labeled diagram of Acer E360 Socket 939 motherboard by Foxconn (labels in English). Compare the previous image: :Image:ASRock_K7VT4A_Pro_Mainboard_Labeled_English.svg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes, when you visit YouTube and right away a video begs for your attention, and the one which I’m going to share with you within this blog post is exactly that.  The title for the video is a bit misleading, because you won’t be able to make a motherboard even if you actually watch the whole video.  Nonetheless, the title goes “How to make a Motherboard – A GIGABYTE Factory Tour Video.”  I must warn you though, the speaker for the video had a strong accent, and so it was hard for me to actually understand him as I tried to watch the video.  Luckily, the video itself is well done as it shows the motherboards go through orderly steps of being manufactured (i.e., how the motherboards are pieced together by machines and humans).  Even though the video was uploaded around two years ago, it was quite interesting for me (and probably you too) to be able to see how the motherboards were assembled.  Today motherboards are probably being assembled in similar manners!  Enough with the rant from me, check out the video right after the break and enjoy!

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Telling you what, I’m a noob (i.e., a newbie) in hardware!  Sure, I know all the basics such as certain graphic card that I must need for my system specifically, power supply and its wattage potentials, must have cpu (i.e., type and performance), and other unimportant components (i.e., not something as a motherboard) — but in reality I only had experience in replacing graphic card and RAM (Random Access Memory).  Fortunately, I was bold yesterday and went ahead with the upgrade of my computer’s power supply and graphic card.  It was really a challenge since hardware to me would always be difficult.  I guess I was more of a software person.  Anyhow, in any case, power supply should be the easiest to remove and install right?  Wrong, because power supply came in many shapes and sizes and wattages.  Getting the wrong one will get you nowhere and a lot headaches since you might have to reconnect bunch of connectors such as SATA connectors.  Also, you might not be able to fit the power supply into your case correctly if you’re getting one that is too big for your case (i.e., mid range case or smaller).  Getting the wrong one might not give you enough power to support the many hardware that you intend to rig for your computer system (i.e., enough power to power many hardware at the same time).  Getting the wrong one will not allow you to have the right connectors so you won’t be able to power your mother board or CPU — I’m looking at you Dell (i.e., Dell sometimes has rigged/wired their computers differently then the standard blueprints that most computer manufacturers/brands would follow closely).  This is why sometimes I think it’s best for you to build your case from start, but how can one do that if one has very little experience in hardware?  Me, me, anyone else?

Anyhow, Dell XPS 8100 is what I got for Windows 7 computer/Desktop.  I upgraded Dell XPS 8100′s 350w stock power supply to OCZ ZT series 550w.  I figured I needed a better graphic card, and 350w would never allow me to use a better graphic card.  The stock graphic card that came with my Dell XPS 8100 was ATI HD Radeon 5770.  Sure, the ATI HD Radeon 5770 was plentiful, powerful for most games and whatever else that needed the graphic power.  Unfortunately, it was not powerful enough for the games that I wanted to play.  Witcher 2 and Star Wars The Old Republic had ATI HD Radeon 5570 ran hot.  Anyhow, I might have been too extravagant in upgrading graphic card for naught (i.e., gaming isn’t glamorous in practicality of all things).  Nonetheless, I wanted to upgrade the power supply since I used it to power so many external hard drives and internal hard drives (that I had installed) to a point which the power supply’s fan got extremely loud and annoying.  The new power supply is super quiet and has a bigger fan which cools my system down (CPUs) tremendously.  Of course, with modular power supply, cable management is way more fun and somewhat providing better airflow, consequently somewhat cooling down the graphic card in the process.  Newer graphic cards tend to run quieter and using power ever more efficient even though one might use them to play extreme graphic taxing games.  I find this to be true with my new graphic card.

The reality was that it took me way too long just to install the power supply and the graphic card.  What was worse was that I thought I had destroyed my whole computer system right after I powered up the power supply and the computer.  How come?  The power supply did power up the motherboard as an amber light was lighted up inside the motherboard, but nothing else had happened — no graphic on monitor and no spinning fans at all (e.g., power supply fan, case fans, cpu fans).  It was a noob mistake, and I was a noob in hardware so it was not a surprise.  It turned out my motherboard required only 4 pins connector to power the CPU, but I did not use the right cable with the right pin to power the CPU.  The funny thing was that the PCI-e connector was able to fit onto the 4 pin power controller for CPU on the motherboard.  Even more funny was that the right cable had labeled PSU/CPU, but as always when it came to hardware I just went on without looking into details.  Luckily, nothing was shorted or broken, and I figured it out in time to have the CPU powered, consequently allowing the computer to work correctly.  Luckily I wasn’t crazy and stupid enough to think brand new power supply was broken, because I could have thought so since I had to actually and tightly snuck the darn power supply with some force so it would reluctantly melted with my Dell XPS 8100 case.  Obviously, this case wasn’t built for having great power supply, because you would know what I meant if you actually had to install something much bigger and more powerful than 350w power supply inside a Dell XPS 8100 case.  If I had thought the power supply was damaged from beginning, I definitely would have wasted even more money to buy another power supply which might just turn out to be not too great either.  In the end, the power supply fitted nicely with the case as if it was made to be married to the case, although a forceful one.

Nothing to be worried really, I was able to get power supply and graphic card installed without blocking the airflow of the case even though the power supply was a little bigger than the original one.  Gotta thanked the four screws that held the back of the power supply to the case!  Anyhow, so I thought everything would be smooth sailing from here.  Indeed it was somewhat until I saw ATI’s drivers complained how my system didn’t run the correct drivers.  Of course, software is my turf and so I went on to simply uninstall ATI’s Catalyst Control Center (CCC).  Unfortunately, ATI drivers were too tightly embedded into my system, therefore removing ATI’s CCC was a futile effort for removing ATI’s drivers altogether.  The same annoying warning (how ATI’s CCC would not support the current graphic driver) came up after rebooting the system.  A quick look into the Windows Task Manager, I saw annoyed ATI’s processors of all types appeared.  Some of them refused to end even though I had killed these processors.  The simplest solution I had was of course went into C drive, typed name of the ATI’s processor into the search box, did a right click on one of the result and executed open file of location, deleted the file — lather, rinse, and repeat!  Unfortunately, it turned out some of these files that belonged to ATI’s drivers were protected with permissions.  So I had to take ownership of these files and changed the permission of these files to full control for everyone, and then I was succeeded in deleting these files.  Finally, I was tired of deleting each file at a time, and so I deleted the whole directory of AMD/ATI’s drivers — of course one had to be sure all files within such directories were belonged only to AMD/ATI’s drivers or else one might delete important system files.  At the end, I used CCleaner to clear up the registry as uninstalling and deleting AMD/ATI’s drivers might leave unused registry behind.

The whole experience told me that I have got a lot to learn in hardware department.  Obviously, each time I decided to upgrade something, I had learnt something new.  The whole upgrade process for whatever components had always been fun and scary at times.  Soon, I’m thinking of upgrading the stock CPU’s fan and perhaps the CPU itself.  Obviously, this has got to be within the limits of the motherboard that I got, because the ultimate upgrade has got to be building one’s own computer which obviously points to the whole idea of getting a brand new motherboard.  I think I won’t be able to build my own ultimate computer for whatever purpose just yet, because I have got a lot to learn on the hardware department.  Perhaps, I might build a physical NAS box next which will use FreeNAS as the OS.  This project might be a lot easier than building a brand new computer since it requires less research!  After all, it’s not so hard in using a spare computer that can support more than three hard drives that come in size of 2 terabytes.  Software RAID anyone?  Until then, I think I’m just going to dream about me getting all work up again about upgrading something or building something that is computer related.  Until then, I be mucking around with more software and writing.  Until then, I keep on being a noob on the hardware department…

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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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Six hard disk drives with cases opened showing platters and heads; 8, 5.25, 3.5, 2.5, 1.8 and 1 inch disk diameters are represented. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Did you know you can use FreeNAS to host iSCSI service?  OK, what is this service anyway?  To tell the truth, I’m so new to this that I’m scared to talk of it, because I don’t want to have this wrong and steer you wrong.  Anyhow, I think I know how this service works inside FreeNAS.  Let me sum this up, it’s like using FreeNAS’s storage volumes to act as hard drives on different computers.  So, to make this clearer, let say you have a FreeNAS server with plenty of ZFS disk space and you had already created the necessary ZFS Datasets to act as if these ZFS Datasets are different partitions (i.e., ZFS volumes or hard disks); you can basically set up iSCSI service through FreeNAS to make these ZFS Datasets to act as if they are internal hard drives of any other computer you have access.  Once you set a computer to connect to iSCSI service’s volumes (i.e., extents) and with appropriate permissions, the users who log onto this specific computer will be able to use FreeNAS’s ZFS Datasets (i.e., ZFS volumes) as if there are additional internal hard drives on the computer.  How neat, right?  Unfortunately, I think the setup for iSCSI is rather confusing, and you have to really understand iSCSI to not make mistakes when setting up iSCSI service in FreeNAS.  I’m myself not exactly sure of how setting up iSCSI, therefore I can’t really make a video about iSCSI.  Luckily, I’ve found an instructive video of teaching you how to setup iSCSI in FreeNAS.  Please enjoy the video out right after the break!

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Image via Wikipedia

Some people might not know that defragging an SSD can be very bad.  Actually, a specific SSD can be worn out faster than usual if someone has defragged it too often.  Anyhow, in the video right after the break, I’ll touch on why it is so!  For the bonus I show you how to turn off the Windows 7′s automatic defragmentation schedule for all hard drives, and then I also show you how to manually defrag the traditional hard drives.

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Thunderbolt might be a hell lot faster in upcoming years.  According to Gizmodo, Intel claims to work on new Thunderbolt version which will use fiber optic cable to push data.  With this new way of pushing data, the data speed can be in the range of 700 MB/sec.

Imagine by today standard, a dual layer disk of Blu-ray can hold up to 50 GB of data.  If my math isn’t wrong, then it takes only 71.43 seconds for one to completely transfer the maximum data capacity of a a dual layer disk Blu-ray over this newest Thunderbolt version that Intel is working on.  It’s just plain awesome to see the transferring of data this large this fast!

A commenter on Gizmodo raises an issue where this newest Thunderbolt version yet might be useless, because there isn’t any storage technology that has yet to show it will also be able to read and write data at such speed.  But to point this out, the commenter is wrong about this if Wikipedia is on the money!  According to Wikipedia’s article “Solid-state drive,” and I quote verbatim:

At Cebit 2009, OCZ demonstrated a 1 terabyte (TB) flash SSD using a PCI Express ×8 interface. It achieves a maximum write speed of 654 megabytes per second (MB/s) and maximum read speed of 712 MB/s.[21] In December 2009, Micron Technology announced the world’s first SSD using a 6 gigabits per second (Gbit/s) or 600 (MB/s) SATA interface.

As you can see, I don’t think the future has to worry about achieving the 700 MB/sec write and read speed of a storage technology since OCZ had demonstrated that it could already done something similar in 2009.  If OCZ can, I think others will be able to do so too.  So, it’s naturally to assume, I should say safely assume, that a compatible storage technology with the newest Thunderbolt version yet might be readily available in the upcoming years.

Sources:  http://gizmodo.com/5844210/thunderbolt-will-become-even-faster++just-with-new-cables, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

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Now, don’t you wish they’ve also invented the PC itself and the monitor and the external hard drive to use solar power?  How about the smart phones to use solar power?  I think it’s about time to push the solar power technology to the next level!

SSD is somewhat a new technology still!  Not so many people have yet knew how to use SSD the right way.  One of those people probably has to be me!  Anyhow, here what I know so far about what you should know before you go out and buy your first SSD!

1. Check to see if your computer is supporting which type of SSD!  Some computers may support only SSDs that use SATA 2 controller only, therefore the latest SSDs that utilize SATA 3 controller for faster performance will be a waste on these computers!  Why?  Yes, SATA 3 SDD type is backward compatible with SATA 2 controller, but why buy SATA 3 SSD type when this type of SSD won’t be able to run at its full potential when it has to communicate with SATA 2 controller?  SATA 2 SSD type may max out around 3 Gb/s theoretically in terms of data transfer rate.  The latest and the best so far is SATA 3 SSD type, because SSDs that work with SATA 3 controller theoretically can have up to 6 Gb/s data transfer rate!
2. Make sure you use the right cable for your SSD, because it’s very important in delivering great performance for your SSD.
3. Sometimes, Windows 7 may have weird configuration which might not be best for your SSD.  One example is that SSD does not need to be defrag the same way as your HHD (i.e., hard drive with mechanical parts).  Instead, you should enable TRIM for SSD, because TRIM is somewhat how SSD does its defrag (certain SSD types may not support TRIM).
   • Furthermore, SSD does not wear out the same way as HHD, because it got no moving part!  Instead, you should worry about SSD’s life expectancy!  How?  Not allowing Windows to write unnecessary log files onto your expensive SSD, but you should disable such logs.  To disable certain unnecessary log files on Windows 7, do this:
     1. Click on the Start button (orb with a Windows flag)
     2. Right click on Computer
     3. Click on Manage
     4. Click on System Tools
     5. Expand Performance
     6. Expand Data Collector Sets
     7. Left click on Startup Event Trace Sessions
     8. Right click on any log name on the right panel to disable the log.  Important notice:  Do not disable EventLog-Application, EventLog-Security, and EventLog-System — these are important logs you should allow to run!
   • Furthermore, your SSD might be a lot smaller in size (i.e., hard drive space/volume) than normal HHD (at least it’s true right now), then you should think about freeing up some space on your SSD.  Here is one example, disable Windows Indexing to free up some space on your SSD.
   • Furthermore, there are conflicting ideas about if one should disable Windows Write Caching for SSD or otherwise.  I think you should try both to see how it works out for your SSD in terms of stability and performance.  Follow the steps below to either disable or enable Windows Write Caching for your SSD:
     1. Open up Control Panel
     2. Go to Hardware and Sound
     3. Click on Device Manager
     4. Scroll down to disk drives; expand disk drives.
     5. Right click on your SSD disk (assuming you know its volume label)
     6. Click on Properties
     7. Switch to Policies tab
     8. Uncheck or check the box that labels as “Enable write caching on the device!”

Following some tips above may help your SSD performs even better!

Disclaimer:  Please know your risks!  Following the tips in this blog post to improve your SSD performance at your own risks!

Source:  http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/windows-7/2441-windows-7-ultimate-solid-state-drive-speed-tweaks.html