Okay, it may not be Sun, I really don’t care, but backing up my VDI images (which I used for testing) always worked. Restored the VDI, created a new vm and everything was back normal. After a couple of months now I do need some of the machines I saved, so let’s restore (in the meantime Sun aquired VirtualBox from/with Innotek): BSOD. Shall we have an “official” backup/restore mechanism, I would’ve used that, but there is no such thing;
dear Sun: instead of adding nice candy icons, please add features instead.
Posts Tagged ‘hardware’
VirtualBox virtual machine backup/restore – FAIL
Friday, October 10th, 2008An aging harddrive and smartctl
Saturday, July 26th, 2008Smartctl can be used to extract smart data from hard drives; since lately I have been experiencing powerdowns (for one of the hdds, you know, you can hear that peculiar clanking sound) in on of my machines, I thought about dumping the smart data; and to my amusement the older drive on which the os is (Debian etch) has been running for nearly four years continously! Now come and tell me old drives are not reliable! By the way it was an IBM Deskstar drive and as you can see some of the values are pretty suspicious (like sector reallocation) but on the other hand all the logs are fine, so it’s still not too late to replace it with one of my ancient 4gb quantum disks :D
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 096 086 060 Pre-fail Always - 196613
2 Throughput_Performance 0x0005 100 100 050 Pre-fail Offline - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0007 147 100 024 Pre-fail Always - 249 (Average 240)
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0012 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 4720
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 005 Pre-fail Always - 13
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 067 Pre-fail Always - 0
8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0005 100 100 020 Pre-fail Offline - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0012 096 096 000 Old_age Always - 34868
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 060 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 3904
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0020 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0008 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x000a 200 198 000 Old_age Always - 422
230 Head_Amplitude 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 524293
231 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 125 100 000 Old_age Always - 44
So much more care from Apple
Friday, February 1st, 2008Sometimes I think about saving up for a Mac and living happily ever after, but still, the price tag just beats me down (I guess, not just here, but here a decent MacBook Pro is around twice my salary). Just out of curiosity I did a small price comparison – took everything from the local shops, trying to replicate the exact Mac configuration (okay, aiming to be close) comparing a Mac mini and a custom built PC.
Mac Mini (2Ghz model) PC
-------------------------------------|------------------------
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo 2 GHz 15800 (pretty much the same)
MB 16320 (Asus P5KPL-VM, socket 775, Intel GMA 3100, no fw)
VGA Intel GMA 950 Intel GMA 3100
SOUND integrated integrated
CASE special 15600 (Asus TA-211 with stock 350W PSU)
DVD-RW (8x) 06900 (Asus DRW-1814BL 18X, boxed)
MEM 1GB DDR2 800mhz 07680 (GEIL 2X512MB 800MHZ ULTRA KIT)
HDD 120GB SATA1/5400rpm 10500 (HITACHI 120GB SATA2/7200rpm)
(some extra slots) 07200 (WinBest WBT5023V PATA/SATA/USB/Firewire)
(remote controller) 03000 (Lirc circuit + you-name-it stock remote controller)
(cooling) 02800 (Arctic-Cooling Alpine 7)
(os) 36960 (Windows XP Pro OEM)
207.900 HUF —- vs —- 122.760 HUF (808 Eur vs 477 Eur)
Mac Mini price is from Xms.hu, pc parts are partly from Aqua.hu and 3t.hu. The case is nothing special, but mostly everything else is a bit more powerful than in the Mac since I couldn’t find such old hardware around. For another 20-25k huf I could buy a cool and shiny Thermaltake case with a powerful PSU, but again, I didn’t want to overdo this; the price tag would be a bit higher for mid range barebone system (preferably Shuttle), but nothing significant.
So in the end the design, the white plastic and the “extra care” by Apple makes their
product 70% more expensive than the stock PC with Windows XP Pro preinstalled – I’m not really satisfied :(
Askey rta1310b adsl modem vs. Asus rx3041 gadget
Sunday, December 24th, 2006The above mentioned adsl modem is given to all new users around here by T-Online. The modem is pure crap (no joking; see here and here for example), at home it died after a month or two, but now I have this garbage once again. It is a suicidal construction, but what really annoys me, is that it does not work with my Asus rx3041 router gadget: the router works with a D-Link modem, but this little bitch forcefully disconnects the router in approx fifteen minutes with PADT signals (which is bad). Now I either return to ffw or gotta pull Lemming together, my old Siemens Scenic Pro “server” to do the NAT magic – the internet provider (of course) does not support devices not sold by themselves. Thanks a lot.
So if you are here by looking for some info on these products, you should now: the modem really is that crappy and the router really isn’t that bad afterall. Happy winter holidays BTW…