Failure is the Key to Success

Over Christmas, the main hard disc on our 5.5 year old Dell mini tower failed, causing us to replace the computer with a new one. We could have replaced the disc, but we had had other components in it fail in the past year, so its time was up. We didn’t really loose any data, as the majority was already stored on our server and backed up regularly. What was more of a problem was the assortment of programs that had been installed and configured over the years. The thought of having to re-install and reconfigure these wasn’t something I was looking forward to, especially if I had to change the operating system to Windows Vista, from Windows XP. Some of the programs would need upgrading to run on Vista and the cost would be prohibitive.

Dell do a range of computers for Small Business, called Vostro which are very well specified and which also offered the option to ‘downgrade’ from Vista to XP for £10. This seemed a very good solution to me. We specified a Vostro 220 mini tower system with a dual output graphics card to match the functionality we already had. This also became the point at which we changed from a pair of 17″ CRT monitors to a pair of 19″ widescreen TFT monitors. The thought was to re-arrange our desk to minimise the items on it. To accomplish this we bought a Belkin OmniView Pro2 KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switch which would allow us to run both the new computer and Jo’s laptop sharing one of the screens and the other screen only attached to the new system.

When the system arrived, I was in for a surprise with the dual outputs on the graphics card. I was expecting a pair of DVI (white digital connector on the left) outputs. I should have checked the specifications of the ATI Radeon HD 3650 card that Dell provided more carefully. It had one DVI output (which I promptly had to convert back to VGA to attach to the KVM switch) and a Display Port and HDMI output. I had to get a HDMI to DVI cable to attach the second monitor.
Continue reading » Enabling RAID 1 on a Dell Vostro 220

Tags:intel matrix storage console,raid,raid 1,vostro 220

I signed up with Skype a few months ago to give me another VoIP telephony option. Skype to Skype calls are free, so it seemed worth setting up.

I originally got myself a Bluetooth headset. Initially, I had problems connecting the headset to the Bluetooth on my laptop. I upgraded the Bluetooth stack to the latest Toshiba stack and then was able to successfully connect the headset to my laptop and configure Skype to use it. However, shortly afterwards, the headset locked up completely and I was unable to use it.

Continue reading » Kensington VoIP handset

Tags:kensington Vo200,skype,voip

The Netgear FVS124G router has settings to allow it to pick up the time from NTP (Network Time Protocol) servers.

I initally set this to my local NTP server with a backup on an online one. However, there is no way to manually set the time initially. When you power on the router the date is set to 1st January 2005. The problem with this is that using NTP will only correct a small time difference; 3.5 years is a big large to correct.

I had almost given up on resolving it when I thought to try connecting using telnet to the router.
The user name and password for the telnet session are the default admin credentials (not the ones I had changed for the web interface). Once connected, press Ctrl C, then type Cli (Capital C is important). This gets you to a unix type shell. Then cd config cd sntpc show This will confirm that the time is sychronised and gets around the large time differnece. Then type exit and logout.

The bonus of fixing the time is the firewall logging now works properly.

Tags:netgear fvs124G,ntp netgear

Tim at The Inflatable Soapbox blind sided me this with this post and tag on Tuesday night.

I wasn’t able to reply on Tuesday as I was replacing a failing hard disc and reinstalling Windows XP on a laptop for a colleague at work. I’d forgotten how long it takes from plain XP, through Service Pack 2 and then downloading and installing the remaining 91 security patches. Still, after all that I was able to install Avast as a free Anti-Virus program and Open Office as a free office suite (much better than MS Works that was previously on the system).

On Wednesday at work, I got called to look at a printer with a paper jam. Usually a simple fix, in the worse case maybe a pair of tweezers to remove the last bit of torn paper. The printer was an old, but very serviceable LaserJet 4000, not very heavy use, so plenty of life left in it. Of course, no maintenance on it, its not worth it for a printer that’s getting on for 9-10 years, so if I didn’t fix it, we would replace it…it would be cheaper than getting it fixed. After 10 minutes at the printer location pulling scraps of paper out of it, I took it back to my desk. I ended up unscrewing just about every bit that would come off, before I could finally get the tweezers to the last bits of crinkled paper and pull it out. All in all, I removed a piece of paper about the size of my hand, but it was finally working again. Just time to get it back on the shop-floor and get the toner off my hands before going home.

Continue reading » Tuesday Tech Troubles and Triumphs

At lunchtime today Jo mentioned she was having trouble connecting wirelessly to our network. This has happened a few of times in the last couple of weeks, but retrying or in one case restarting the router resolved the issue.

Not today! Wired connection was working fine, but there was no wireless. After resetting the router and re-entering the configurations, I had intermittant wireless, but now no routing of wireless connections to the internet. Also, it was no longer logging any connection details.

I have had the router since February 2005, so it has been on for most of that time continuously. I updated the firmware from the default Linksys to Hyperwrt when I got it which gave me the ability to log the incoming and outgoing firewall connections and messages. This has had its uses; a few weeks ago I was able to identify a test signal from my VOIP service that was trying to connect every few seconds.

So, unexpectedly, I had to go out and buy a replacement router this afternoon. Linksys routers used to run Linux. There is a great support for 3rd party firmware upgrades to the Linux based routers, one good site for this is Linksysinfo. Unfortunately, a few years ago, Linksys changed their routers from using Linux, which means the 3rd party options are now limited.

I now have full connectivity restored, but have had to sacrifice the logging ability as this isn’t part of the standard firmware.

Tags:network router

I know my answer to this question, but I am not sure it is the correct way going forward as data quantity increases.

I have the majority of my data located on a server computer with a RAID hard disc array. This means that I can have a hard disc fail and not loose any data before I can replace it. I backup the data stored on this computer to tape every week to a pool of weekly and monthly backup tapes. This gives me the ability to restore previous versions of files that are deleted or overwritten.

My computer, with the software applications on, accesses the data on the server and doesn’t store any critical information locally. This means if I have a hard disc failure on this machine, I don’t loose any critical data and only have to reinstall the operating system and programs.

As I scan my film negatives, I am scanning them at the highest resolution that the film scanner is capable of and storing them in tiff format. For long term storage of the scanned images, I have created par files for each image, which will allow me to recreate the image if the original is damaged. Each film has been stored on DVD, 2 copies, each on different manufacturer’s DVD. One set will be stored at my mum’s and I will retain the other scanned set as well as the original negatives.

I know that there are other things I should be doing such as storing my tapes at a different location rather than at home. This locating of storage media remotely protects against data loss in the case of a fire. Although the original data would be lost, I would be able to recover it from backup.

Coming from an IT environment, I am aware of the importance of data backup and am able to implement a solution that will work for me. I often wonder what, if anything, most computer users do to ensure the long term protection of their data. There are USB flash drives, external hard drives, online storage and DVD/CD storage available. As the home computer becomes more important for storing digital photos and other information, I wonder what will finally be targeted at the home user as a out of the box minimal configuration solution.

What do you do to protect your data?

Tags:backup,data backup,data storage