Upsizing NAS Storage from 500GB to 1.5TB

I have been planning to upgrade my NAS storage capacity after it crossed the 90% mark a couple of weeks ago. Just over a year ago, I went with a 500GB hard drive (1TB drives were available in the market then but at a premium) expecting it to last me for at least two years. I was pretty amazed to find myself consuming more than 400GB in just over a year.

On further analysis, I found out that most of the space was used up by my family's photo and video albums; It's not really surprising considering that my DSLR captures each frame at ten megapixels and my videos are captured in VGA quality at thirty frames a second and stored as mjpeg.

With that hindsight, I decided to go all out and get the largest drive on the market today for this upgrade. Other than size, the other two requirements I had were low power consumption and noise. This is because my NAS runs 24/7 and it sits in the living room where the constant clicking noises from the drives can get pretty annoying, especially late at night.

Based on today's market, my ideal choice is the Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB. Unfortunately, WD has yet to launch this model and the largest it offers is a 1TB model (WD10EADS). I would have waited for it if its due to launch within the next few months but I couldn't find any news of it online.

My next best choice is the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB model (ST31500341AS). Although the power consumption and noise performance isn't as fantastic as the WD Caviar Green range (reviews here, here and here), its price per GB ratio makes it a hard-to-resist offer; At $0.19/GB for the WD 1TB model vs $0.14/GB for the Seagate 1.5TB model, that is more than 20% cheaper! In addition, its also runs on slightly lower power and alot quieter(!) than my current pair of 7200.10 500GB drives. But do be careful when buying the Seagate drives as there are apparently some buggy production firmwares out there. Based on user feedback, it appears that those with firmware CC1G are ok.

As a compromise, I decided to replace my primary drive first while waiting to see if the WD Caviar Green 1.5TB model will turn up in the next couple of months and at what price point. FYI, I run a JBOD configuration with a full disk to disk backup setup (i.e. HD_a2 -> HD_b2) in my NAS hence it is possible for me to break the upgrade process into two phases. Obviously, I will have to stop backing up some folders due to the smaller backup drive.

The upgrade process was simple enough; I first swapped out the backup drive in the NAS with the new one, booted up the box and let the firmware detect and format the drive accordingly. After that, I copied the entire content in my primary drive to the new drive via ssh using the command cp -a /mnt/HD_a2 /mnt/HD_b2.

Once the copy is complete (be patient! It can take a long time to copy all 400+GB over!), shutdown the box, remove the old primary drive, move the new primary drive from the left drive bay to the right, put in the old backup drive in the left drive bay and reboot. Job done!

A couple of things to note:

1. The primary drive is in the right drive bay while the backup drive is in the left.
   
2. My DNS-323 firmware version is 1.05 and is able to detect the drive correctly. However, the "format new drive" dialog in the web admin console shows the drive having zero bytes. Just ignore that and continue to format the drive as normal. However if you are running a RAID configuration with your pair of 1.5TB drives, you will require the 1.06 firmware.
   
3. The formatting process can take quite awhile (more than 30mins!), just be patient and let it complete.
   

Kids - 20081221 - Joel's 5th Birthday Celebration @ Home

Happy 5th Birthday Joel!

This year, we decided to throw Joel a birthday bash right at home and invited some of his friends (ok... ok... more like his parent's friends with kids...) over to celebrate it with him.

We also decided to try something new... like not buying an off-the-shelf birthday cake but instead, have mommy bake one! It (the cake that is) turned out pretty well for a first attempt I must say... both in terms of aesthetics as well as in the taste department. The kids absolutely loved it! Hm... on second thought, it could be the thick chocolate icing that they liked...


Oh, and finally here's a shot of Joel with the loot he picked up today!

Cleanboot finally working on my DNS-323!

If you are running fun_plug on your DNS-323, you may notice that your partitions are no longer unmounted properly at shutdown or reboot. You have this problem if you start seeing this line in your dmesg output:

EXT2-fs warning: mounting unchecked fs, running e2fsck is recommended

The solution to this problem is a utility called cleanboot. Unfortunately, since the first version, it has not worked for me and quite alot of other folks; instead of cleanly unmounting the partitions before shutting down or rebooting, it hangs the box. Bummer...

The good news is that a fellow forumer SilentException persisted and managed to fixed the utility for his box (forum post here). I just tried it and it works on mine too! Hooray! You may want to give it a shot and see if it works for you.

Jordan and Grandparents

Found these shots of my mom and dad with Jordan while cleaning up my picture library. These were taken during the period when Jordan was being cared for by them on a daily basis. The good thing about having your own folks look after the kids is that you are pretty much assured that they are getting the best attention one can give. Just look at how tightly my dad is hugging him in the photo! Thanks mom and dad for your help!

Vista TIP: New way to capture a screenshot

Before Windows Vista, you can use the following ways to capture a screenshot:

1. <Prt Sc> key - captures the entire desktop
2. <Alt> + <Prt Sc> keys - captures the active window

If you want more fine grain capture, like part of a window, you will have to do one of the above first, paste into Paint and then crop or cut and paste from there. Not rocket science but quite a hassle.

The good news is that in Vista, there is a snipping tool that allows you to capture any part of your screen without jumping through the hoops! Check it out here! Note: This feature is not available in the Home Basic edition of Windows Vista.

Ready made LAMP Virtual Machines

Recently, one of the projects I'm working on urgently required a LAMP environment for testing. Rather than going through the hassle (not to mention time consuming process) of securing hardware, getting the infra guys to set up the network and OS and finally getting my own guys to set up the rest of the middleware, I did a search online and found myself a ready made LAMP VM all in a compact 166mb package. Download the package, unpack it into a directory of choice, add it in my Virtual PC 2007 console and click run; it couldn't be any simpler.

Thirty minutes later, I was up and running with my LAMP environment compared to weeks if I had gone the other route. Oh, and half that time was taken by the download... Yeah, my corporate network sucks...

Kudos to the guys at Virtual Appliances. Other than the LAMP VM, they also provide ready made VMs for LAPP (Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL, PHP), Tomcat (App server only, no database), Cacti (Network device monitoring and data collections), and NTOP (Realtime network traffic monitoring). These packages are available in VM formats for Virtual PC (and Server), VMware and Virtual Iron. Oh, and best of all? Its Free! (for now at least as its still in beta)

Upgrading ffp 0.5 and moving it to USB... again

Recently I have been getting some comments on my post on moving ffp to a USB stick asking for help as the instructions seemed to have become invalid. It was only then I found out that fonz has been updating ffp without changing the version number. Alot of changed since I last upgraded to ffp 0.5 and while there are instructions on how to upgrade to the latest version, I decided to play it safe and just do a fresh reinstall. Here is a log of what I did:

1. Backup the file /mnt/HD_a2/fun_plug and the directory /ffp. (use the sym link to make sure you are backing up your active configurations)
2. Download the latest packages (i.e. fun_plug and fun_plug.tgz) and put them in /mnt/HD_a2/.
3. Delete the folder /mnt/HD_a2/ffp if you have it and reboot.
4. Telnet into the box (default has no username/pswd), disable telnet and enable ssh. (i.e. do a chmod a-x telnetd.sh and chmod a+x sshd.sh)
5. Download and install all the core packages found here. After the download, install using the command funpkg -i *.tgz. Also run the command funpkg -u *.tgz to update existing packages. (i.e. those that came in the fun_plug.tgz package)
6. <-- At this point, we have a working stock ffp working off the hard disk partition /mnt/HD_a2. Now to update the box with extra packages we need -->
7. Restore the svn startup script from backup (it contains the path to my local SVN repository)
8. unrar
9. Transmission
10. Create a local fun_plug script (/ffp/etc/fun_plug.local) to set up some convenience shortcuts. (/hd1 for /mnt/HD_a2, /hd2 for /mnt/HD_b2 and /usb for /mnt/usb)
11. <-- Now that we have all the features working, lets move it to the USB stick using the method found here -->
12. First create the directory /mnt/HD_a2/.bootstrap and download the necessary files into it. (namely setup.sh and usb-storage.ko)
13. Edit setup.sh to make sure that the variable USBFFPPART refers to the right USB partition. If you have only 1 USB drive attached and it has only 1 partition, then this should be /dev/sdc1.
14. Reboot to get the USB partition up and running. (Check by running df and look for /mnt/usb)
15. Copy the entire /ffp folder into the USB partition /mnt/usb. (cp -a /mnt/HD_a2/ffp /mnt/usb/)
16. Create a dummy file .usb-ffp in the root of the USB partition. (touch /mnt/usb/.usb-ffp)
17. Reboot again to get ffp working off the USB partition. (If you need to troubleshoot, check the ffp log at /mnt/HD_a2/.bootstrap/ffp.log)

A couple of things to note:

• To have ffp running off the hard disk again, simply remove the file /mnt/usb/.usb-ffp and reboot. You may want to do this when you need to run e2fsck (i.e. file system check) on the partition.
• To be able to unmount the first hard drive partition (i.e. /mnt/HD_a2) say for disk maintainance, you will need to copy the USB module (i.e. usb-storage.ko) to VRAM (/lib/modules is a good place to put it) before loading it. You can do so by editing the script setup.sh.
  

How to spot a recovering economy?

Now that the year 2008 is drawing to a close, the number one thing on everyone's mind right now must be how the economy will pan out in the new year. The guys at CNNMoney have just published their predictions as well as some advice on how to tell the worst is over (quoted below). Do you agree with this assessment?

The action plan

Keep your eye on three key signs that the overall economic picture is improving. These clues can help you decide when to make moves you may have put on ice for now, such as starting a business or moving to a bigger home.

• Check the three-month TED spread

It's the difference between the interest rate at which banks borrow from one another (known as Libor) and the rate on three-month T-bills. The wider the spread, the more skittish banks are about lending. It's now just under 3%, far above historical levels; when it drops below 1% you'll know the credit market is almost back to normal.

Where to find it: Go to Bankrate.com, search for the three-month Libor rate and the three-month T-bill rate, and then subtract the T-bill rate from Libor.

• Track real estate inventory

Historically, the number of months' worth of inventory on the market has reliably predicted home prices. Six months of inventory appears to be the sweet spot for a healthy market; right now it's 10 months. The National Association of Realtors puts out the inventory data each month, usually between the 22nd and the 25th.

Where to find it: Go to the Research section of realtor.org.

• Watch initial jobless claims

The number of new people filing for unemployment benefits, released every Thursday morning by the Labor Department, has been running between 450,000 and 500,000 a week lately.

"When you see those numbers start to come down below 400,000, that'll be a very good sign that the worst of the pain is over," says Brian Wesbury, chief economist at First Trust Advisors.

Where to find it: Do a search for jobless claims on our Web site.

Video Clip: Jordan's many faces

Here's a short video clip (more of a slide show actually) of Jordan making funny faces. Camera shots and video editing all done by the ever-so-tech-savvy grandpa! Nice maiden effort on the clip!