AndyFair

Quote: Hi I'm not very au fait with RAID so could you please explain how 4 x 250GB would not give 1TB (in RAID 0 for example)? Backups will be kept on CD anyway but this is for immediate access.. hence I am considering RAID 5.. this would leave 750GB? Do you know any motherboards that support 4 x SATA drives in RAID 5 mode or would I need a seperate controller? Either way.. can you recommend a motherboard/controller? Thanks. Mak Look here for a good description of RAID levels. With RAID-2 and above, there is some usage of disk space for error checking information (parity information). With a RAID-1 mirror, the same information is stored twice on 2 separate hard drives, so if you have 2x200Gb drives, in a RAID-1 setup, you'll only have 200Gb storage, but it can survive catastrophic failure of one of the hard drives. RAID-0 is just striping - i.e. writing the same file in portions on each separate disk - but in effect, your seeing your 4 disks as one big "virtual" disk. The problem with RAID-0 is that if one of your disks fails, you lose absolutely everything. There is no (easy) way to recover from a RAID-0 failure if you don't have backups. I cannot stress enough the need to have some kind of backup solution - if your client is really serious about this, then they will be willing to spend the money. After all, there is no business if they lose all their data! As far as a CD jukebox goes, this will give you (almost) instant access, and get rid of all that horrible RAID stuff. I think you need to go away and find out exactly how much your client is willing to spend, and do some research on storage solutions in general (and look at all the possibilities, so look at SAN, NAS, DAS as well as jukeboxes and tape backup). This kind of storage is not something that comes cheap (at least it is not something that should be done on the cheap) - if nothing else, consider what would happen if the client were to lose all of their data, and how long they could survive without that data - and how long it would take someone to source some new drives and recreate the data store from the CDs they already have? Also, if they had that much storage, how likely would they be to carry on copying the files to CD? Just some food for thought. Rgds AndyF

Quote: Hi The firm is a printers and they produce a lot of Photoshop work which is then archived on to CD. It is, often, hundreds of MB (perhaps not a full CD) but nevertheless, there are hundreds of CDs they want on this archive machine to be readily available as clients often come back months later requesting re-prints. Even if you're using RAID, I would still suggest a backup solution. RAID will cope with one disk failure, but any more than that and you're FUBAR'ed. Also, bear in mind that 4x250Gb disks in any kind of mirrored RAID solution will not give you 1Tb of space (more like half that), so you'll need to buy more than 4 disks to get the capacity you need. The downside is that you'll need a fairly hefty backup solution to cope with that much data. You're looking at some kind of tape loader, with multiple tapes for each backup, and of course off-site storage for the tapes (you have thought about backup, haven't you?) Since much of the data is stored on CD, have you considered lowering your disk capacity (just enough for day-to-day work) and installing a CD jukebox instead? Even then, I would consider doing multiple copies of your CDs as backups - because CD-Rs are not guaranteed to last forever (from a recent article in UK's PCPro mag, it appears that using labels for CD-Rs may actually degrade them faster). Just a couple of points to consider - it's not as simple as just plugging a few disks and walking away! Rgds AndyF

Quote: We are in Iraq for the following reasons: 1. To rid the world of Saddam 2. For oil 3. To have strategic bases in the region, to attack Iran, Syria or whomever Aren't you forgetting the "weapons of mass destruction" thing...? Seems both George W & Tony Blair would like us to do that as well - but once the celebrations die down, that ol' chestnut is going to raise its head again... And why rid the world of just Saddam? It's not as though he has any links with Al Qaeda, the US and the UK paid for him to be there in the first place! Why not go after all the other dictators as well, like Zimbabwe, North Korea, etc...the list goes on And George hasn't made any friends with his announcement last week that only those countries who supported the war will be able to bid for reconstruction work in Iraq. He seems to have forgotten the old saying: "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer"! Still, you never know, we might find Osama soon, too - who's currently hiding out in a network of caves containing dialysis machines... Rgds AndyF

1Tb seems an awfully high amount of storage space just for 5 users - that's 200Gb per user - what are they storing that requires so much space? Rgds AndyF

Are you saying you've installed NT or XP? If you've installed NT, don't expect any games to run on it without having to do a lot of tweaking. NT wasn't designed to run games, you can't use a (decent) version of DirectX without having to hack it to bits. XP will run like a dog on a system of this spec, if you're determined to use an NT class OS, you're better off trying Win2k instead - you can still upgrade your DirectX version, and games have a better chance of running. Rgds AndyF

Isn't Microsoft releasing a separate AMD 64-bit Windows? I would imagine, given the nature of AMD 64-bit processors and their 32-bit compatibilty, that this version of Windows will also allow you run 32-bit apps. But that's just conjecture - when was the last time Microsoft did anything sensible... Rgds AndyF

Well, you only have to look at the stories of "zero tolerance" to see how much people are over-reacting... Rgds AndyF

Quote: Anyhow, I am in the process of moving to a new place I am renting which is literally, a 2 minute drive from work So in New York, that's what, a 30 second walk?! I love NYC, but I don't think I could ever live there. I live in the suburbs of London, that's bad enough for me, and I only ever go into the centre maybe once or twice a year (usually when rellies visit) - and I just find it too dirty, noisy and crowded...is that a sign of impending old age...?! Rgds AndyF

Quote: Anyone remember GeoWorks? I do... Am I showing my age? Wow! I remember this on the old Commodore 64 - so if you're showing your age, this must make me feel positively ancient!!! Rgds AndyF

Common sense says to me that using the FAST wizard will not copy the system restore point, because that is part of the system, not the user profile - because you could be copying the user profile to a totally different machine, and copying the system restore point would be a futile exercise... That's what common sense says, but I may be wrong... Check this link from MS for more info. Rgds AndyF

Much clearer From The Bat!'s webpage: Quote: Sorting Office The Sorting Office is a powerful filtering system, not only sorts incoming, outgoing, read, and replied messages to folders, but also can auto-respond; reply with a custom template; forward, redirect, print, or export messages; send reading confirmations; run an external program and more. From Eudora's webpage: Quote: Manage messages and eliminate unwanted email easily through extensive filtering capabilties. Thousands of filter action combinations enable you to send unwanted emails straight into the trash or direct messages into different mailboxes automatically. SO, in answer to your revised question, yes other e-mail apps can do rules based filtering, I don't see any reason why these wouldn't work with IMAP as opposed to, say, POP and local folders. But the best thing to be would be to suck it and try - both apps have free trial downloads. Rgds AndyF

I don't think it's possible (and I don't think any other boot loader can do that either), but why not just add c:\linux.bin (or f:\linux.bin) as an option in boot.ini? AndyF

Most standard e-mail packages will support IMAP out of the box. Mozilla/Netscape clients certainly do, as does Eudora. I've also heard good things about "The Bat!" e-mail package, it's supposed to be good, and cheap! Hope this helps Rgds AndyF

I think you've basically hit the nail on the head - Mandrake doesn't recognise your RAID controller - but using the Windows bootloader, you're booting from RAID, so the Mandrake bootloader (which is located on the RAID controller) doesn't recognise the device its being booted from. Does that make sense? ;( I think even if you were to boot of HDD0 using LILO or something similar, you'd still have problems booting Windows from this drive, as LILO still wouldn't know about the RAID controller? The long and the short of it is if you want to be able to boot both from one drive (whether its the RAID or IDE controller), you'll need to find Linux drivers for your RAID controller. Rgds AndyF

Well, the government here have just announced that school run traffic is the cause of a lot of rush-hour jams (this research brought to you by "Pointless Research That You Already Knew, Inc") THey're bandying about a figure of 20% of rush hour traffic is school run, but I'd question whether it really was that low (I know it certainly isn't in the part of London where I live - but then my 6-mile journey to work takes me past at least 3 schools) Tony and his pals want to invest money to try to stop parents jumping in their cars - but they didn't actually explain exactly how they were going to do that! I just sit behind my steering wheel and curse the lot of them AndyF

Quote: I know I have completely the wrong attitude about this but its hard for me to get upset about the prices of food and gas. I just think of it as I have to get it anyway, so why ***** about the prices? You can't live without food. There is little to no public transportation in my city and things are so spread out that it just isn't practical to use it so I need a car and gas. It's a good thing that everyone else doesn't feel that way about ***** about prices or we'd be in a whole lot worse shape now. I know how you feel - the greens keep saying we should ditch our cars and use public transport instead - but they've obviously never tried using buses and trains to get anywhere...especially when it usually takes longer to get somewhere by bus or train than it does by car - where's the benefit in that? My other little pet hate is parents on the school run. I drive to work (and yes, I have to - I often have to visit client sites during the day, so I need my car), and what really kills me is the traffic caused by people driving their kids to school...what ever happened to walking to school? It was good enough for me when I was at school (oh, no! I've just realised that I'm starting to sound like my parents! 8) ) . The kids have just started back to school here after the summer hols, the difference in traffic is astounding - 10 minute drive in the summer, 30 minutes now the kids are back ;( I'll get off my soapbox now AndyF

$1 a gallon - wow, petrol hasn't been that cheap in the UK since I was a kid - and we're talking <COUGH> years ago!! I read somewhere that the UK now has something like the third highest cost of living in the world - behind only Switzerland and Japan...my weekly grocery shop for me and my wife costs £80 ($125), my car probably costs £150 ($200+) to keep filled with petrol for the month, and to buy a 2 bed apartment will set you back somewhere in the region of £175k in the SE of the country ($275k+ 8) ). It's getting too expensive to live in the UK! As for fuel cells, looks like we're getting there - car companies seem to be getting out from under the oil companies and designnig decent alternative (or dual) fuel cars - I don't mind, as long as they don't all look like the SMART car - nice concept, shame about the looks! Back to the Future used to be one of my favourite films, but the one thing that annoyed me was when Christopher Lloyd uttered the words "one point twenty-one jiga watts" - kind of ruined it for me, cos a scientist would never say "one point twenty one", and would know how to pronounce giga...but I'm a scientist, and kind of anal like that AndyF

Well according to babel.altavista, the translation of 'Las Burbujitas Imeccables' is... 'Las Burbujitas Imeccables' Thanks, glad to have been of service AndyF

$4 a gallon? I wish! 8) You ought to try living in the UK, then you'd see what high petrol prices are really like!! At the moment, we pay about 80 pence per litre, which is around £3.60 per gallon, which is something like $5.75 at the current exchange rate. Every time I fill my car up, it costs £60 (almost $100) ;( I wouldn't mind, but something like 75% of the cost of petrol here is tax... Rgds AndyF

Your problem is that your motherboard contains a "normal" ATA133 IDE controller, which is on connectors IDE1 & IDE2, and a Promise RAID controller, which is on connectors IDE3 & IDE4. The RAID controller will not recognise a CD device unless it is a slave on a channel with a HDD as master. You need to swap the layout of your connectors: Hard drives on IDE3 & IDE4 DVD-ROM on IDE1 DVD +/- RW on IDE2[/list:u]BIG CAVEAT: be careful that you don't set the hard drives as part of a RAID array, because you'll lose data if you do that. I think there is some way of telling the RAID controller to see each drive separately, but I'm not sure of the exact method. If you don't want to use the RAID controller, you could put all of your IDE devices onto IDE1 & IDE2. [EDIT]I've just checked your motherboard manual, according to page 37, you should be able to change the RAID controller into a bog-standard IDE controller in the BIOS (under the "Integrated Peripherals" section)[/EDIT] Hope this helps, Rgds AndyF

I also can't understand why anyone would want a screen lock program that lets everyone see what you were working on when the screensaver kicks in. If I lock my PC, I do it because I don't want all and sundry seeing my work. And you're right, it shouldn't be allowed - APK is a long time member of this board, has a very large number of posts and he and his tools are well respected (but $10, not free) Rgds AndyF

So, yet another reason to put off buying that DVD +/- R/RW/RAM/whatever drive It looks like it will be a few years before this becomes mainstream - but it may happen quicker than DVD - $3800 sounds relatively cheap compared to the first generation DVD players... AndyF

Quote: Quote: They could call it the Penitum 242, or 246 lol Then again AMD never was good at marketing That's something that I never understood... THeir whole naming convention was based on the pentium. I guess they were going for value for the money but how could they ever hope to obtain the top spot if they rely on the pentiums for their names? I thought that AMD's numbering was based on performance relative to the original Athlons? Anyway, I'd buy an asshat processor just for the name...and the label that says "asshat inside"... AndyF

You've got wrap text on? Rgds AndyF

The RPC Locator service is not the same as the RPC service. To my knowledge, the WS32.Blast worm uses a vulnerability in the RPC service, not RPC locator. It's a fairly easy worm to defeat, partly because if you're patched, you're not vulnerable, but also because it's a badly written program, and crashes more often than not... Rgds AndyF