Blogs about hardware from Pew Pew Laser Blog

Back that Sweet Data on Up.

A few months ago, I finally sprung for an external hard drive for data back-ups - a slick 320G drive w/ USB and Firewire connections. I can't have over a decade's worth of code, photos and music vanish. With my drive, I had wanted:

• Both my WinXP desktop and Macbook Air laptop to be able to share data and read backed-up files, without installing extra utilities.
• A little space for a Time Machine for the Macbook Air. (Not much, since I mostly use the Air as an internet machine.)
• Enough space to back all my necessary data from WinXP machine.

I did have a little trouble getting everything to play nicely; mostly with regards to the file system for the drive. The potential file systems were HFS (native to Mac - but which WinXP won't read), NTFS (native to Windows - but which OSX can't write to) and FAT32 (which both Mac and XP can read and write to - but is ideal for neither).

I had to give up on using Time Machine - apparently TM will only use an HFS drive. When I used OS X's Disk Utility to create an both an HFS partition and a MS-DOS partition on the same drive, XP kept seeing the drive as "unallocated" (un-formatted). Even after the solution presented below, the Disk Utility was unable to split the partition into two.

With HFS and NTFS out, that left FAT32. Unfortunately, WinXP won't format drives larger than 250G as FAT32. But the hubby tipped me off to these steps.In summary:

1. Use XP's Disk Management utility to partition, but not format the drive. This utility is very well hidden. It's in Control Panels > Administrative Tools > Computer Management. Take a deep breath, then drill into Storage, and there's Disk Management.
2. Download Ridgecrop's fat32format command line utility to format as fat32 - it's super zippy fast.

This process gave me a single FAT32 partition that both XP and the Mac can read and write to. The only thing safer would be some off-site storage.

PSA: There are only 2 kinds of hard drives out there - those that have crashed, and those that will. What's your data recovery plan?

It's a Clinker.

Well, I'm going to have to buy a new hard drive. I want to buy this 500 GB SATA Western Digital hard drive from NewEgg - it's a heck of a deal. But I have a smidgen of a doubt that it'll work with my motherboard. It's an MSI K8NGM2, and supports SATA II up to 300MB/s. But the hard drive is 3.0Gb/s - what's the dealio? All the drives seem to have that spec, but it's an order of magnitude off from from my motherboards' spec. Unless there's an important difference indicated by the lowercase versus the uppercase "b".

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Crabwhomper!

My desktop computer is giving me trouble again. It's the same trouble as early in the month - random boot failures, a couple of page fault BSODs, and now the dirty bastard won't boot. Lucky for me, I installed the Recovery Console on the hard disk after list time. Unluckily for me, CHKDSK is now saying that "The volume appears to have one or more unrecoverable problems."! At least now I have a suspect in the whole debacle. Sigh. Time for a new hard drive.

I'm really glad that the Macbook Air is still working perfectly. Otherwise I'd be in real trouble. Still, I'd much rather not deal with this at all. It's been quite a few years since I enjoyed dicking around with my computer. I just want to move on to writing web pages and wasting time on the internet.

Sometimes, Cursing Does Help.

Last weekend, I finally got around to installing some new parts on my Antec Aria Case. Around the end of last year, the card reader had quit working, and one of the LEDs was constantly blinking. So I emailed Antec, and they sent the parts right over.

I'm a reasonably competent computer technician, but I had trouble installing these. No instructions were included, and it was a pretty complicated install. The worst part was getting the old faceplate off - it was screwed on in the middle, and it took me a good bit of yanking before I discovered the screw. Once discovered, it was tricky to reach the screw - it was right in the middle of the case, near the bottom. I had to pull out the entire drive mounting mechanism, and there was quite a bit of cursing.

Oh well. The new parts fixed all my issues once I got them installed. This computer should continue working for quite a while yet; unless I get into digital video. I still won't hesitate to buy an Antec case in the future.

I Regret Nothing.

After hands on testing, careful consideration of all of the available options, I've done it. I ordered a Macbook Air. In December, I went to a couple conferences and had to haul a big work laptop around. This made me really want something light and easy that I could take to conferences or use to code or surf on the couch.

I put my hands on the Dells and the Sonys, but none of them felt as light or as sturdy as the Air. I'm aware of all of the limitations to the Airbook, but they do not matter for my use of a laptop. I am not looking to replace my desktop computer. The applications and file formats I use will work with both Windows and Mac. I use my iPod for music, and flash drives for data.

I had the husband order the Macbook Air online; using his employee discount saved a few bucks. Now I just have to wait a couple weeks for Apple to configure and ship it.

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