Tag Archives: Hard disk drive

We Need Google Fiber Sort Of Broadband Service Providers In Town To Boost Business Opportunities And Customer Experiences

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Posted by on in Internet
Backup Backup Backup - And Test Restores

Backup Backup Backup – And Test Restores (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today, broadband upload speed is nowhere near the speed that is desirable for people to backup their digital contents to third party backup service providers or I should say doing backups to the cloud.  I’m using Crashplan backup service provider, and it seems that it took me ages to backup my Windows 8 PC — containing 500 GB worth of data — to Crashplan’s cloud with AT&T U-verse 3 Megabit per second upload speed.  On the sort-of opposite spectrum of doing backups to the cloud is doing backups to a local network’s backup device or devices, and it turns out Crashplan software is doing so much better, like way better, when it backups the 500 GB worth of Windows 8 PC data to a NAS (network attached storage) and external hard drives.  Basically, at the moment, I see that Crashplan shows that it’s 97.2% done with a backup for Windows 8 PC to a NAS, 54.1% done with a backup for Windows 8 PC to an external hard drive, and 10.2% done with a backup for Windows 8 PC to Crashplan’s cloud.  So, I think you get the gist why doing backups to the cloud is super tedious and slow.  It really does take ages.

If one day Google Fiber ever comes to my town, I will definitely see doing backups to the cloud as a positive thing.  For now though, 3 Megabit per second upload speed is definitely too slow for me to do a backup from a local network to the cloud for 500 Gigabyte worths of data.  Imagine people who have like Terabytes worth of data, I wonder how would they feel if they have to do backups to the cloud.  With faster broadband such as Google Fiber, I believe the cloud with become even more popular.  If the cloud is not too expensive for people to store Terabytes worth of data and Google Fiber type of service is readily available, I don’t see how people would not find this combination a super delicious one.  Yummy bandwidth and data redundancy if we care not about the possibility of data leak from a possibility of weak computer security in the cloud.  Of course, don’t forget to encrypt whatever data when such data are to be stored in the cloud, yo?

I’m just talking about doing backups of data only, but obviously any faster broadband which is in the league with Google Fiber offers more than just the upload essential, because Google Fiber type of download speed (i.e., Gigabit per second bandwidth) can also bring more opportunities to people and businesses alike.  Just imagine the possibility of having Google Fiber type of broadband connection… more households may be able to enjoy playing games, streaming movies, listening to music, surfing the web, watching Internet TV, video chatting over the Internet, shopping online with enhance experience (e.g., interactive media shopping experience which allows people to use video chat and 3D interactive contents), and a lot more at the same time.

With such amazing possibilities — that I had mentioned — float to the surface of the pool when faster broadband gets deploy, we can definitely see modern businesses that rely on the Internet for revenues will see faster broadband a positive thing and a must thing to have.  For the people who are the consumers of all Internet and digital things, they  might be even more addicted to the Internet since they can do more all at once.  Imagine the fantastic feeling of a big size family when Google Fiber sort of broadband service provider is coming to town, the family will definitely not have to take turns to consume all Internet and digital things.

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Tips To Protect Your Photos For A Very Long Time To Come

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Posted by on in Hardware, Internet, Photography, Web Services

If you want to keep your photos for a very long time to come, you definitely need to take measures in protecting your precious photos.  Something as hard drive failure to accidental deletion can definitely erase the awesome picture moments that you had captured.  Of course, you don’t really have to be a fanatic with photography for you to take extreme measures to protect your photos, because protecting photos isn’t that hard as long you are willing to take some steps in giving you the chance to recover the lost photos.  Within the video right after the break, I give some tips that might be helpful to you in regarding to protecting your photos for a very long time to come.  Please enjoy it!

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Using Storage Space To Make Data More Resilient On Windows 8

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Posted by on in Microsoft and Windows, Software

Windows 8 Storage Space is a feature which resembles physical or software RAIDs that many server admins have dealt with on a frequent basis.  Server admins employ RAIDS to make sure data won’t just disappear.  Of course, Storage Space isn’t Enterprise grade, therefore it might not be as reliable or effective as real RAIDs are.  Nonetheless, Storage Space is definitely useful and effective in home computing environment.  An example would be how a person could quickly combine mismatched hard drives (i.e., different sizes and types) together through the usage of Storage Space.  The plus side for using Storage Space is that his or her data will even become more resilient than otherwise.

How would Storage Space work?  Basically, Storage Space feature within Windows 8 allows you to create Storage Pools.  From a Storage Pool, you get to create almost limitless amount of Storage Space.  What had I spewed?  No sweat!  Just imagine a Storage Pool as a computer configuration of multiple hard drives, and it’s indeed just that!  Nonetheless, a Storage Pool alone is rather useless, because it’s only representing a pool of combined hard drives.  You need to create as least one Storage Space out of a Storage Pool to make the Storage Pool useful.  In the context of Storage Space, just imagine it as a virtual disk space or virtual hard drive or virtual storage space.  The important point to keep in mind about Storage Space is that it’s being virtual!

By being virtual, Storage Space is free of physical limitation which many physical RAID configurations are facing.  I think software RAID configurations can pretty much be as flexible as Storage Space.   So, in this way a computer user can use Storage Space feature within Windows 8 to create any size virtual hard drive (Storage Space) from a limited configuration of Storage Pool.  Why Storage Pool is a limited configuration?  When a Windows 8 user creates Storage Space that is much larger than its Storage Pool, there is a possibility that such a Storage Space will overfill the physical configuration of its Storage Pool.  When this happens, Windows 8 will complain that a user must add more physical or network drives to a Storage Pool so there will be more real physical disk space to support the overfilled Storage Pool.

By knowing the differences between the Storage Pool and Storage Space, Windows 8 users can freely add however many and however large Storage Spaces into a Storage Pool quick and easy.  With Windows 8 Storage Space, I can see Windows 8 users will find their data to be rather resilient than usual.  I made a video on Windows 8 Storage Space, and you can watch it right after the break.  This video will go deeper into what I’d written here.  Enjoy!!!

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Windows 7 Home Premium And CrashPlan Won’t Support Network Attached Storage As Backup Solution? No Problem! Using FreeNAS ISCSI To Trick Both Into Thinking Network Attached Storage’s Volumes/Partitions As Local Devices So Backup Can Be Done!

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Posted by on in Microsoft and Windows, Networking
FreeNAS

FreeNAS (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I just found out that Windows 7 Home Premium would not support backup to network attached storage.  So, I said fine, CrashPlan could do the job!  To my dismay, CrashPlan too would not support backup destination of network attached storage type.  Well, CrashPlan had a workaround to this problem, but I tried and it refused to work for me.  Luckily, I had one last trick in my sleeve, and it worked perfectly!  Now, I could backup my Windows 7 Home Premium to my FreeNAS box (a software which runs network attached storage server).

How?  It was (and is) all about FreeNAS ISCSI.  I enabled ISCSI and created ISCSI type of volume/partition on FreeNAS box; finally I would connect Windows 7 Home Premium to FreeNAS ISCSI drive (formated it) so CrashPlan would be able to do backups to FreeNAS box (network attached storage server).  Wait, wasn’t CrashPlan would not support network attached storage?  I didn’t lie, but FreeNAS ISCSI (or ISCSI in general) is special!  ISCSI’s job is to trick Windows 7 Home Premium (and other Windows versions) to think that it’s a local partition (i.e., internal hard drive), therefore Windows 7 Home Premium will not be able to figure out that ISCSI is not a local device (i.e., internal hard drive or partition).  The same goes with CrashPlan!

Of course, once you can get ISCSI going between your Windows 7 Home Premium and the network attached storage server, you don’t really have to use CrashPlan to do backups for your Windows 7 Home Premium anymore.  After all, Windows 7 Home Premium (and other Windows versions) has native backup tool.  Nonetheless, in my opinion, CrashPlan is far superior as a backup tool than Windows’ own backup tool.  Anyhow, it’s really up to you to use either Windows’ backup tool or CrashPlan to keep your Windows’ data safe.  Furthermore, you can check out the video right after the break to see how you can set up ISCSI on FreeNAS server and how to connect to FreeNAS ISCSI from Windows 7.  (You won’t be disappointed for using FreeNAS ISCSI solution as a solution for doing backups of Windows 7 Home Premium!)

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Want To Keep Your Data Around For 1000 Years? You Don’t Need Alien Technology To Do So! You Just Need Millenniata M-DISC discs!

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Posted by on in Hardware
A photograph of a digital disc with disc rot.

A photograph of a digital disc with disc rot. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not too long ago I had contemplated on the question of how to keep data around forever.  Nonetheless, as many other grand questions that had popped into my mind before, this one too came and disappeared from my mind without an answer.  Until now!  I stumbled onto a YouTube video with the title “Millenniata M-DISC Permanent Storage Archival Grade Media Showcase NCIX Tech Tips,” and I had a eureka moment.  Of course, Milleniata M-DISC would not be the answer for my question, because even with Millenniata M-DISC data would go corrupted in about, 1000 years?  But it was close!  Close enough for me to have had a eureka moment!

What?  1000 years you said?  Yes I did say so, but I didn’t make it up.  Just watch the videos right at the bottom of this blog post and you would see they had said the same thing.  Anyhow, nobody would be able to live 1000 years, therefore keeping the data for 1000 years would be excessive, right?  For you and me, the answer is yes!  For the future of mankind, the answer is not even close.  What if we humans need to keep some data around forever so history can be told again and again to whoever wants to know about us in millions of years later?  For the dinosaurs, they have their fossil bones, for us, we might have our data discs and fossil bones too!  For folks who are paranoid about not losing data as long as they are the masters of their data, I think Millenniata M-DISC might have to be the solution for them.

What is with the might have to be the solution phrase?  Well, I like the idea of having data around longer than my own lifespan or anyone else’s lifespan, but writing data onto any disc is troublesome.  Plus, buying disc and keeping them is also troublesome (i.e., many trips to the store or losing discs or forgetting to label the discs).  Nonetheless, I still think Millenniata M-DISC has paved the way for what soon to come that blows your mind!  This is my hypothetical slashes prophetic saying and thinking, perhaps someone might try to improve Millenniata M-DISC concept and technology and come up with a way to allow people to store data onto hard drive form factor that allows data go uncorrupted forever?

OK, data go uncorrupted forever might be a wishful thinking, because nothing lasts forever in reality!  Not even the sun, the moon, the stars, and anything else you have ever thought of as having been around forever.  I still think though, data to last for 1000 years on a hard drive form factor is way more awesome!  Therefore, I’m crossing my finger and hoping that someone can improve the Millenniata M-DISC data storage concept sooner than later!  For now, I think I might try out Millenniata M-DISC technology.

Millenniata M-DISC technology is expensive, but is not out of reach for ordinary technological enthusiasts like you readers of my blog.  For an example, when I browsed Amazon for Millenniata M-DISC, I saw 10 pack size with 4.7 GB spec for each M-DISC costs around $26.24.  In my honest opinion, I don’t think $26.24 for 10 M-DISC (4.7 GB storage capacity which secures your data for 1000 years) is too bad!  Of course, not even with Millenniata M-DISC to have such capability as storing data to last 1000 years can circumvent the price drop of popular technology (at least I think so).  So, I guess just like any other technology that has been around long enough, we might see Millenniata M-DISC discs to drop in price gradually.  If this happens, we might see people flock to M-DISC technology so they can keep their data around forever just for the sake of having the ability to do so.

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Extend A Drive In Windows 7 So You Can Make The Drive Grows Dynamically And Combine Drives Into One

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Posted by on in Microsoft and Windows

Before following the instruction within this blog post on extending a drive for your computer, you have been warned that there are associated risks to extending a drive.  Such risks might be about losing data and more.  Therefore, you have been warned about the risks and should not blame me for something goes wrong with your computer.  If you aren’t sure about the whole thing, please don’t follow my instruction within this blog post for the sake of keeping your data and the computer safe.

I never had to create an extend volume on Windows 7 ever before, but I just did this yesterday.  OK, first thing first, what on earth is an extend volume?  Extend volume is how you merge additional hard drives onto the main one so the combination of drives would create a huge dynamic volume.  To put this in another way, let say you have a primary drive D is about to be filled up with lot of data, and you want to somehow increase the size of drive D — the only way to do this without having your computer seeing another drive F or G or whatever is to extend drive D — you combine additional hard drives that you had just installed for the purpose of extending the primary drive D and make drive D grows in size.  Get it?  OK, but how are we going to extend a volume?

No sweat, because it’s not that hard!  First of, before you even decide to start extending a primary drive, you should back up all the data of this particular primary drive for just in case something bad might happen (i.e., losing data).  Done?  Great!  Now we can begin our process of extending a primary drive.

I assume that you have already install an additional hard drive into your computer, therefore you should be OK by following whatever instructions that will come next.  Oh by the way, you should not extend the primary drive that holds the installation of Windows operating system, because if you screw this drive up you might have to reinstall Windows all over again (a painstaking process I’m sure).  Nonetheless, if you insist that you are a fearless individual, then you go ahead and try to extend the primary drive that holds the installation of Windows operating system — just don’t format the drive and so you should skip the part where I profess that you should format the drives that you want to combine (i.e., extend).  By the way, don’t blame me if things go wrong though, because you have been warned about the danger of extending a primary drive that holds the installation of the Windows operating system.

Since you have already done the backup of a primary drive that you want to extend, therefore it should be OK for you to format it.  I’m not sure if the format of the drive you want to extend is necessary or not, but you can always try to extend the drive without formatting it first to see how things fair.  For me though, I formatted the primary drive that I wanted to extend.  Format?  Yes?  (To format, do this — click on Start button > hover mouse pointer over Computer > right click on Manage > left click on Storage > Disk Management > right click on the correct primary drive > left click on Format > choose NTFS as file system and check the box that labels as Perform a quick format.)  Great, let move on then.

Now, you go ahead and format the second hard drive, the one that you just installed not too long ago for the purpose of extending the primary drive (i.e., the primary drive that doesn’t hold the Windows OS).  Done?  Did you format it with NTFS?  Great!  Go ahead and get back into Disk Management window (i.e., Computer > Manage > Storage > Disk Management), right click on the second hard drive (i.e., the one you just formatted) and click on Delete Volume.  The next part I might not have the details down to the letter, but it should go like this — right click on the primary drive that you want to extend, choose Extend Volume, and add the available unallocated drive (i.e., the one you just do a Delete Volume for) as to extend the primary drive.  I think the rest of the process is pretty much self-explanatory, therefore you just follow through with whatever Windows asks you to do.

Done with extending your primary drive?  Inside Disk Management window, you should now see the graphs of two separate disks with different disk number labels are colored with the same color.  This means you have successfully extend the primary hard drive with the second hard drive or so.  You should also see both disks are having the same drive letter or so.  If you go to Computer from Start button, you now should see the drive (i.e., primary drive) you have done an extend for is now showing larger drive size (i.e., larger disk space).

To conclude and bring everything back to normal, you need to restore the data of the primary drive from the backup you had made earlier.  After the restoring of the primary drive’s data, you should be able to use the primary drive (i.e., now is being extended) as if it’s just a regular drive — you won’t be able to tell that it has been extended unless you take a look at the Disk Management window.  Good luck!