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I have ~45GB of space left on my four drive RAID5. This makes me nervous. Funny though, since my first computer had a 200MB drive, oh how things change!

My array is four 250GB drives, originally having been three, but I grew it a bit more than a year ago. When I set the array up each of those drives cost more than a one terrabyte drive costs now, but it was 2005.

Upgrading my RAID is a nerve wracking sort of thing, you see, because purchasing four drives at once is a pretty huge expense, for me anyway, and that’s really the only way to do it right. It’ll also be nerve wracking in the regard to time consumption, as each of those four drives will need to be individually failed, replaced, and the array rebuilt between each drive replacement. Then the array will need to be grown! There’s also the issue of backing up should something heinous happen, which I didn’t do when I added the fourth drive. I’m not inclined to do it this next time either, simply because it’s even more added expense.

Of course, given the current spending “freeze” thanks to the need to zero out credit card balances, this sort of expenditure is going to have to wait quite a bit more time. I think I need to sort through the array and weed out things that have become deprecated and have no future utility.

My additional two RKLs came today, as did my Gerber Trendy pocket knife, and the replacement memory. I haven’t set the RKL up on the 75g yet, probably will Sunday; that pocket knife is so tiny, and thanks to the new memory, my computer is no longer slow as frozen molasses, yay!

I also took another trip down to Mr. Coral in Frederick and got myself six coral frags for $50, woot! I’ve been lackadaisical again about posting, but I had also gone down there last weekend to pick up two frags. I’ll need to photograph them and get that posted.

Last weekend I did a serious overhaul of the 75g aquarium, substantially thinning out the right side that desperately needed work.

Oh, day before yesterday my Garmin 260w GPS arrived, got it for $119 shipped from Amazon. Now it’s much less stressful while trying to find places and getting lost during “construction season” has hopefully been minimized.

My computer is rarely turned off, in fact it’s rarely even rebooted, but some time back I had shut it down as I was going away for a longer period than usual, saving power and all that. It was difficult to get up and running again, wouldn’t POST. I dismissed it, but unfortunately that happened again today.

I had shut down the computer to give it a good de-dusting outside, now that I finally have my air compressor back. To my horror, it again wouldn’t POST. This is the first time the computer has been shutdown since the last difficulty.

In September of 2007 the memory went bad, had to RMA for a new set. Because of the extended period without it I had purchased a small stick of cheapie memory to make do for the interim.

After unplugging everything critical, resetting the BIOS, reseating everything else, still no luck. I swapped memory stick positions, tried each one individually, still no luck. In a vain attempt at one last thing I even reseated the CPU. Finally after everything else had failed, and perhaps I should have done this sooner, I remembered that 512MB stick of DDR2 in the drawer. To my surprise the computer actually booted up!

It’s a bit of a bittersweet diagnostic victory, I need to check these memory sticks in another computer before I RMA them (yay for lifetime warranty), as it may be the board and not the memory. It seems unlikely, but it’s really been about forever since I’ve had to diagnose a computer problem.

I do have to give a hardy round of laughter to my “really expensive” memory now costing basically thirty dollars. It’s almost not even worth the trouble of the RMA, waiting, etc. $5 for return shipping is still better than $30 plus shipping though.

The plus side is that the system is running substantially cooler now that it has had the dust blown out of it!

Thanks to the summer special at Digital Aquatics I was able to justify purchasing a Reef Keeper Lite tank computer for the reef tank! :D Finally, I’ll have compact timers and desperately needed temperature control.

Part of me wanted to get one for the 75g too, but the extra features are not really necessary. Depending on how long the special lasts I might still get another, but the current timer setup so far is working well and in order to take advantage of features like temperature control while still using the timers I’d need to purchase another outlet strip. Who knows, maybe I’ll like it so much that I’ll give in to the temptation.

I got this amazing little CR123A powered flashlight last weekend during 4sevens.com’s Memorial Day sale for $22 shipped! The lowest output mode is as bright as the “3 watt” LED Maglite, haha.

The New Disk
Disk /dev/sdd: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x638212f6

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 1 30401 244196001 fd Linux raid autodetect


The Old Disk(s)
Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 30401 244196001 fd Linux raid autodetect


They Match!

Time to add the new drive
mdadm --add /dev/md0 /dev/sdd1
mdadm: added /dev/sdd1

Now to grow the array
mdadm --grow /dev/md0 --raid-devices=4
mdadm: Need to backup 768K of critical section..
mdadm: ... critical section passed.


The growing/reshaping took 9 hours.

Time to check the integrity of the filesystem

fsck -f /dev/md0
fsck 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
e2fsck 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
RAID: 96834/61063168 files (31.4% non-contiguous), 104634355/122097920 blocks


Now to resize the filesystem

resize2fs /dev/md0
resize2fs 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
Resizing the filesystem on /dev/md0 to 183146880 (4k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/md0 is now 183146880 blocks long.


Whoohoo!