Archive for July, 2009

revenge is mine!

Posted by niv in nerd on July 30, 2009

so part of the reason why i lost a huge number of files (in the end, let’s just say i lost everything) 2 weeks ago is because two of the 1.5tb drives i ordered were actually defective.  this will happen from time to time and i was pretty unlucky to get two bad drives but i can’t put much fault on newegg or seagate.  you have to assume the drives are bad, is what i’m saying.

anyway, yesterday i got two replacement drives in the mail.  i’ll mail back the bad drives tomorrow, because just now my second drive finished resyncing and i have 4 beautiful solid green lights on my NAS and 0 drive alerts and 3.9 terrabytes to get busy filling.

i think i’d fill these drives a whole lot faster if i had a just-announced nikon d300s.  but that might have to wait.

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two separate but equal points

Posted by niv in metaniv, music, ravings on July 26, 2009

1a) the first two seasons of the west wing are latched into my brain.  i love the pacing, i love the writing, i love everything about it, but it always leaves me feeling that i should be doing more, or at least that i should be trying to do more.  which maybe is more than most.  but still not enough.  or something.

2b) i’m starting my music library over.  i would like suggestions on how to organize my music.  now that i’m starting over, i mean.  clean slate.

i mean it’s all very depressing.  this is what happens when i’m left alone for 3 months.

update: i went with letting itunes manage my music.  talk about depressing.

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another readynas update

Posted by niv in metaniv, nerd on July 20, 2009

friday was not my finest hour.

2 of the readynas drives were showing as failed.  i pulled one.  everything broke.  my nas then spent the next 3 days claiming that the entire volume was dead.

i have somehow tricked it into thinking that one of the previously ‘failed’ drives is not dead, and i’m copying files off of the nas as we speak to an external drive.  however i’m seeing a lot of read errors when i copy files (mostly around my DNGs and NEFs, the files straight off my camera), which leads me to believe i’ve lost a significant amount of data.

so, what have i learned from this ordeal, in which i thought alternately that everything was fine, that i lost everything, and now the reality that i’ve lost some things, especially the things that matter most to me:

1) don’t panic and stay calm.  instead of pulling drives willy-nilly, i should have started a copy to an external drive on friday and let it go until it was done.

2) back things up.  more.  meaning, before i even started this upgrade i should have backed up the entire NAS to SOMEWHERE, anywhere.

3) back things up, more.  meaning i should have been copying my irrecoverable files on a weekly basis to somewhere else.  photos, documents.  not music files or things that i can get again, but something like “original RAW files from trip to europe with jen” would count.

4) sometimes shit happens.  i was freaking out on friday.  but i watched some west wing, went to sleep, woke up, talked to jen, and spent saturday out of the apartment, away from all the devastation.  and after all this, i didn’t care as much about losing files.  as jen said, they are just things.  and as i was telling myself, it doesn’t mean i didn’t experience the things those photos captured.

on a more specific note about the readynas, i think after inserting a new drive, the right move is to reboot, let the entire RAID rebuild, and then replace the next drive.  this relates back to #1 – patience.  this shit takes time.  i wanted 4.5tb as fast as possible, and rushing through it kicked my ass.

update: final tally, 173gb of 698gb (24.79%) lost, most of which were photos.

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maybe i spoke too soon

Posted by niv in nerd, ravings on July 17, 2009

i might have sung the praises of my readynas too soon.  drive 4 added fine.  then i replaced drive 1, and that worked well.  then drive 2 blew up in the middle of adding it (possibly a bad drive) and after adding drive 3 (supposedly fine) the NAS has been doing a raid sync for over 24 hours.  something is seriously messed up!  so maybe some tough love will help.  readynas, this is what you’re supposed to do – this is what i paid for.  get it right or pay the price.

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praising the readynas

Posted by niv in nerd on July 15, 2009

yesterday was a big day for me.  two packages in the mail, both of the utmost importance.  the smaller of the two packages was my release day copy of ncaa football 2010 for the xbox 360.  there is a good chance i’ll actually be able to get an online dynasty going with some people this year, and if this happens you’ll be hearing plenty more about this game.  but for now, let’s focus on the bigger package – four 1.5tb hard drives.

between the music obsession and the photography hobby, i have pretty ridiculous storage requirements.  and of course, there is the natural paranoia that any good nerd should have about hard drive failure (note: if you are not paranoid about hard drive failure, you should be).  so a while back, i bought a netgear readynas (previously branded as infrant).  it holds 4 drives, it does dead-simple raid and file sharing, so it basically fits the need of anyone who just wants more storage that is redundant (that is to say, hard drive failure isn’t a catastrophe).

did i mention its tiny form factor?  it has a nice, tiny form factor.  you can stick the thing anywhere with a power cord and a network cord and just forget about it.

my original configuration was goofy.  i had 3 drives in there of varying sizes (1x500gb and 2x750gb) – this limited the size of my raid considerably and wasted space on the larger drives, but whatever, i had no interest in buying a new drive or 2 for a moderate increase in size.  then, of course, the big drives came down in price and the equation changed a little.

i got the 4 drives for $120 each from newegg.  not a bad deal at all.  so i started the upgrade process last night.  this is what i’m talking about when i say dead-simple: pull out tray, unscrew existing drive, screw in new drive, push in tray, wait 5-7 hours (by, i don’t know, playing ncaa football 2010, sleeping, going to work, doing your normal thing because the NAS STAYS ONLINE), and then repeat for the next 3 drives.  then the one bit of downtime comes when you reboot (sleep during this step) and voila, you just turned your 921gb array into a 4.5tb array without losing any data.  and this is in a CONSUMER GRADE device.

i knew all this stuff going in, this is why i picked the readynas and paid the slight premium for it – but man, when it actually comes together in practice, i just fall in love all over again.

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life, as one might see it

Posted by niv in metaniv on July 14, 2009

I watch Bruce Springsteen’s “Making of Born to Run” documentary. The engineer from the album describes a 24 year old Springsteen standing in front of a microphone working on a guitar solo. Every time he finishes a take he turns to the engineer and simply says “Again.” He does this for twelve hours straight. The recording of the song “Born to Run” takes six months. The drummer and the keyboardist quit and don’t record the rest of the album. Thirty years later they asked the drummer how he felt when he heard the song today. He said “I feel like running out into the middle of traffic.” He sort of laughs afterwards, says he was happy to be a part of the album, but you know the day he quit the E Street Band plays over and over in his head like a fever dream.

I want to believe I’m Springsteen but worry I’m the drummer.

- http://hucksblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/diary-of-mad-housejosh.html

there is not much more to say.  i’d teaser and say ‘big things coming’ but i might be that drummer.

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