Recent Posts

801

Living Room / Re: Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 drives failing at alrming rate?

« Last post by nosh on January 14, 2009, 01:29 AM »

I don't know about anyone else, but the length of the warranty is almost the only thing I consider when choosing a drive.  I'll take a 5-year warranty over 3-year any time.  Because I backup redundantly, I don't worry about data loss, I just want a new drive without a hassle.

-superboyac (January 13, 2009, 04:47 PM)

I also give a lot of importance to the length of the warranty - it shows the level of confidence the manufacturer has in the product. The trouble with hard drive replacement is that I HATE the fact that all my "unusable" data is going into someone else's hands. I've thought about Truecrypting my entire system or atleast the data drives but that apparently delivers a substantial hit to performance. 

PS: Maybe I should invest in a powerful electromagnet  - seriously, would that work?

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Living Room / Re: Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 drives failing at alrming rate?

« Last post by nosh on January 14, 2009, 01:15 AM »

Did some (rather frustrating) research on the issue - there's supposed to be a preventive firmware upgrade that's linked to on the newegg comments page (600+ posts there, IIRC)

The file's been linked to in an AVSforum thread but someone also mentioned in the same thread that the fix is for the ST31000340AS (1.5 TB) model, so exercise caution before applying any firmware updates!

The problem seems to mainly hit drives made in Thailand running the SD15 firmware and occurs at boot time.

AFAICT, there's no firmware update available for the 1 TB ST31000340AS model mentioned in mouser's original post, SD15 being the latest firmware version.

The reports of failure seem to be very mixed, I'd be suspicious about a malicious campaign were it not for established forum members posting negative feedback. There's one user who says he lost THREE of these drives overnight and another who says he's been running around twenty of them for over a year without a single one dying.

a_lunatic, I haven't experienced any BSODs on my system (other than the ones that sometimes occur at bootup, which have been attributed to Acronis - something I've learned to live with). I don't think there are any reports of random BSODs associated with these drives so your problem may lie elsewhere.

If anyone hears of an official fix from Seagate please update this thread, no matter when it happens. I've been backing everything up to other sources too and the drives come with a solid 5 year warranty but I'll sleep much better if I know I don't have a couple of time bombs ticking inside the box.

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Living Room / Re: Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 drives failing at alrming rate?

« Last post by nosh on January 13, 2009, 10:47 PM »

I'm running two of these for around four months now, as my primary and mirror data drives. 
Picked them because they were slightly faster than most of the other 1TBs.

According to data recovery experts Seagate has diagnosed the problem and issued a new firmware to address it. However, drives that have already been affected can't have the firmware applied to them due to their locked-down status.

Looks like I've got some work to do. Thanks for the heads up, mouser!

804

Living Room / Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 01-09

« Last post by nosh on January 04, 2009, 02:30 AM »

Happy New Year, Ethyar! And thanks for these updates.

805

Living Room / Re: End of year humor (I apologize in advance)

« Last post by nosh on December 31, 2008, 03:47 AM »

How twins are made:

806

Living Room / Re: This coming year, I am SOO looking forward to __________ .

« Last post by nosh on December 30, 2008, 04:30 PM »

(Along with probability of accomplishment)

1. Getting a grip on my OCDs. - (3%)
2. Getting much better at time management. (30%)
3. Daring to do some of the things that scared me this year. (40%)
4. Working out consistently. (80%)
5. Being way more constructive. (70%)
6. Controlling my temper. (20%)
7. Being a better person. (60%)

807

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 3.1 [BETA 2]

« Last post by nosh on December 29, 2008, 04:25 AM »

The leap from FF2 to 3 was surprisingly smooth.

I tried the 3.1 beta cursorily, most of my (53) extensions didn't want to play along so I guess I'll be waiting too.

808

Living Room / Re: site:donationcoder.com [your username]

« Last post by nosh on December 27, 2008, 08:26 AM »

6,170  - Not bad for someone who can't type 

809

General Software Discussion / Re: How do I stop selling myself v1agra?

« Last post by nosh on December 27, 2008, 01:33 AM »

why would I have any need to remind myself to use something I don't need?

Since when did trivial things like 'need' stop a good salesman? 

In T-Bird just use a nonsense text string as your subject line...

I'm thinking of using my name contained in the From field in the first filter, that way I don't have to worry about fcsking up by forgetting to type in a specific subject line, which is extremely likely considering I have the memory of a four year old. It just struck me the spammers haven't used my name which they probably don't have access to. If that does happen I'll just modify the name slightly by putting it in square brackets or something.

Thanks for the input guys.

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General Software Discussion / Re: How do I stop selling myself v1agra?

« Last post by nosh on December 26, 2008, 08:42 AM »

but man, those Japanese can get freaky!!

 

App, mail goggles? Very funny!

I wish I could narrow it down to a set of keywords but sadly the spammers seem to have more words in their vocabulary than I care to enter into the filters. Hmm... maybe I could use a keyword for positive identification and send everything else from "me" to trash. Don't know if the filters will permit that but it's worth considering. Also, I'll have to remember to include that keyword everytime or end up deleting my own messages.

Like in the email etiquette thread, Option b: "delete button" seems like the best choice.

811

General Software Discussion / Re: How do I stop selling myself v1agra?

« Last post by nosh on December 26, 2008, 12:37 AM »

Who'll pay for all that v1agra then??

812

General Software Discussion / How do I stop selling myself v1agra?

« Last post by nosh on December 26, 2008, 12:10 AM »

Just when you think your inbox is invincible, you start getting junk from the one person you don't want to start blacklisting online... "yourself"!

I would just mark my own addresses as junk (in my offline client) but I do occasionally mail myself stuff from the phone.  And I'm an "approved sender" so the images and god knows what else start loading immediately. I don't think I'm running a zombified machine and I'm at a complete dead end on this one - how do I stop junk messages when they appear to originate from my own address?

813

Living Room / Re: Merry Xmas

« Last post by nosh on December 25, 2008, 06:50 AM »

Merry X'mas to mouser, Cody & the rest of the DC gang!!

814

Living Room / Re: Question about my video card temperature

« Last post by nosh on December 24, 2008, 03:43 PM »

gexecuter,

I had a GEForce 6200 and it drove me nuts with overheating problems, causing crashes whenever I used anything graphics intensive (which for some reason also included scrolling a web page with Firefox 2  ). It took me a while to figure out it was an overheating problem - the fix I used was crude but 100% effective - I attached a tiny fan blowing into the heatsink using a piece of string.

Can't recall the exact temperatures it was hitting but it was way over 69C IIRC, so your problem could very likely be something else.

815

Living Room / Re: Last second home-made gift ideas: HELP!!!

« Last post by nosh on December 21, 2008, 09:34 PM »

cmpm beat me to the papercraft suggestion.


There's some pretty cool (but somewhat complex stuff) at
PaperKraft.net


If you're drawing something you might as well do it alongside a 12 month calendar template and mark out family birthdays, etc.

I think mouser's suggestion is pretty cool too.

816

Living Room / Re: How will the Earth end?

« Last post by nosh on December 17, 2008, 04:22 AM »

Overpopulation is not so much about room as it is about resources, or the lack thereof. My maid, who barely makes enough to give one child a decent life has decided to go ahead and have four children. The thinking is, the more kids you have the more people you'll have earning for the family. As an Indian I am in complete admiration of the Chinese one child policy and their overall disciplined society coz I witness firsthand the consequences of not having stringent population control in a developing country.

817

General Software Discussion / Re: Bear Bottoms Freeware: A very nice high-quality software site

« Last post by nosh on December 15, 2008, 03:02 AM »

Sorry guys, I find it my duty here to back up the KKK claims. Nandana Sen features nowhere in this guy's top 25 most beautiful women.

On the flip side, nice collection of portable links. 

818

Living Room / Re: Email etiquette How to Decline Fowards/Junk?

« Last post by nosh on December 12, 2008, 10:58 PM »

Deozaan,
I felt much the same way about social networking sites and Twitter but the recent attacks in my city showed me how incredibly useful micro-blogging can be. You can search for pretty much any keyword (hashtag) at search.twitter.com so a search for #mumbai would immediately put you in a sort of chatroom where you got the latest breaking news from people situated close to the attacks, NTM a great compilation of links & resources in the days that followed. The flipside is that it's pretty easy to spread misinformation and rumors. Twitter was also a bit too effective for its own good, with the Indian govt. apparently asking to block the search page for a while in order to protect military operations. For all its pros and cons, the one thing Twitter isn't, is "just another tool".

819

Living Room / Re: Email etiquette How to Decline Fowards/Junk?

« Last post by nosh on December 10, 2008, 11:58 PM »

Just wondering a bit about how you use your  "forwards address"...

Do you make it similar to your "real address" : [email protected]?
Do you check the mail in it?
If so, do you use an email client to get both accounts?

Thanks!

-thefritz_j (December 10, 2008, 02:58 PM)

I don't really use a forwards address, I use filters. But it does sound a bit more polite than asking them to stop.

820

Living Room / Re: Email etiquette How to Decline Fowards/Junk?

« Last post by nosh on December 10, 2008, 01:52 PM »

Create another account and request them to update your "forwards address", not as rude as declining their forwards and you never have to check the new account. Or set up your own filters and take care of it on your own. I take the latter approach when some people start sending really large attachments.

Got a 30 MB mail @ gmail today, didn't know they accept such large attachments- their outgoing limit is 20 MB.

821

General Software Discussion / Re: Movie Collector 5 released

« Last post by nosh on December 08, 2008, 11:26 AM »

MC 6, which releases tomorrow, will now fetch data exclusively from their own online database. Support for IMDB and every other source has been completely dropped.

v5 users should be OK because even after the one year support (IIRC) ends there's a big (geeky) user-base that should take care of changes to data retrieval scripts but this is a controversial decision to say the least. Lots of pissed off users on their forums - and for good reason! 

822

Living Room / Re: Your favorite quotes?

« Last post by nosh on December 06, 2008, 12:08 AM »

Some of my favs (sources unverified):


 "He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr

 "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." - Winston Churchill

 "A modest little person, with much to be modest about." - Winston Churchill

 "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. "Clarence Darrow

 "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner

 "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." - Abraham Lincoln

 "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain

 "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." - Oscar Wilde

 "I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here." - Stephen Bishop

 "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb

 "He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." - Robert Redford

 "They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." - Thomas Brackett Reed

 "In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." - Charles, Count Talleyrand

 "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" - Mark Twain

 "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West

 "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde

 "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx

 "He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder

823

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by nosh on December 05, 2008, 11:15 AM »

I'm sure you'll find a special place in your heart for this one, Zaine. 
It was quite popular during the 80s.

[Edit: NSFW?]

824

Living Room / [Humour] Never ask for help on the Internet

« Last post by nosh on December 01, 2008, 11:50 PM »

Maybe I'm just twisted but this made me laugh 

Never Ask For Help On The Internet [Possibly NSFW]

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Living Room / Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 48

« Last post by nosh on November 29, 2008, 02:11 PM »

#1 - Damn, that's a lot of smut!
#7 - Imminent lulz