indiboi.com

If you happen to have been following along over the last few months you’ll know that I’ve had quite a few hard disk failures… five to be exact. All of them were Maxtor drives, and nearly all of them were just out of warranty.

Thankfully I was able to either recover the data or it wasn’t terribly important. The most recent failure was a bit annoying, but considering the fact it’s ‘just porn’ well… I’m not throwing a fit over that one.

I did purchase one 120GB drive to replace the three smaller drives I’d lost originally as part of the file server. I don’t know what I was thinking, because I believe that is a Maxtor too, but then I could be wrong, I simply don’t recall and I’m too lazy to open up the file server and actually look.

The file server is looking a bit pitiful with a mere 240GB of space across two 120GB drives now. I do have about 40GB free, which worries me. Actually, it seems rather ironic and funny that I’m worried about having only 40GB free when I recall my original computer had a total drive capacity of 200MB.

This whole drive failure situation has given me cause to evaluate my data storage habits, mainly I’ve vowed to never again buy a Maxtor drive, and to essentially any new drives will be thrown away whenever they fall out of warranty and replaced. Perhaps that is a bit extreme, but it still prompts for new evaluation of ‘procedures’ when it comes to data storage.

This situation also should have been viewed as a reason for forced updating of the hardware, but I was simply too involved with so many other things to consider throwing money in the tech direction. It’s actually been a very, very long time since I’ve bought any technology, really, which is also strange.

I suppose I’ve just grown so very tired of it, mostly due to work; there’s always some sort of attempt at brute force or some sort of other cracking attempt, hell… even my simple inquiry form at Positive Fusion has been under an intermittent cracking situation. Add in that simply browsing around on the internet these days requires multiple layers of anti-annoyance software to get rid of intellitxt bullshit (those green double-underlined links), popups are everywhere — even the type that can counteract blockers regularly, not to mention ads now just flying across in every direction. I’m actually avoiding updating Flash because I know the primary reason the browser prompts for the update is so that even more ads can be shown. Adblock is very helpful, of course, but regardless; the entire world of the internet is ridiculous these days, I’m rather sick of it as a whole. This can be evidenced by my serious lack of updating this journal, my lack of being online (in terms of aim, etc).

I’m getting off track, but I figure I somehow needed to vent a little of the frustration. Perhaps I still need to vent a bit more, but being at the computer continually reminds me how the business is not exactly prospering, while not suffering it’s at pretty much a standstill. I don’t know what to do about it, and to that end the frustration really drives my lack of desire to want to do anything to improve the situation.

It is only by virtue of the fact that I live with someone (my mom, of course) in a house that is fully paid for, and do not own a car, and thus do not have the issue of car payment and associated insurance, or rent, or other utilities, that I can have the ‘lifestyle that I have become accustomed to’ at all. I’m very thankful that, while I’m not exactly a wealthy person, my life situation works out okay anyway, in that I can afford to purchase items that may be considered a luxury by some or most.

Going off that tangent, there are many somewhat high ticket items that I would really like to have. One of which is a new digital camera, I’ve been moaning about how horrid my non-slr Nikon is, but I never really do anything about it other than look at how a good digital SLR would cost a tiny fortune (to me the near $1000 range). If I put my mind to it, like I’ve been attempting with the new TV, I could do it. I suppose I’ve just not cared enough to actually want to get it, in that I care more about it than all the other little things I would also want to get that do not require saving up money.

I mentioned the TV. In August I began using a Motorola DCT6412 dual tuner Hi-Def DVR. This was a bit of splurge, but made sense to finally get a DVR if it would basically be a zero-upfront sort of situation (i.e. through Comcast). I’ve always been wanting a Tivo, but that upfront cost and then having to pay $12+ per month for guide data was just too much to stomach. There was also the problem of knowing that they were not exactly seamless if a cable STB were to be involved… which made the possibility of getting any premium channels annoying. Of course, there was always Direct TV, et al, that one in particular having Tivo (in fact my friend Matthew has one, which was one of the primary motivating factors — keeping up you know). Anyway, point is I have this nice little thing, it costs me roughly $25 per month; $10 for the box itself and another $15 because they require you to have digital cable to get it. I like it, as the Tivo cultists say, “It’s changed how I watch TV.” Satellite wasn’t a viable option, because either I’d be paying the whole thing for just me to use, or if we went whole-house with it and cancelled cable, the Comcast bastards would then raise the price of the broadband internet to the point where it would be asinine to drop the cable — we’d still be paying for it. That is, of course, exactly how they want it to be - to have the customer feel locked in, and you know, it works… it’s just less expensive. In areas where there is good DSL service it might not be so bad, but when it comes to evil versus evil, Sprint is worse and they provide service here for DSL — much slower and much more expensive. The last time I checked it would be nearly double for the same type of bandwidth.

I’m getting a bit off track again. I suppose I really do have a lot to write about, even if for the majority of people that could be reading this, it’s well… ridiculously boring and unimportant. I had been happy with my TV, really, I was… then I suddenly had HiDef signal available to me. The Motorola DVR conveniently down-scales the signal to work on my ‘old fashioned’ 480i TV, but you know, the quality is absolutely stunning when compared to just about anything. I also started to realize that almost everything I watch anymore is in 16:9 format, it’s getting silly to nearly always have those black bars at the bottom of my screen.

I started casually looking at getting a widescreen (16:9) TV. I was originally mostly leaning toward going with a flat tube CRT, like I have now. There are two big problems with CRT technology, varying in importance depending on who you talk to. The first being that tubes are heavy, very, very heavy. The second problem being that screen size is severely limited, with them maxing around 32″, though there are a couple a tiny bit larger. It really isn’t that much of an upgrade, when you consider that my TV is 27″ in 4:3 format… it’s basically the same size (with 33″ being required to have a 4:3 image look 27″ on a 16:9 screen). That is a bit of false logic, to an extent, given that 16:9 shown on a 4:3 screen is approximately 24″ in the diagonal, so it would be quite a jump in that regard. Regardless, I was still strongly considering it until I discovered just how severe that first problem is; a Sony 34″ CRT I was looking at weighs in at an insanely hefty 194 pounds! The 3 LCD Rear Projection in 42″ is actually less expensive and a svelt 60 or so pounds. Now, when it comes to picture quality that Sony XBR CRT is going to very likely be better, it’s rather ‘high end’ compared to the projection TV, but my goodness, it weighs so very much!

I really like the idea of Plasma, but the price difference is too difficult to stomach. A 42″ Plasma costs roughly $1000 more than the Sony LCD RP. Now, plasma has one very big advantage… it doesn’t have a very expensive light bulb that will need to be replaced every 6000 hours of usage like LCD RP and DLP TVs require. That same advantage and longevity apply to a CRT also, but of course a plasma can be hung on the wall — that CRT would need reinforced concrete as a stand!

That bulb replacement issue does get me down. It almost seems that while the LCD RP will cost less initially, it’ll continue to be fed $200 every couple of years a steady course of new bulbs. This is actually something I’m growing more concerned about, given my TV habits. My TV is in my lounge, which also faces into the other half of the overall room, my bedroom. I tend to leave the TV on while I sleep, it’s just something I’ve grown so used to that, well, it’s a bit strange to sleep without it on. I have taken to turning off the TV and allowing the sound to just come through the surround system, but it’s a conscious effort to be sure to turn it off, and most of the time I forget to set the timer or don’t plan on falling asleep. My TV is certainly not on 24 hours a day, but it is on a LOT. It’s probably on right now even though I’ve been in the office, simply because I never intended to even start this gigantic entry in the first place. If it were to be on 24 hours a day, that $200 bulb wouldn’t even last a year! In 3.5 years of bulbs, five bulbs at that particular rate of usage, I’d have paid for the ‘upgrade’ to the Plasma. The ‘average’ use says that bulb should last between three and four years, but I’m not the average user by any stretch. The plasma TVs have a brightness halflife of 60,000 hours… in theory it could be on for nearly 14 years straight or so before it went thud, though it’s rather likely some other problem or just normal replacement would happen before then. The 20″ Panasonic CRT in my office has been mine for approximately eight years and suspect it could go another eight if necessary… which is one reason I went with Panasonic for my lounge TV two years ago.

I think I’ve done a good enough job of talking myself out of a projection TV, actually. Of course I just can’t imagine willingly paying nearly $3000 for a TV. A very nice Panasonic 42″ plasma goes for $2700 right now, whereas the Sony LCD RP goes for $1800 (Best Buy had it for $1600 this past week). I think $2000 is about as much as I can possibly stand to spend, and even then… ouch. Perhaps just waiting until prices drop and HDTV actually comes into more of a vogue with the average person is advisable. Indeed, Plasma TV prices are ’supposed’ to be dropping like a lead weight any day now, and really… they’ve gone down considerably versus the original prices a couple of years ago.

I could purchase a plasma EDTV, which is 480p, (versus 720p or 1080i that defines Hi-Def) but that is roughly the same as standard TV, just being progressively scanned instead of interlaced. It seems like not quite a big enough step forward. It does have benefits though, it costs the same as the LCD RP… and in theory Standard Definition should look considerably better on the ‘Enhanced Definition’ TV versus the ‘High Definition’ one. This is truly important, even if I want to dismiss it… while I do watch some TV in HD, most of it really is SD. It’s also a Plasma TV that is a mere 4″ thick, I could wall-mount it if I wanted… and of course other than the potential burn-in issue (which I believe to be blown out of proportion in a major way) it will not need to have a bulb replaced… ever.

I’m just really struggling with how it’s only 480p… with my penchant for wanting the ‘latest’ technology. I am truly concerned though that SD will look terrible on an actual HDTV, and since the broadcast seems to be moving so slowly over to HD, that an EDTV might actually be a better choice overall. HD will still look great, no doubts, it looks great now on my ‘regular’ TV… *sigh*

This confusion and uncertainty really brings me to think I should wait a lot longer than I intended on waiting originally, it also brings me back to the entire point of this entry. I’m getting very concerned about drive failure. I have come very close to losing my entire library of music once already. I think it may be time to implement some form of redundancy, to implement a RAID 5 setup perhaps. It might be a bit extreme, but I’ve been considering implementing such an array with 4 250GB SATA drives, which would give me 750GB of 1TB as usable storage after taking the parity into consideration. I figure this little operation would cost somewhere in the $500 range, given that the drives are about $110 each, I’d need a SATA controller card, and as a touch of added safety I’m thinking of using removable tray/sled ‘things’ in my 5.25″ bays instead of mounting the drives internally as normal; the sleds have cooling fans and also offer the convenience of grabbing the drives in the event of an emergency.

This isn’t a “backup solution” clearly, it’s a redundancy solution. If one drive were to fail, the other three could reconstitute the parity bits onto a replacement; if two or more drives were to fail I’d be screwed. As it stands now, if one drive were to fail I’d be screwed, so it’s a magnitude increase in security… right?

I’m considering Seagate drives as they have five year warranties… that should help with the ‘throw it away when it’s out of warranty’ issue a tiny bit, given it’s rather long compared to many other manufacturers. The RAID itself will be done in software (the file server is a gentoo box) versus having to dish out tons of extra money for a true hardware RAID… apparently tons of manufacturers are putting out fake RAID cards these days. Considering the CPU does essentially nothing on that box, it’s an Athlon 950 or something to that effect (it’s been so very long), the file server is so overpowered it’s not even funny.

The implementation of the array would be oh so much easier if it were possible to create one without obliterating the contents of the drives. Those two 120GB drives hold all the good stuff, and are mostly full… otherwise I’d just get another 120GB and call it a day. The idea of backing it all up to DVD is ridiculous, as it’d take about fifty of them… and take a great chunk of my life with the process. That is assuming I ever replace my broken dvd burner… someday!

There is of course the ‘bang for buck’ principle. It makes more sense to spend a bit more to get so very much more storage space. Going with a 120GB drive for an array costs roughly fourteen cents more per GB. That doesn’t seem like much, but it really adds up when you’re talking several drives - at the 120GB drive pricing it would cost an extra $130 or so dollars for the additional storage, enough to actually buy another 250GB drive and then some!

Do I need that much storage? No, not really. I’ve always had this geeky fixation with being able to say that I have a terabyte of storage space though… and of course to say that it’s RAID would be even cooler… not that any of my friends would really understand what any of that means.

Diverting funds to data redundancy won’t sabotage the TV buying by too much, delaying about a month I guess… I still haven’t any clue when I’d actually be able to buy the TV anyway, and of course prices could drop more and it’d work to my advantage.

Ultimately I could play the ‘just wait’ option for everything and actually start keeping money in my account for once (I mean… again). It’s a bit stressful though, in a way, which is why I’ve been having so much trouble saving… there are always so many little things I could buy instead of letting the money pile up to purchase something more expensive. I don’t need a new TV, no matter how nice it would be to have one… I do believe it could be said that I need data reundancy though; even if I could just spend a very long time backing things up to DVD for the ‘just in case’ scenario where the drives fail again.

I think I’ve prattled on enough at this point.