I’m taking a trip to Berlin between May 18th and May 21st.
Methodenschulung at IBM Nahmitzer Damm
Crown Plaza Berlin City Centre
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A trip to Berlin in May
Mirco
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Windows 7 on an IdeaPad S10e
Mirco
Last week Microsoft introduced the new Windows 7 to the humble consumer and since I’ve known about the increased performance over Windows Vista from the Beta program it was to to send the installation of Windows XP on my netbook into retirement for good.
The Atom processor of the S10e doesn’t support 64 Bit operating systems and the onboard graphic isn’t the fastest either. And since I rarely store any data directly on the netbook I won’t need the BitLocker feature, so I went for a solid 32 Bit Home Premium version. These are available as System Builder Version from 69€ to 89€ at retail shops (perfectly legal according to German law). The only differences to the regular retail version is the missing 64 Bit DVD and the lack of Microsoft support.
The first obstacle was the DVD. The IdeaPad, like any netbook, doesn’t have an internal optical drive. So I have two options:
- use an external USB DVD drive
- copy the DVD onto a USB thumb drive (at least a 4GB size)
I went with option 2 because I didn’t want to buy a new DVD drive.
Before I started to copy I had to prepare the thumb drive using some command. Open the Command Prompt (CMD) as an Administrator (important!).
c:>diskpart
DISKPART>lis dis
DISKPART>sel dis 3 (3 was my thumb drive)
DISKPART>lis par
DISKPART>sel par 1 (1 usually the only partition on the thumb drive)
DISKPART>format fs=FAT32 LABEL=”Windows 7” QUICK OVERRIDE
DISKPART>active
DISKPART>exitYour thumb drive should now be empty and most importantly bootable.
Now insert the Windows 7 DVD into your DVD drive (D:) on your PC and copy the content to the thumb drive (G:) using Robocopy. (use drive letters that match your configuration)
c:>Robocopy d: g: *.* /e /copyallThis could take a while, depending on the writing speed of your thumb drive. Now you can boot the netbook with the memory stick and start the installation process. I still had the original recovery partition which I wanted to keep. I had to choose custom setup to select the system partition for installation. The automatic mode went into a menu loop because the recovery partition (the first partition on the disk) was too small to install Windows 7. A simple error or warning message would have helped at this point.
The main installation was done within 30 minutes.
From good tradition the first thing I did was to run Windows Update. It found only 9 updates, most of which where device drivers. but still I missed some functionality.
- Microphone
- Bluetooth
- Energiemanagement
- Multi Touch function of the touchpad
Lenovo doesn’t provide any Windows 7 drivers to the IdeaPad S10e, since the device is currently phasing out and is only sold with Windows XP. But the new IdeaPad S10-2 is sold with Windows 7 and besides some minor differences it’s practically the same hardware.
Here’s a list of needed device drivers:
- Lenovo Energy Management Driver
- Synaptics Pointing Device Driver
- Realtek High Definition Audio Driver
- Intel Onboard Graphics Driver
- Broadcom Bluetooth Driver
For the 3G version of the S10e you’ll need additional UMTS card drivers. There’s a complete list of all working drivers and tools at the ThinkPad Forum (only German content, but the drivers are available in Englisch).
Update: I just found a video tutorial
Click here for Part 2
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The Things I Do Online – In Color
Mirco
After months of collecting some ideas and getting nothing done I decided to split my content yet again and created bindermichi.de. The new home for everything my online alter ego does on the internet.
To keep a clean look my of choice was Unstandard which I’ll be customizing to some extend in the next weeks.
I will also be using Disqus as my commenting platform on bindermichi.de. That should keep me from the hassle of dealing with all the comment spam.
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Not getting anywhere…
Mirco
Remember I wrote something about restructuring my (currently 4) blogs and combine three of them into one?
Not? well, it’s already been 4 months and I’ve not been getting anywhere close to that. Partly because of my lack of time between my working schedules, and part of my lack of experience with wordpress themes.
The initial plan was to create a new theme that reflects the different parts of content I’ve been covering in these three blogs. currently I think it would be easier to take an existing Magazine style theme and tweak it to my needs, but I’m still in a decision phase.
Here’s what I came up with until now:
Freemium seems to be one of the most versatile themes currently out there. Lots of tutorials on how to customize this theme. But since it’s that popular, this would just lead to another boring blog layout.
TheLatest is a magazine like new theme. Feature wise it has everything I’d need, so with a litte effort to spice up the dull color scheme this would have good potential. MegaNews is pretty much the same in over crowded. more and narrower columns and huge advertising spaces… which I don’t need at the moment.
CorporateMag is a sleek contemporary blueish design. It has some nice features and probably need to be replaced with next years fashion. One thing that caught my eyes were the stretched images. Seems like it uses the same pictures for both the feature bar and the article header, which is slightly wider and though stretches the images out of proportion. I hope this is not intended and only a bug in the demo.
The Unstandard does a good impression, and only needs some minor modification for the headline images. everything else in clean and very lightweight.
Another clean theme is Equilibrium with a similar approach. Image header with a short text excerpt and support for featured content.
A creative couple of themes would be Nami and City Dreams, although I’m not sure how much of re-coloring it will need to fit these two to my type of content.
During these last months a seconds idea came to me. Why not take some of the photos I’m loading onto Flickr and make a separate photoblog. There’re some nice themes out there that would suit this idea.
AutoFocus would support not only a simple photoblog but with the clean text article format also a more story telling or news themed scenario.
Aperio is has similar features, but with it’s 4 column single post pages the text posts are displayed in a very narrow format that is not suited for longer posts.
Folio Elements is a very good example for a Portfolio only theme. You can scroll through single photos with small text portions… nothing more.
The Transition from one Blog to another has to be styled too, so here are two very beautiful examples of what to display in between blog releases:
The Changing Room and UnderCon. Both support FeedBurner RSS and Email and are fully customizable.
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Is the new DroboPro for you?
admin
Last week Data Robotics, the company behind the Drobo personal data robot, announced their new product: The DroboPro
Like the current Drobo it’s a shiny black box that will fit any kind of 3,5” SATA disk you fit into it and create a virtual storage volume using up as much space as possible while keeping all your data save from loss due to disk failure. The improvements are mainly found inside the box. The Pro fits 8 instead of only 4 SATA disks, reduced noise by utilizing two bigger fans on the back and sports a 1Gb/s Ethernet port that’s dedicated to using iSCSI.
This means you can now hook the DroboPro to any Ethernet port you have and connect it to your your computer via iSCSI. The only requirement is that your computer has to have a second Ethernet port, that you can configure to only use the iSCSI protocol. This will give you read/write speeds up to 100 MB/s on the Drobo disks.
This all sounds great, so where’s the catch?
The DroboPro will start at $1299. If you a small business and want to include the DroboPro into your server rack, there’s a rack mounting kit available, for another $150. If you want to add 8 reliable 1TB hard drives, this will be another $800.
$2200 isn’t that much for a SMB storage solution, but there are some things about the DroboPro that bother me more than the price.
1. The device is marketed as an SMB solution with rack mounting capabilities, but it’s only 12” wide and 3U high, so there’s 7” of wasted space. Usually a 19” 3U NAS has space for 12 3,5” or 24 2,5” disks, the DroboPro only fits 8 3,5” SATA disks. The DroboPro is totally single device, so there’s no way of extending, combining multiple DroboPro to act as a single device. This is bad news for everyone that needs to scale beyond the current 16TB barrier or 8 disk limitations.
2. The rack mounting kit adds another $150 to the DroboPro price tag while it’s included for free with most competitor’s devices. I’m not absolutely sure what exactly is worth $150 from the pictures, but for a mere metal mounting plate with plastic clip-ons it’s way over top.
3. The DroboPro only has a single power supply. I’m not sure about Data Robotics or you, but I like my power supplies redundant, just in case one of them fails. Imagine you company unable to work because the DroboPro’s power supply is broken and you have no ways to access your 16TB of files until the replacement DroboPro has arrived.
4. Security: The device itself cannot be locked. The only theft prevention is a Kensington lock connector on the back and the disks can easily be placed into another DroboPro. So, if you want to prevent a massive data theft, you’ll have to lock the DroboPro itself into a rack or shelf.
To answer a few of my questions I attended a webcast on Thursday in hope that some of my doubts might be addressed. Instead of the expected product presentation for SMB customers it turned out to be a “for dummies” presentation. The host took unnecessary lengths to explain the different RAID systems (limited to 1, 5 & 6) and why Drobo’s “Beyond RAID” was much superior to them.
With the info I currently have, “Beyond RAID” is a simple JBOD with a virtual storage volume file on it. The controller takes care of the data redundancy on the physical disks, so a single or dual (on a DroboPro) disk failure won’t lead to any data loss. Although this is a kind of storage virtualization, it’s not nearly as sophisticated as a professional storage systems or Data Robotics marketing would like to make you believe.
Just as I expected from the setup of the webcast, none of my questions where answered.
But for whom is this DroboPro really made?
Data Robotics says it’s for professionals and small businesses that need fast high capacity storage. what they didn’t mention or answer is what a small business is for them. I’ve been in the industry for a few years now, and one thing I know is that every product vendor has it’s own definition of the SMB market. The range of defined SMB company sizes varies from 1-100 to 100-10,000. For the DroboPro my guess would be more in the 1-100 employee range.
These are companies that in most cases only have one or a part time administrator with limited knowledge. No offence, but I met a lot of them and you usually only get what you pay for.
If you’re one of these businesses and don’t care if your file services go offline for days in case of failure, go an buy one. It’ll be much better than any NAS of fileserver you might currently have. Just make sure it’s not placed on the Administrator’s table, secured with a Kensington lock.
Should your company approach IT services in a more professional way, the DroboPro might not be your first choice. The missing power redundancy, limited scalability will drive you into a dead lock sooner or later and lack of device security could be a serious compliance issue.
If you’re a professional working with large quantities of data like music, photos or videos this could be a rather price worthy, flexible and fast solution for you.
In case You’re only looking for a easy way to store data and need neither iSCSI nor more than 16TB of space get a “normal” Drobo. Even if you only have a PC without FireWire 800. there are plenty of FireWire Cards for your PCI Express slot, that give you faster access than USB 2.0 does.
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sturgis
Very interesting review. I am looking for a storage solution and this Beyond RAID technology looked very appealing. What I do not like is that is not a NAS so I cannot just plug it in my network.What solution would you recommend for a scalable “Beyond RAID” type of storage (hot swap) that works as a NAS?
Thanks -
bindermichi
Actually it is a NAS.But it depends on what you're looking for. The typical SoHo NAS devices either provide Web, FTP or Samba SMB access to the stored data. professional level NAS deviced usually use iSCSI which enables the operating system to use the NAS as if it were an internal drive.
The DroboPro is a mix of both. Technically I wouldn't recommend it for business- or datacenter usage, but it offers the advantages of iSCSI for SoHo users, the biggest of which is the extremely high access speed.
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sturgis
Thanks for your answer.
I want it for home. I have several servers and around 40.000 raw photos (15Mb each).
Even if I have samba partitions in one of the linux machines with video and photos I end up eating terabytes of data.
I use to have a NAS that died and it was pretty convenient as I could see it from my linux, windows and my macbook pro. Now I back up my macs to the samba in my linux machine, but physically I have no possibility of expansion.
I am looking for a solution that can be escalated if I need more space in the future. I would like to plug it to the switch and not to any server (independent), and I don't see how to do this with drobopro without droboshare. -
bindermichi
Since the iSCSI uses a standard Erthernet port, you can actually conenct it to a switch somewhere in your network. the only catch is, that you'll a server with two network interfaces. 1 for regular network traffic and 1 for iSCSI. If you only work on a single computer you can connect the DroboPro to this one via iSCSI, otherwise you'll need a second computer to act as a fileserver.AFAIK the DroboShare does not work with the DroboPro.
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sturgis
Do you know of an alternative?
-Ethernet (not iSCSI, just a NAS)
-8 HD's with similar hot swap and
-Beyond RAID or similar technology -
Guest
I have the exact same question. Suck the DroboPro won't work with DroboShare -
Network Rack
Drobopro is a kind of server rack product which is to store disk but I can say that this product must be put in a good storage. It can be store on those computer work bench so that the device has its own storage too. -
Wicker Bench Storage
That's the great article! I just pass 'n read it, two thumbs up!
zig 19:43 on Friday, 4. December 2009 Permalink
bindermichi 22:21 on Friday, 4. December 2009 Permalink
driver update 11:34 on Thursday, 14. January 2010 Permalink