Category: Technology

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The Internet Blackout was interesting…

Yesterday, during the  internet blackout my email box was very, very quiet.

On thing in particular was missing… SPAM

Yep, folks not one piece of SPAM clogged my email.

I”ve become so accustomed to the continuos avalanche of SPAM that I thought something was wrong with my email.

It reminded me of the infamous “Day without a Mexican” in Los Angeles of several years ago. That was a day when all or a majority of Mexicans stayed home in protest of something or other. In their case the protest kind of backfired.

The traffic in LA was a breeze, no-one was having to dodge flying debris from gardening trucks on the freeways, there were no car fires, fewer accidents, and fewer broken down cars on the side of the road (or in traffic lanes.)

The next day traffic returned to it’s normal screwed up mess and everyone was asking for more days without mexicans, La Raza was NOT pleased.

This morning my email box has the usual amount of SPAM. The online drugstores, Teens who want to show me their tits, and the Letters from bankers telling me that distant relatives in Kenya have died are all keeping my Junk Mail filters busy again.

However, if I have to choose between SOPA and censorship OR SPAM… I’ll take the SPAM any day.

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SOPA & PIPA Are dangerous Fight BACK

Censorship is one of those things that we all say is bad. Yet we engage in censorship every day. We choose what we want to see & hear, we choose what our children see and hear too.

This kind of normal censorship is reasonable and in fact demonstrates our ability to be responsible for our actions

Small groups protesting each other CENSOR each other by one group shouting louder than the other. In recent years, a new tool has been added to the small group Censorship tool box… It’s the single word RACIST! Even in this situation we accept that tempers flare and even appreciate the passionate expression of someones differing beliefs.

We know that we can, if we choose look up both sides of a protest and we can evaluate and decide for ourselves whose opinion we agree with. The news media will present both sides in an unbiased way. We can read about the protest in the newspaper and have all the facts laid out before us.

CAN we?

Do we really trust the talking heads on TV? Do we really believe what is printed in the news paper?

I think the answer is more often than not NO! Part of the wonder of the internet aside from giving voice to every village idiot, is that we also get information. Tons of it, sometimes completely unfiltered.

That unfiltered, un-sanitized news is often our best insight into the truth of a situation. In our country our freedoms are highly dependent on a free flow of information from all sources.

Which brings us to…

Get the point?
You can find the contact information for your Representative HERE Click on your state, then find your representative and call them.

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RAID Array is toast… (Update)

My Buffalo LS-QL R5 8TB started failing in September. Since that time I have re-formatted the unit, tested the drives (no problem found), re-formatted again, re-flashed the firmware (Lots of fun finding that..) And through it all been completely unable to get any response out of Buffalo Tech.

I thought I had everything squared away but the unit died again after 10 days of operation.

Report Last night at Midnight

Running Time
: 10 days
, 15:34:32
[HDD Usage Status]
RAID Array 1 Usage Rate
: 747128112 kbytes / 3890505728 kbytes (Usage Rate
19%)
[DISK error status]
DISK1 0
DISK2 0
DISK3 0
DISK4 0

Report This morning at 5am

HDD error occurred
Disk(s) the error occurred
:UnknownDisk()
(sda) WRITE sector:12016445 count:1
Disk writing error
Some data may not be recoverable.
Immediate change of disk is recommended.

I’d happily change the disk IF I COULD FIGURE OUT WHICH ONE!

“Unknown Disk”??? How is that possible?

NAS Navigator for Windows appears to be accurate (more or less)

NAS Navigator for Mac reports:
“Unformatted / Unconnected” at the same time the drive is in fact running. and also reports “E13: An error has occurred on RAID ARRAY 1”

But that’s it! Nothing specific enough to actually diagnose or correct the problem.

I’m really not up for doing the math to figure out which drive that sector is on.

All the drive indicator lights are green and the drive is doing a disk check after powering down due to the error. I was hoping that at least one of them would be flashing red.

Buffalo Technology is not interested in providing products that are reliable or serviceable. This can be easily illustrated by reading their support forums, if you can… Some of the comments from the buffalo support team are far less than customer oriented and in some cases downright nasty.

Their software is buggy, and they do not appear interested in updating anything to correct their deficiencies.

If I had to do it again, Buffalo Technologies equipment would not be anywhere on my list of potential purchases.

If you’re looking for a NAS… Look at another manufacturer.


————– UPDATE —————–


After fooling around more with the Buffalo unit and at one point “BRICKING” the array and it’s enclosure entirely. I have identified that 3 of the four drives consistently fail. This is after having formatted and tested the drives on another computer and each of the drives reporting no errors. I did figure out that (sda was drive 1 buy moving it to slot 2 where it became sdb.) You know… I didn’t want to guess about that and with 3 drives reporting problems I wasn’t wanting to make any assumptions. It appears that Disk 1 is sda, Disk 2 is sdb, and so on through sdd. That might have been bloody useful to actually PUT IN THE FAQ on the Buffalo Web site. Even a simple “yes that’s the way we report a failure.” would have been helpful.


A 75% drive failure in the same enclosure is interesting as hell to me especially where there has been no abuse, vibration, or other factors outside of normal operation. This is well beyond what the MTBF numbers say should happen. Nonetheless, when the drives are all put back in their array, they fail I’m now two for two and am calling the 3 drives toast.


I think it’s suspicious that the failure occurred on all three drives at the same time. But then again I’m a suspicious kind of guy.


So now I’m left with spending $165 per drive to replace them, thereby bringing the Buffalo unit back online and wondering if there’s something else going on… Or I could just bite the bullet and replace all 4 drives and hope the problem isn’t in the enclosure itself….


OR I can purchase a WD 3TB Mybook NAS. It’s non-raid but apparently Buffalo Technologies RAID5 array isn’t as redundant as its supposed to be. 


On the upside… I have significantly LESS data to worry about now anyway.


If I could buy 4, 3TB drives and put them in my existing Buffalo enclosure I’d consider it, since it would be an upgrade. BUT Buffalo technologies isn’t updating the firmware on my enclosure so that’s not an option.


TO BestBuy Boy Blunder! …………………………………..


I now have a nice happy WD 3TB My Book Live plugged into the port the Buffalo Tech unit used to occupy.  I paid 200.00 for the new machine. I have several ports open on my maser switch so If I need additional storage space… I’ll buy another 3TB and move on.


Yep, no RAID but as long as I’m going to have to backup the data to another media anyway who CARES?

I noticed some variant OS builds on the net for the Buffalo enclosure. Maybe if I get really bored I’ll flash one of those to the unit and see if someone else’s FREE implementation works better than the factory build. I’m going to have to be REALLY BORED!

By really bored… I mean so bored that masturbation is off the table… AS IF!

Again if you’re looking for NAS devices… Avoid Buffalo Technologies.