December 15, 2008 / 0 Comments
Some of the new 1TB Seagate drives come shipped with a 1.5GBps jumper enabled by default. The ST31000340AS drive has a jumper on the back that needs to be removed to enable 3.0GBps transfer. This "jumper secret" may also apply to Seagate drives so make sure to double check your existing and new Seagate drives for this limitation.
Directly from Seagate’s manual:
Serial ATA drives are designed for easy installation. It is usually not necessary to set any jumpers on the drive
for proper operation; however, if you connect the drive and receive a “drive not detected” error, your SATAequipped
motherboard or host adapter may use a chipset that does not support SATA speed autonegotiation. If
you have a motherboard or host adapter that does not support autonegotiation:
•Install a jumper as shown in Figure 3 below to limit the data transfer rate to 1.5 Gbits per second (and leave the drive connected to the SATA-equipped motherboard or host adapter that doesn’t support autonegotiation) or
•Install a SATA host adapter that supports autonegotiation, leave the drive jumper block set to “Normal operation” (see Figure 3 below), and connect the drive to that adapter. This option has the benefit of not limiting the drive to a 1.5 Gbits/sec transfer rate.
The only issue is that the jumper comes pre-installed on these drives in particular.
Good luck and happy hard disking!
October 9, 2008 / 0 Comments
I’ve met and spoke with quite a few persons who believe that RAID is the answer to all of their data-safety needs. There is only one thing I can say about relying solely on RAID: “It’s a horrible idea!”. RAID is a good supplemental protection mechanism in your entire data integrity plan but it is not THE answer.
- RAID is usually susceptible to double-disk RAID faults. While this may not sound like a normal or even conceivable possibility it is a very real issue that I have personally experienced. RAID-6 offers some higher
levels of protection to this problem. Most new 9600 series 3Ware controllers (and most newer controllers) offer RAID-6 capabilities. Choose a RAID-6 able card and, if possible, always run a BBU (Battery Backup Unit).
- RAID will never protect against file corruption or viruses.
- RAID can’t protect against human error. We’re all human, we all make mistakes. If you just hit the delete key on an entire directory of your company’s data then you can probably hit the delete key on your job as well. This is why backups, along with RAID, is the best data integrity solution.
- RAID will only protect you if you are proactive. Some lower quality RAID controllers do not send email alerts and do not properly alert you of an issue. These controllers require special attention. The more user interaction is needed the less likely you will notice a fault. Having a hot spare or spare disks available for swapping is always a good idea.
- RAID will not facilitate off-site and disaster recovery scenarios. There are some utilities out there that provide block-level replication.
In summary, the best data integrity plan is to use RAID to supplement your plan. Don’t rely on RAID as your sole backup/data security mechanism. I personally recommend using RAID-6 with a block-level backup of all data to an off-site location. Using software like R1Soft’s CDP will allow for full block-level backups and file-level and bare-metal restores. Remember to always double check your data integrity plan and never be satisfied with your solution! I personally hate loosing data. With drives as cheap as they are today, why aren’t you backing up offsite?
October 8, 2008 / 0 Comments
Apparently one of Facebook’s founders, Dustin Moskovitz, is proverbially “jumping ship” to start his own Internet company. This quite possibly the best move for him. I’ve known many people who specialize in starting large companies and keep moving. I believe this is the true way to make money when it comes to entrepreneurial endeavors.
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September 19, 2008 / 2 Comments
I just received a letter notifying me that tapes containing data with my information on it were "lost" by BNY Mellon’s archive services vendor. I figured I would make mention of this because it is somewhat technical. I would assume that they are using some sort of encryption routine to protect the data on the tapes. Chances are that these tapes were lost or misfiled. Who knows. The data is most likely unrecoverable but it just goes to show… Even the big boys make mistakes. They do, however, graciously offer 90 days of service from a credit monitoring company. Thanks BNY Mellon!
September 2, 2008 / 0 Comments
It’s very interesting to see what the web was like then and now. Big sites like FaceBook.com and others have been owned by other companies and have looked very different.
Check out a list of the top five web sites on the Internet (as rated by Alexa.)
Yahoo went through many changes throughout the years.
October 17, 1996
 |
Feb 10, 1998
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Jan 22, 2003
 |
Google didn’t really change too much throughout its life thus far. This may be a reason people love Google so much, beside the obvious reasons of course.
Nov 11, 1998
Strange! The first link was to “google.stanford.edu” and the second to “alpha.google.com”. |
Dec 02, 1998
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Jan 01, 2001
Only 1.3 Billion Pages? Wow 🙂 |
3. YouTube
YouTube has definitely stood the test of time. I wish I would have created a site as popular as this!
May 16, 2005
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June 30, 2005
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Nov 25, 2005
Nothing too special here. Just them touting about how big a 4GB IPod is! |
4. Windows Live (Live.com)
It looks like live.com wasn’t always owned by Microsoft. Check these out!
Feb 11, 1998
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Jan 02, 2006
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Jan 21, 2007
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5. Facebook
It looks like the domain “Facebook.com” was originally owned by a company who created “software to manage your world” in 2003. Facebook was originally called “TheFaceBook” back in the day.
Jun 28, 2003
 |
Aug 12, 2005
 |
Oct 31, 2005
Facebook changes in to the site we all know and love. |
Images provided by WayBackMachine.
Some of the new 1TB Seagate drives come shipped with a 1.5GBps jumper enabled by default. The ST31000340AS drive has a jumper on the back that needs to be removed to enable 3.0GBps transfer. This "jumper secret" may also apply to Seagate drives so make sure to double check your existing and new Seagate drives for this limitation.
