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  1. Mercutio

    Home NAS

    Or, I dunno, pay somebody to put together a solution for you. You want a single user file server. That's not exactly rocket surgery.
  2. Mercutio

    Home NAS

    Netgear makes an 8 port, $1000 10Gbase-T switch, but I haven't seen any NICs yet for under $500. On the other hand, bonded gigabit links usually don't feel slow to me, even when I'm moving terabytes of stuff around. I know it's going to take a while, so I start whatever process I need to start...
  3. Mercutio

    Intel Haswell-E (X-99 chipset) processors reviews.

    Because Samsung couldn't be bothered to do the right thing when they lost my drive while it was supposed to be in their custody.
  4. Mercutio

    Home NAS

    Synology is my favorite from a firmware and features perspective. Performance on the ARM-powered NAS devices is universally lousy, though it sounds like you'd be looking at an eight bay model which will probably have an Atom CPU. All of the four bay or larger devices do have some kind of double...
  5. Mercutio

    Intel Haswell-E (X-99 chipset) processors reviews.

    I added a Plextor M6e to my GAX99-UD4 machine. I had to upgrade my firmware to the F12 revision so that it was recognized as a boot device, though the Windows installer recognized it immediately. The firmware also had to be set to UEFI mode, which I typically don't use when I can avoid it and...
  6. Mercutio

    6TB Seagate Hard Drives $199 Shipped Free

    All of the drives with "Archive" branding are 5900rpm. That's not to say that there aren't 7200rpm drives, but Seagate makes lots and lots of 5900rpm models.
  7. Mercutio

    Something Random

    It's not unusual for me to have three outages a week in the spring and early summer. Lots of wind and lots of old trees equals lots of time in the dark. I have UPSes but past a certain point there's just not much I can do about it.
  8. Mercutio

    problem Can the volume of a laptop's built-in speakers be increased?

    I have these in different places in my apartment. I don't exactly need high audio fidelity in my kitchen or bathroom, but it's nice that I just do not miss notifications any more. I had enough computer speakers sitting around that I have a decent solution for everyplace I might be.
  9. Mercutio

    6TB Seagate Hard Drives $199 Shipped Free

    Relatively few people will shop for machines with drives that large and those that do will be buying more drives regardless. The unit pricing difference between 320 and 500GB is not terribly significant for consumers who are aware of the distinction. It's $5 on Amazon or Newegg, but that turns...
  10. Mercutio

    problem Can the volume of a laptop's built-in speakers be increased?

    It might be more productive to move to a bluetooth speaker set or a bluetooth audio receiver. There really isn't any extra space along the edges of a laptop chassis for a speaker of a different design than the ones the machine shipped with, so regardless of any other consideration, you're only...
  11. Mercutio

    Phone Dying

    I use just enough of a cover to keep my camera lens from scratching if I set the phone down. One of the really wonderful things about the S4 is how thin and light it is and I really see no reason to spoil that, especially given the number of devices I see that are damaged in spite of the...
  12. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I don't know but that is clearly a crap-ton of work and probably even scholarship on the part of the people attempting the restoration.
  13. Mercutio

    Phone Dying

    I've seen posts on a couple tech sites that say that Samsung is cutting way back on the crap it's loading on the next model year of its phones. Honestly, it's hard to make a bad decision on the flagship Android devices. Between Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola and even Sony, there's a lot of good...
  14. Mercutio

    Super Flower 2000w PSU.

    Is it even possible to use four Radeon 295s some kind of Crossfire configuration? And if so, why would you want to? What else is going to get a desktop to that kind of power draw? I've got a dual Xeon with 30-something connected hard drives and the only concession I've had to make was bump the...
  15. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    There was a link to a rapidshare-like site. I've got the files on My Google Drive. I can share them that way if you'd like.
  16. Mercutio

    6TB Seagate Hard Drives $199 Shipped Free

    I just used plastic pry tools.
  17. Mercutio

    6TB Seagate Hard Drives $199 Shipped Free

    Pretty sure they're 5900rpm.
  18. Mercutio

    6TB Seagate Hard Drives $199 Shipped Free

    The cheapest way to get those high capacity disks is by tearing them out of external enclosures. I got a couple 5TB drives for ~$135 over the holidays.
  19. Mercutio

    Phone Dying

    The 6" phones are massive enough to have legitimate 36 hour batteries. It's nothing special about the Note4. I'm still amazed by how much difference there is between 5.5" devices like the LG G3 and phablets like the Note 4. 5.5" = totally hand and pocket friendly 6" = that is a monster meant...
  20. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I left Chrome with one tab open on cc.com (Comedy Central's web site) over night. The only addon I have installed is Adblock Plus. Chrome has six threads and is using a combined 1640MB RAM. I am going to mention this the next time someone tells me Firefox is a memory hog.
  21. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I think we all just send PMs for non-public discussion.
  22. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Whichever. The important thing is that WD drives are just as good at being fish as storing data.
  23. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I'm guessing it's something like a trout trying to return to its native stream.
  24. Mercutio

    8TB and no helium

    The IBM M1015 cards I use have LSI 9220 chips. I did have to flash them to support target initiator mode, but that takes all of about 90 seconds. I've seen them as cheap as $85. They do work with 6TB drives, SATA drives and with SAS expanders. They seem to be a very good choice for at least...
  25. Mercutio

    8TB and no helium

    The overhead for getting large RAID6 arrays up and running is definitely an inconvenient starting point. Perhaps 3 - 4TB single drives are large enough chunks that few people see the reason to extend to multiples of that value?
  26. Mercutio

    8TB and no helium

    It's useless when you exceed a 12 - 15TB on a volume because of the statistical certainty of encountering a URE. I usually target storage volumes of ~15TB with parity snapshots to minimize the likelihood of data loss and my important stuff (i.e. not porn) has an extra parity drive and an...
  27. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    The Multi-OEM project works exceptionally well for building a Windows installer image that automatically configures product keys. I've found this to be useful several times, particularly for Windows 8 machines with no product key or recovery media. I've tested it on Acer and Toshiba machines and...
  28. Mercutio

    8TB and no helium

    Perhaps they're meant to be pared with something like SnapRAID (parity snapshots) for additional error correction of presumably stale data? The error rate does seem unreasonably low for stand-alone data storage.
  29. Mercutio

    Cheapish Speakers

    SPDIF is SPDIF but are you sure that the port you're connected to on the TV is an output?
  30. Mercutio

    question Harman Kardon AVR 3600-Z

    Inexpensive modern AV receivers tend to be kinda crummy from a reliability standpoint. Everything is inexpensive and built around the HDMI ports, which should in theory provide the highest possible fidelity for digital audio. Unfortunately, dying HDMI ports also seems to be endemic to low-end...
  31. Mercutio

    Quiet Keys

    Tell them to fuck off. You're doing something productive while you're on a conference call instead of playing Solitaire or Facebook stalking like everyone else.
  32. Mercutio

    SPaceSniffer - Find what is using your disk space

    My porns are already sufficiently well categorized, thank you. :P
  33. Mercutio

    Server 2012 R2 Fileserver with Auto-Tiering

    Storage Pools are a not-quite-ready-for-big-time option where there's definitely a certain amount of "Well, that's how it's SUPPOSED to work" in Microsoft's documentation vs. an endless stream of "This isn't working" edge cases from people trying to use them. For example, I have a...
  34. Mercutio

    Something Random

    It's a Scandinavian ISP of some sort. They clearly did a lot of work and I thought it should be recognized.
  35. Mercutio

    Hard drive Failure Rates

    Yes. The cheapies.
  36. Mercutio

    Hard drive Failure Rates

    When I open Seagate USB enclosures they almost always have the eco-type drives in them.
  37. Mercutio

    Something Random

    This is pretty awesome.
  38. Mercutio

    Hard drive Failure Rates

    HDDs are very much an undifferentiated commodity product. Of what benefit would allowing alternative branding be for WD? I mean, besides the fact that its own name is already synonymous with terminal ass cancer. When was the last time Seagate used the Maxtor brand name?
  39. Mercutio

    Hard drive Failure Rates

    I believe that they historically buy in sufficient volume that they're more concerned with getting a certain number of spindles of a certain capacity at a time rather than any other characteristic or metric. They buy whatever their logistics can give them. During the storage crisis after the...
  40. Mercutio

    Cheapish Speakers

    You might look at a soundbar as a compromise option, if you can find one that supports at least HDMI input (e.g. Yamaha YSP-2x00). You certainly can get low-end receivers with HDMI support for $200 (here in the US, they show up on woot.com fairly regularly), and then it's just a matter of...
  41. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    At one point, Microsoft was making some noises that the 8 to 8.1 "upgrade" was only going to be available for a year as well. There's probably not a technical reason why there can't be a direct update path and it's in most peoples' interest to be running the newest thing, but I'm sure it'll...
  42. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Stuff breaks. Especially on crummy laptops. You probably do have a better machine now, though.
  43. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    I was toying with the idea of trying a Transcend cheapie since they're priced comparably to common 240GB drives. I just got a 1TB SSD, but M.2 is a straight pipe to PCIe, so I suspect I'd see a qualitative improvement over the drives I have now. It looks like the Samsung is alone at the top of...
  44. Mercutio

    question Maxtor 7345 AT data retrieval

    Windows 3.1 did not have a startup menu. DOS was more or less the startup menu. You could control portions of startup by editing win.ini or system.ini with a text editor (edit.com et al.) In this case, commenting out the line in system.ini will take care of the error, but IIRC that was a...
  45. Mercutio

    question Maxtor 7345 AT data retrieval

    You could also start a Linux LiveCD on that machine and probably do useful things.
  46. Mercutio

    Smallish Case

    The NZXT Source 210/Source 220 are my go-to cases. They're less bulky than something like an Antec Sonata Solo, though I don't think you're going to find a mid-tower much under 440mm (17.3"). As an alternative option, why not something like a Silverston LaScala? They're media center chassis that...
  47. Mercutio

    i3 GPU weirdness

    It's a laptop and the CPU is soldered in.
  48. Mercutio

    i3 GPU weirdness

    I'm sitting in front of a Toshiba Satellite A5005 with a first-generation Core i3 CPU in it. It absolutely refuses to operate with GPU accelerated drivers. Standard VGA? Fine. Software rendering in X? Fine. But if I try to start a GUI that matches the purported capabilities of the panel and the...
  49. Mercutio

    DC replacement for small business

    2012r2 Essentials is... lacking compared to SBS2011. Specifically, it lacks Exchange, Sharepoint and MSSQL (i.e. all the things that justified SBS). Exchange won't even install on r2 Essentials. The only nifty feature it does have is deduplicating client backups, something that must've been...
  50. Mercutio

    DC replacement for small business

    One of my customers has an Avaya phone system that depends on Exchange for functionality. The owner doesn't want to pay for new Windows Server stuff, so I migrated his SBS 2003 installation to Xen on a fairly modest Linux box (i7 2600 w/ 16GB RAM) that handles file access with Samba. The process...
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