise already as my mob. number is wrong in Google. Someone else is getting my security code.

Clive

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Trouble in paradise already as my mob. number is wrong in Google. Someone else is getting my security code.

Clive

[Russ BParticipant @russb]

Hard drive failures are a given, anything spinning at 5-10 thousand rpm without so much as an oil change is bound to end in failure eventually.

You can almost (99.9%) guarantee your data is completely safe with a RAID array. RAID 5 is the most economical requiring 3 drives, each drive contains 2/3 data, 1/3 backup) and it will all perform faster than a stand alone drive in certain scenarios. RAID 10 would offer the highest level of performance and protection, 4 drives data stored on 2 of them, and mirrored on the other 2.

In most cases it's as simple as connecting the desired numbers of (usually identical) HDDs to a single SATA controller on your motherboard (look for the matched coloured sockets) and flicking a switch in BIOS to tell it to combine the drives into a RAID array, from then on, for all intents and purposes they will behave as one single drive, sometimes windows 7 will require a driver disk, often available from the motherboard manufacturers website and almost all (pre win8) windows installations provide a pause for you to load such a driver from a disk or USB key.

Be sure to label which drive is plugged in to which port (ie Sata0, Sata1, Sata2 etc) and WHEN one fails (usually every 3-6 years) replace immediately and the remaining drives will just fill it with whatever it should have. I tend to buy the drives with best warranty, and lower rpm drives tend to last longer, with obvious speed drawbacks. I'm running a 3.5 inch Samsung 500gb Eco green drive and it's about 10 years old at a guess, still silent (a good sign!) and still as quick (slow…) as the day I got it and it's done some serious mileage. My usual choice is Western Digital, I find Hitatchi endless trouble, albeit they do last their warranty period and they are usually much cheaper drives

[Bob Brown 1Participant @bobbrown1]

There is always SSD hard drives as they are solid state the price of which has come down to more reasonable levels and use the cloud for data storage.

Bob

[Nick_GParticipant @nick_g]

.

I am tiling the kitchen.

Stuart engine production today shall be nil. – Women. ……………… Mad, mad, mad. ……… Do you hear me.? ………. Mad I say.!!!!!!!!!!!! ………………… Mad. ………… Every single one of em mad as a box of frogs. Totally mad.!

Nick

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

Even the best raid isn't protection against motherboard failures and my paranoia doesn't go with cloud storage fo anyhting important. The stuff that matters gets backed up off line at least two ways and for simplicity the less important stuff gets passed over the home network and copied to another pc drive and usb drive. Of course nothing is totally secure – it's just a matter of picking the level of risk. Even the best vault comes with just a minimum security time to break in.

As to mad women.. I rebelled after the last ultimatum to retile the utility room floor in no more than 3 days. After I lifted the mess that was there and discovered a section with bare earth under cork tiles over ply.. dug it out and mixed 27 wheelbarrows of concrete by hand, screeded the whole room solo, used heaters and dehumidifiers, broke all the rules and it still took me 4 days before the grout was done. No, no more. I'm not Scotty on the Enterprise – you can't fix everything just before the Klingons start shooting. No, those days have gone. I'm not climbing onto the conservatory roof at 3.30am in ice and frost to look for another nail or two i might have dropped up there 'cos i haven;t got enough for the wall batterns and the shops are closed….

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Posted by NJH on 20/12/2014 23:58:11:

My advice is to buy an external hard drive ( they are as cheap as chips these days) and regularly back up all your important stuff there. You will then have a head start if ( when?) all goes pear shaped again in the future.

Agreed. The best tool I've come across to back up to the external disk is "Redobackup", a free download. It will not only backup your data but the whole system, Windows or Linux or, in my case a dual boot system with both. All your favorite programs and settings are included.

Russell

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

Got to agree. You cant beat external hard drive systems (NAS). I have one 4 Terabyte and one 12 Terabyte external hard drives. Each one has 4 hard disk drives, One is used as a hot spare and the remaining three are run as a RAID5 group. Should a DISK Fail then it is taken out of use by the system and the hot spare is automatically brought into use and the system rebuilds itself. You get a notification that a drive has failed, pull it out and fir a replacement.

Data will be backed up on PC, backed up to NAS 1 and copied across to NAS 2. The grief one is likely to get if all family photographs for the last x years vanish does not bear thinking about, let alone the work that is backed up.

Some stuff is also backed up to the Cloud.

Laptop data is also backed up to another external hard drive. NAS drives and server are on a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) so brownouts and power cuts don't damage the drives.

Regards,

Colin

[Russ BParticipant @russb]

I'm not sure how motherboard failure has anything to do with storage loss but SSD's are really not (yet) the way forward, they are incredibly fast (I run them as primary drives for the OS and programs) but they have a very definite number of switches per block before they are simply worn out and will no longer switch,

I'm happy enough with a RAID 5 system, and my old 500gb which I now just use to back up the really important stuff from the RAID array every year or so – I think that's a bit over the top, I don't make a point of doing it.

[OuBallieParticipant @ouballie]

Colin,

Would appreciate any details on how you did your NAS arrangement please, as it would be of assistance even though I run Macs.

I need to get my NAS systems sorted out once and for all, having been given me a kick up the chimney with the posts here about bachaving.

Geoff – Sidetracked once again

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

RAID systems, either NAS or built in to your desktop machine are excellent for making sure you don't loose any data, although if you need real security for a business you should keep a backup off site to insure against fire or theft of your hardware.

For me, for private use, I think that backing up the system and software is equally important. After all you have a lot of time and effort invested in installing all that software and getting it set up to your liking.

Russell.

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

Geoff,

I am using Buffalo Terrastation lll NAS devices. These are attached via Cat5 cable to network switch and then to servers/pc etc. The software that comes with them NASNavigator2 allows selection/configuration of the various RAID options. I use RAID 5 with a hot swap disk. The small unit has four x 1 TB drives and I lose 1TB immediately by having this as an automatic hot swap spare. This leaves me with 3x1Tb drives, which when set up as RAID 5 gives me just under 2Tb of storage. So in one respect I lose a lot of storage space but have the additional safety. To be honest this is why I have now purchased the 12TB device.

I am also using some backup software called Novabackup (which IIRC came with the hard drive). This enables me to run scheduled backups of particular directories, e..g. photos on a regular basis.

With many of these NAS devices software is provided which will enable to access the data from anywhere in the world. So for example a son/daughter at UNI could back up uni work to your hard drive, or you could share a drive with a colleague.

I have a friend who runs MAC's and his stuff is backed up to the cloud continually.

Hope this is of some help.

Colin

[Roger Provins 2Participant @rogerprovins2]

I use Linux (currently Ubuntu) and have done so for many, many years.

I back up personal stuff on to USB memory stick but don't bother with OS or installed software as I can do that from fresh in an hour or so from primary sources.

I've never needed to recover for real but in the past I've done a dummy run or two just to make sure it'll work okay.

It does

Edited By Roger Provins 2 on 21/12/2014 15:48:52

[NJHParticipant @njh]

Geoff

" ..it would be of assistance even though I run Macs.

Time Machine ? ( if you are running OS X)

See HERE

Norman

Edited By NJH on 21/12/2014 16:04:59

[Roger Williams 2Participant @rogerwilliams2]

Hello all, went out on t'bike for a quick whizz round. Tried out my Gerbings heated under jacket, marvellous. Heating elements in arms and collar as well. Not really that cold yet, but still, what luxury !.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Colin Heseltine on 21/12/2014 15:18:58:

Geoff,

I am using Buffalo Terrastation lll NAS devices. These are attached via Cat5 cable to network switch and then to servers/pc etc.

.

Colin, and Geoff

Just quick [and probably out-of-date] warning … I installed a Buffalo Linkstation Quad [LS-Q1.0TL/R5] a while back, intending to use it for archiving several thousand RAW image files.

I updated the firmware, and used NASNavigator2, but file transfer was excruciatingly slow on Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and the drag'n'drop doesn't work properly with folders containing many files. … I ended-up using FTP and a Cat5 cable [instead of the anticipated Wi-Fi transfer] and it still took ages.

It appears that the Buffalo stations [of that vintage, at least] are better-suited to use with MS Windows.

Hopefully, someone might confirm that the newer models work better with Mac; but, on my limited experience, I would look elsewhere.

MichaelG.

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

Michael,

My Buffalo NAS are both used on Windows. I must admit the software is a bit sluggish when configuring stuff, but access speeds seem ok.

Colin

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Colin Heseltine on 21/12/2014 18:39:10:

Michael,

My Buffalo NAS are both used on Windows. …

.

Thanks Colin,

I saw Buffalo NAS in use with Windows, and was quite impressed: Which is why I bought mine.

Unfortunately there seems to be limited Mac compatibility: Which is why one of them is still in its box, unused.

MichaelG.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Always make sure you back up your NAS to an external drive regularly. Most NAS's include the ability to backup to an external drive. You might think that using multiple drives in RAID config will protect you but I can tell you from my own painful experience that this isn't the case. Listen and learn.

My original Qnap NAS had 2 x 500GB drives in RAID1 (mirrored, redundant) and gave good service for many years until the power supply started to fail (presumably the caps started to dry out). The first I knew about it was when both drives became bricked. This shouldn't happen with a RAID system surely? One of them was completely trashed and the other was only accessible by removing it from the NAS, mounting it (EXT3 format) and manually copying each directory to an external drive. If I went into a corrupted directory, the PC would BSOD. I had to work this recovery process out myself, as the forums were of no help at all in this instance.

I only recovered about about 70% of the files added since the last full backup and lost quite a few hours in the process. Not long after replacing the PSU and both HDDs with proper "enterprise" grade drives, the fan failed (bearings had dried up) and the OS became corrupted, trashing the data again. It's now in the back yard waiting for a trip to the dump.

The HDDs now reside in an Asustor AS-202TE (2 drives in RAID1). I lost faith in Qnap personally. Although I'm sure they are fine nowadays, I decided to change to another brand.The latest NASs have masses of apps and extras built in, such as media servers, browsers, HDMI, multiple USBs, wifi, webcams etc. I plugged mine into the TV with an HDMI cable and now use it to watch BBC iPlayer, Youtube, browse photos and play music (no PC required). Not bad for under 200 quid. You can access it from anywhere with an internet connection using the apps that come with it and it even sets up port forwarding etc automatically. Mine is an Asustor but the offerings from Qnap, Synology etc offer very similar features. I always back up to an external drive every month or so and back up critical stuff to a cloud drive.

Murray

[Tony SimonsParticipant @tonysimons69671]

My Buffalo NAS works perfectly on my Mac network. I have a USB drive hanging off the buffalo and it does daily back ups automatically.

[Author]

Posts