Is 8.75TB too much storage ?

First of all, this little story is made of fail, however I’m happy with the outcome

First of all, let me take you back a couple of years. As myself and C tend to have a lot of shared content, eg Movies, Music, Photos, we used to use the good old shared folders on our Windows PC’s. The downside of this was if a machine was off, you had no access to the shared folder !. So I went with plan B, build a cheap server out of old parts I had kicking around, and have all our content on that. This way neither of the 2 main machines would need to be on, and we could still access shared content.

After 6 month or so running like this, I just found it used far too much power, and went for plan C…a NAS drive. I bought a 500GB Western Digital MyBook World, plugged it into the network, and bobs your uncle, storage that didn’t need a PC to be on. My only issue with the drive was it was very slow, I even upgraded my entire network to gigabit to try and improve the speed, but to no avail. About a year later, I decided to upgrade the firmware on the device, which somehow repartition the drive, meaning I’d lost everything ! ARGH !…it took a piece of software nearly 3 days to recover the content !

So onto plan D, a NAS drive with redundancy….so a forked out a lot of money for a 2TB NAS drive with that hard RAID so if the worse case happens, I just plonk in a new drive, and I’m back up and running again. I went with the Acer Aspire easyStore, which at the time was perfect, I had multiple RAID options, gigabit network, wireless, iTunes server, and media server. I went with RAID5, as I felt this would give a decent amount of performance and would only lose 500Gb to redundancy.

As hard drive do die, I set up a piece of software on both mine and Cs machines called SyncBack. This would mirror our chosen folder to the NAS drive, to ensure we could recover our data. This worked great on the PC’s and can highly recommend it, however when we moved to Mac, I planned on using the Time Machine software build into the OS.

Now for plan E, No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the Macs to see the NAS drive as a Time Capsule, so went with the real deal. I bought the 1TB Time Capsule back in March of this year, and does the job perfect !. Currently I have 2 x iMacs (with 1TB hard drives), 2 x MacBook Pros (with 250GB hard drives) and a MacMini with a 160GB hard drive. Now I know that if you add all that up, that is a lot more than a terabyte, however I was happy that I only had around 500GB of data across all machines at the time, and would address the space issues at a later date when it became an issue.

So about a month ago, the space became an issue, and I bought an external caddy to house a couple of drives I had kicking around. This external caddy allowed 2 drives to be plugged in via USB giving the Time Capsule an additional 750GB to play with.

So early this month, I got the new Apple TV, and got into my head, that I should digitise my entire DVD collection. As it stands, I’ve ripped 72 movies, and 7 boxsets….guess what ?…I’m running out of space on the 2TB NAS drive ! ARGH !…so onto plan F !

I was in 2 minds, I could either upgrade the hard drives in the NAS drive, or get another NAS drive, or get an external hard drive and plug this directly into the MacMini. As you can probably tell from the above, redundancy is key, so the drive would have to have some kind of RAID to ensure the data was safe.

I spend the weekend looking around, and found a decent little 4 drive caddy which had USB, Firewire 400/800 and eSATA connectors, and a variety of RAID options !. After spending what seemed like hours looking, I found a site which seemed to do them for £60 less than everyone else. The model they were selling didn’t have the firewire, however I thought “For £60, I don’t really need firewire”. I ordered this on Wednesday, as well as 4 x Samsung 1TB hard drives, knowing I would lose 1TB with RAID5.

On Thursday, all turned up, I went to the PDF manual I’d downloaded in preparation, but couldn’t find the RAID dip switches ?!?……then it occurred to me, for £60 you don’t only get Firewire, you also get RAID !!! ARGH ! I’d ordered the StarTech SAT3540U2E instead of the S354UFER I’d been looking at and downloaded the manual for !

So Thursday in a panic, I ordered the S354UFER, so now I have both. I could have sent the original one back, but thought I’d keep it and plug this into the back of the Time Capsule giving me the option of having another 2 drives as additional storage. Currently the Time Capsule has it’s own 1TB drive, plus a 500GB, and 3 x 250GB, giving it a total of 2.25TB

Now for the final fail….the S354UFER turned up yesterday, plugged it in via firewire, but I was getting a red light on one of the drive (suggesting it was broken), I moved it up and down the bays, but still got the same !. So….in a panic at 5pm yesterday, I rang the place where the hard drives came from and ordered another drive on Saturday delivery so I could finally build this box.

Today, as expected, the 2nd drive turned up, I put it in the caddy, to only be told another drive had failed !….NO !!!…..I went, had a coffee, double checked the manual, only to find that I hadn’t set the dip switches correctly, and the box was only expecting 3 drives. I flicked them to the right position, and both the old, and the new hard drives work fine ! DOH !

However, all is not bad, it does mean if the worse case happens, I have a spare 1TB drive to slot straight in.

This gives me my total of 8.75TB of storage, the Startech S354UFER with 4 x 1TB hard drives, 2.25TB on the Time Caspule, a 2TB NAS drive, and finally my 500GB MyBook World. Now granted I lose 1.5TB to redundancy however it’s a small price to pay knowing my data is safe

Tags: 2tb nas, amount, avail, cheap server, cs machines, downside, drive, easystore, entire network, everything, firmware, itunes, machine, MacMini, media server, music, music photos, MyBook, mybook world, nas, nas drive, piece, plan b, plonk, power, raid options, raid5, redundancy, software, story, Thursday, time, western digital, western digital mybook, windows pc, worse case, year, yesterday

iPod Touch OS3.0 First Impressions

Ok, I’m a little sad, ever since the WWDC I’ve been counting down the days until the version 3.0 software for my iPod Touch. Today as most of you are aware is d-day. I’ve spent the day checking the net to see if it’s out, but to no avail.

5.30pm came, I got myself home in record time, sync my iPod, hit Refresh of the update page….and got the, the latest firmware is 2.2.1…Booo !

Had a quick look on twitter, and and there was a tweet from TrekkyGeek to suggest the firmware wouldn’t be out till around 9pm. Great I though, I’ve got things to do, and this gave me a little time to do them, then I could spend from 9pm onwards messing with the new software.

Just after 6, there was another post from TrekkyGeek saying, ooops, 9pm may have been wrong, so I hit refresh and there it was FINALLY !

I hit the magical download button, did as most people do and just hit the “I accept your T’s and C”s”, paid my £5.99 and hit download.

Initially it download a “iPod Software Update” of 277Mb, went through the motions of updating my iPod, rebooted, once rebooted I unplugged it, went straight to Config >> About and it still said 2.2.1 ? Thought WTF !, So I plugged it back in, iTunes detected it, and said…”Hey, there’s a new firmware available ?!?”, so I downloaded the firmware again, this time a 257Mb file, it ran through the motions, and voila Version 3.0 !

So, I’ve had a couple of hours to have a play with it, so what do I think ?

Well, it’s quicker, and I’d say noticeably quicker, it seems to feel a lot smoother.

Bluetooth, now enabled !, for those of you that didn’t know, the iPod Touch 2G has bluetooth, however this was never made public knowledge, ad this is what was used for the iPod + Nike, and was how you communicate with the sensor you put in your trainer. This now seems to be unlocked so you can use it with Stereo headphones, and speakers. From what I’ve read, this will also be used for peer to peer gaming also.

One of the major additions for me is the Landscape keyboard, currently it only seems to work with Safari (which it did anyway), notes and mail, which is cool, however I hope they bring this to the other applications.

Spotlight Search…anybody who owns a Mac will know just how good the spotlight search is. This will check meta data and id tags for the “searched word(s)”, emailed, notes and it an incredible local search engine, to see this work on the iPod Touch was lightening fast, and a welcome change.

Now this is the major seller for me, and worth the £5.99 alone, Cut, Copy & Paste..I tend to use my Touch a lot for browsing the web, and sending and receiving email, and to be honest it’s been frustrating not to have these when you become so used to them, on the PC and Mac. This does work a treat, you hold down your finger or thumb on the screen for a few seconds, and you get the Cut, Copy, Paste option, select the text, or images you want, with 2 movable start and end blocks, and your done, works very well.

Voice recorder, not a major feature for me, as it means I’ve got to plug in my ear bud/mic combo headset in, but works pretty well.

Something I noticed when I was listening to a podcast shortly after was a number of new icons on the play bar. You now have the option to jump back 30 seconds, which for me is a godsend, I’m forever getting interrupted and struggle to find where I was, with this, 1 click and your 30 seconds in the past !. Another of the icons lets you speed up / slow down the play speed, this way you can power listen to the podcasts you are behind on, which seem a really good feature to me !

The main update I’m looking forward to (which won’t be available till September) is the Push Notification, which allows information about your apps to be notified to you (kinda how the blackberry’s work) for example if you use a Twitter application, this could potentially be coded to let you know when you have a reply, without actually running the application. This if done right with be brilliant, and really give blackberry a run for their money I think.

Finally, a feature that’s been missing since day, something very simple and something you could do by using Yahoo, it’s the ability to sign in to your YouTube account and see and play your subscriptions  ! GENIUS !

Anyway, the firmware is still new, I need to have a good play with it, and will get chance over the next couple of days.

There are many more features, but the above are the only ones I’ve played with so far.

Tags: 2g, avail, bluetooth, counting down the days, couple, d day, day, Download, feature, firmware, ipod, ipod software, ipod touch, little time, lot, mac, motions, new software, nike, play, public knowledge, record time, Refresh, search, software, software update, something, stereo headphones, time, time sync, touch, TrekkyGeek, tweet, twitter, update, version, work, wwdc

How to stop spam bots on phpbb3

Over the past couple of months I’ve been having a bit of an issue with spam bots signing up, and posting spam all over my forums. I spent the best part of 2 days trying to combat this but to no avail. I was just about to tear my hair out, when I stubled accross a brilliant idea over at awesomestyles.com

The idea was to create a custom field which was compulsery on signup.

Custom profile fields are a feature of phpBB3. They allow you, as admin, to easily add fields that a user can fill out to their profile – such as location, age and so on. It is possible to use a custom profile field to help and prevent spam bots from registering on your forum.

Adding a new custom profile field

Firstly you need to login to your admin forum and click the Users and groups tab

From the left hand menu select the Custom profile fields from the Users menu

This will show all the custom profile fields currently added. Add a new one from the box in the bottom right of the page.

Use a name in the textbox such as ‘stop_spam’ or ‘no_spam’ (17 characters max, a-z and underscores only allowed). Select Dropdown box from the dropdown box and click Create field

The settings

You’ll now be shown a more detailed form. The field type and identification fields should already be filled in. Make sure that the Display profile field option is set to Yes and the Display on registration screen and Required field options are checked.

Enter some text for the bottom 3 boxes. In this tutorial the Field title is Are you a spambot?, the description is Sorry we have to ask and the options are just Yes and No.

Once you’ve entered this text click Profile type specific options and you’ll be taken to the next stage in adding the custom profile field.

The default settings here should be fine. Both drop down boxes need to be set to Yes. This means that “Yes” is the default option when on the registration page and that a value of “Yes” will cause an error. This means that whoever is registering will have to change this value to “No” – the idea being a spam bot would not know to do this so won’t be able to sign up to your forum. Click the Language specific options button. This will allow you to translate the text you entered (Are you a spam bot, etc) in step 1 to any other languages installed on your forum. Once that has been completed click Save.

That’s it! This won’t stop all spam bots however it will help to prevent some spam and it is a very easy system to implement.

Using just 1 field didn’t work for me, however adding 2, worked just a treat, my registration screen look like the below, and since implementing a couple of days ago, no more spam bots !!

Reg screen

Tags: admin, admin forum, avail, bot, bottom right, Box, brilliant idea, caption, click, couple, custom, custom profile, default option, default settings, Display, drop down boxes, Dropdown, field, field options, forum, idea, left hand menu, menu, option, page, phpbb3, profile, profile field, profile type, Reg, registration, registration screen, screen, spam, stop, stop spam, text, type