New disk installed with win7 up and running

Fresh (custom as the upgrade set up options called it) install of windows 7 on the 2TB disk complete. The 300GB RAID data is still available along with the NAS based back up. At some point i'll take a look at the 500GB drive and see if anything's retrievable.

Back up and running though and installing windows 7 was a breeze. Actually I much prefer it to Vista already.

disk failure part III

I now have in my possession a Western Digital 2TB Caviar Black HDD and a copy of windows 7 upgrade. At some point i'll set about repairing the beast.

Do I bother - disk failure pt II

So the disk has largely failed. I recall now why the machine boots from the non-RAID disk - it's because the drivers for the RAID disk are more than a little awkward to load during the recovery/repair step in Vista.

So a new 2TB disk (how the heck am I going to back that up?) disk is on it's way, now i could just stick this in as my .5TB disk was and have this one boot vista off the RAID disk or I could bite the bullet and take this opportunity to do a fresh install of windows 7 on a completely new disk.

Do I bother fixing Vista? Kind of feeling if I'm going to invest the time might as well get the upgrade out of the way.

Hard disk failures ruining my life

Perhaps a little excessive but that's pretty much how it feels. Some of it I seem to have brought on myself.

I have a Windows Vista system (having not paid for windows 7 yet) with three hard disks. Two are arranged in RAID-0 and there is a third newer disk that's larger than the RAID. The OS is installed on the RAID disk and I had larger files and media on the 500GB western digital disk. I say had.

The disk has now, I have concluded failed big time. It started about a week ago and chkdsk - the windows repair tool seemed to fix it, then seemed to fix it again when there were issues again, then took longer to fix it. Now it doesn't complete and the western digital diagnostic tools tell me there are too many errors on the disk to fix it.

So this morning I unplug it. I then discover that actually by some wierd method when I installed vista the system has been booting from the now broken disk but running the OS in the RAID. I'm now faced with trying to get the system to boot to some degree so I can mark the RAID disk as bootable.

I am kind of thinking a new disk and a move to Windows 7 might be easier at this point.

Edit: most of the important data was backed up, but now the disk is gone I'm left wondering if I missed anything - as you do.

Do I need a Tablet?

As a techy watching trends in computing I want a tablet. Partly because they're new, partly because I can imagine many situations where I would use it and partly because my two year old is just awesome at using touch screen interfaces.

Do I need one? Well that's something I'm wrestling with right now. iPad's are still cheapest but are closed, can't use flash and lack some of the Apps I love on my Android phone. The Tab is pretty cool but lacks the finesse of the iPad - will it work with Android 3? Also it can't play films as well, well rather I mean the content isn't there. The iTunes store is much better featured and supported although kudos to Samsung on their movie store.

Then I see lenovo's ideapad - awesome. A multi-touch netbook running Windows 7 starter edition where the screen can spin round and it has the form factor of a 10" tablet. This could run itunes (and actually it could play Samsung's movies). Sure - it lacks Angry Birds but actually it could play some of the Elmo games that Zack seems to like.

Perhaps I'm not after a modern tablet (or a pad as some seem to unfortunately call them), perhaps I want the latest iteration of the old tablet. Perhaps I just want a system with a touch screen.

More pondering to do.

Cool advert for 3D TVs

It's getting to be an obsession now but still. I do like this ad. I'd love to see my young son's reaction to 3D TV - particularly some of his favourite shows like Mickey Mouse Club House that are already rendered in 3D by a computer...

in reference to: Video: Watch an advert for Samsung's 3D LCD television | Media | guardian.co.uk (view on Google Sidewiki)

Follow up on 3D TV

As a quick follow up on my '3D TV is just around the corner' post I note that Samsung have a very impressive line up of 3D TV solutions with one big TV at on $3300

Now all that's needed is the content to catch up. To be honest I think games will still lead the way and it'll wait for consoles to support the technology before adoption increases significantly.

in reference to: Craig Beattie, Information Systems Architect: Affordable 3D video games are already here, TV not far behind? (view on Google Sidewiki)

Note to self on April Fools posts - The Facebook Cap

They need to be done earlier in the day. Still I like my idea in this one - how much does a patent cost these days...

in reference to: Celent Blog » Facebook Cap tweets your thoughts (view on Google Sidewiki)