By SETH GHOLSON
Occupation Migration, Data Gluttony, and Tinfoil Parabolas
As is probably quite obvious, something’s been distracting me since August. No, it’s not the fatty from my previous post, but New Tech (Computer Systems?). Thanks for the recommendation, Chris, but I think I enjoyed it more at Highland Clinic where I was wholly unnecessary. Or not. Being necessary has been quite refreshing, but it’s caused me to neglect my personal tube in the interweb.
New Year’s Day provided some much needed geek time, so I had some time to convert my now unnecessary Windows Media Center PC to a Windows Home Server and I absolutely love it. I understand that Linux is free and can do all of the things WHS is doing, but it is so much easier to do with Windows Home Server. I need data redundancy to protect those important family photos, documents, etc., but I’m not particularly keen on the idea of maintaining a RAID 5 rig and worrying about having the right kind of drive to replace a failed one, controller failure, or whatever else. I need a poor man’s data redundancy, and it seems that WHS is right up my ally alley.
The install was quite pleasing. It took some time, but it was still fairly straightforward. What drew me to WHS was the concept behind the disk management. Install whatever hard drives you have. Don’t worry about which is E:, which is F:, which is G:, where your photos are and where your videos are, and so on and so forth. Home Server handles all of that. It operates on shares, so you have your Photos share, your Videos share, and whatever other shares you prefer to create. Flag a share as needing duplication, and Home Server makes sure the data for that share is somewhere on multiple hard drives. A drive fails? No problem, it’s on another. Home Server handles all of that in the background. I’m really loving it so far. At this point I’ve got two 200GB drives, a 320 GB drive, and an external 200 GB drive. It doesn’t matter which files go on which drive. I just dump them in their appropriate share and I’m done with it.
WHS also supports user created add-ins. The add-in I’ve most enjoyed so far is Xbox Community Feeds. I’m using it exclusively to subscribe to video RSS feeds. Now I can watch my favorite vidcasts (The 1UP Show, Totally Rad Show, Diggnation, Systm, DL.TV) on my 360 without having to manually download them and add them to my video share.
Thanks again to Chris for suggesting Windows Live Writer. It makes the entire process of blogging downright fun! I might even post again before 6 months has passed just so I can use Windows Live Writer again.
We rearranged our furniture in our living room, and my laptop now has terrible wi-fi reception. Solution? Access point!? No, not worth the money. Better router!? Again, my $19 Microsoft Router from woot! has served me perfectly in every other way and I need not spend any more. I know! A parabolic tinfoil reflector for my antenna. As it turns out, this little arts & crafts project made all the difference needed. I went from two bars in the Windows wireless connection monitor to 5 bars. Very cool.
That fact only further solidifies my belief that his hair is just a little too perfect and his teeth are just a little too white.
