2011 — 26 May: Thursday
Well, I have to admit the weather has started off somewhat grey today.1 But I'm not giving up on the idea of a walk just yet. Meanwhile, overnight emails have reported on the "disk rebuilding" state of the Terastation that's got my name on it, and also made a very sensible suggestion about a more robust backup strategy for backing up the Terastation itself.
But there are plums to be stewed, a breakfast and a packed lunch to be prepped, and even some clothes to be thrown on. This getting-up-early lark isn't so bad providing the going-to-bed-not-too-late bit precedes it. Last night's video entertainment took me a couple of hours into Season #6 of "House", which I bought as a Blu-ray boxed set, amazingly cheap, in Asda as a birthday treat last year.
At about this ungodly hour a mere 37 years ago, I found my then-new girlfriend from Germany a very congenial companion and photographic model:
Being a trio of wusses, we're opting out of a long walk today and instead will take one of our local little routes. No packed lunch needed, but (possibly) an extra layer of clothing. Mike reports gusts over in Winchester whereas here there are some signs of breaks in the cloud cover (though the clouds themselves are rather unenticing). It's only water, dagnabit.
Somehow, this strikes me as a perfect Grauniad science headline:
The noon that is after
I've always thought you can tell a lot about people by browsing their bookshelves. Today, after our walk, I was able to cruise along Brian's shelves to see as eclectic a mixture as you could wish for, and I've extended an invitation to him to spend an hour or so upstairs here in the "book warehouse" at some time. Mind you, the poor chap has now realised just how little spare time there actually is in retirement for such indulgences.
So I didn't get to my lunch until nearly 15:00 and then it was off down a motorway once again, this time to pick up a matched pair of SATA data drives to go back into Blackbeast,2 replacing the pair that have now moved on into the Terastation. I spent a minute or so debating whether to open up the Iomega external drive I bought for the iMac as that has a matched pair of 500GB drives in it, but I figured a) technology has moved on in the last four years, and b) I couldn't open the case so it was a non-starter. Besides, it was still a nice day out there. And, indeed, the sun is still shining at 17:25. Time for my next cuppa.
The acid test
The two new data drives are plumbed in. They and the system drive are all neatly spaced as far apart as I can get them for maximum cooling. I've also plumbed the audio card back in. So I just need to swap over the keyboard, mouse, screen and network cable, and I should have Blackbeast back up and running in the proverbial trice. Of course, it remains to be seen how it will react to finding a non-mirrored pair of data drives but the Novatechnician assured me yesterday it was booting happily into Win7 without any data drives at all as he was powering it on and off while working out what had failed...
I shall, however, keep the Gateway PC close at hand for a while as it's actually very convenient to have two working PCs side by side for some purposes. Right. Better put the kettle on, Mrs Landingham. I need something to steady my nerves. Or is it just time for my evening meal? It's now 18:34, mysteriously.
This next paragraph is coming from Blackbeast. The only real glitch,3 so far, was the need to ask Mrs Google the question that led to the answer here. Which, in turn, needed me to make a couple of Registry entry edits which, frankly, I hate having to do. Still, at least I now know how to break Windows Explorer — the fundamental interface. <Sigh>
It's 23:16 and I've nearly finished copying back all my data files. It seems to be averaging around 25MB/second from the USB external drive to the new internal SATA drive, a virtually silent 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 device.