Darwin Visits My Desk

Ever noticed how your electrical and computer cords always seem to become tangled? Especially the coiled ones like a headphone cord... this might be exactly the same mechanism by which DNA interacts; it's the well-known double-helix that "slides" against other DNA strands and other things.

The Zen of MP3 and other stories

Still struggling to get my 8,000+ music library synced to the newly endowed 120GB Zen jukebox... although it got through about 6600 of the tracks, WMP experienced an i/o timeout or something.

Dennis Burton's new Develop Using .Net blog:
http://developusing.net/

A good treatise on multi-booting OS's. Clears up the confusion between primary, extended, and logical hard drive partitions. Boot loaders as well.
http://www.vsubhash.com/writeups/multiboot_os.asp

PC World: Avoid Static Damage to Your PC
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,82184-page,1/article.html

"Static electricity is much more common than you might think... Walk across that rug and touch a grounded metal object, and the voltage can be in the 10,000-to-12,000-volt range.... But for PC upgrades, the important thing to remember is that while a static shock must be 3500 to 4000 volts before you can feel it, it's the voltage below that level that is common, and insidious. It's entirely possible that you'll open up your PC, plug in an add-in card or some RAM, never have any sensation of static, and still have zapped the electronics. That's because the integrated circuits can be damaged or destroyed by static voltages as low as 400 volts."

"What's worse is that the component you installed may appear to be fine, but days, weeks, or months later your PC may lock up or start acting strangely... it's essential that PCs be unplugged when you work with them."

Also:
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/static-hard-drive/

http://www.build-your-own-cheap-computer.com/static-electricity.html

http://www.google.com/search?q=static+damage+computer+components+hard+drive&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

More storage tech...

Bicameral day... having firmware issues with the Zen Jukebox after failing to sync my library with it in a number of ways (WMP 10, NotMad). Tried updating the firmware to "Plays for Sure" and that for sure didn't play -- the Nomad boots into Rescue Mode and the computer won't recognize it any more to upgrade the firmware.

On the storage side of things, still trying to figure out whether I should invest in SCSI or SATA, as well as whether to buy a new box (e.g. with faster CPU, SATA RAID built-in, etc).

On storage: AnandTech's Server Guide Part 2, which explains seek time vs. latency, as well as compares a SATA drive with a SCSI drive:
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2859

FireWire vs. USB 2.0:
http://www.cwol.com/firewire/firewire-vs-usb.htm

Swapping out hard drives

The Zen JukeBox hard drive upgrade to 120 GB was as simple as pie... syncing my entire collection to it now...

Regarding upgrading my lowly 36 GB SCSI drive:

Swapping your board without so much as a reinstall
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/77909774/m/1400925745

http://www.mostlycreativeworkshop.com/Article11.html

How to replace the motherboard on a computer that is running Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, or Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;824125

Upgrading my Creative Zen Jukebox

Found out that I could upgrade my 40GB Zen Jukebox Xtra to 80, 100, or more GB via published "hacks."

http://www.aoaforums.com/forum/general-hardware-discussion/36570-upgrading-your-creative-zen-xtras-hard.html
http://monkeybum.pierceitshop.co.uk/2007/05/upgrading-30gb-zen-xtra-to-60gb.html
http://home.mchsi.com/~sallad/zen/tutorial.html

Bought a 120GB WD Scorpio for $70 + shipping from NewEgg.com:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136130

Hard drive wanderings

Explanations of hard drives and their use that reach down to the level of electronic ciruitry and rotational platter dynamics:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/op/cacheCircuitry-c.html

Cache size: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/perf/spec/other_Cache.htm

SATA vs. PATA: http://pcworld.about.com/magazine/2206p164id115629.htm

Basically the best hard drive overview I have ever read. It includes details about everything from heads, areal densities, platters, read-write mechanism, and more: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/op/index.htm

My Dell PowerEdge 1600SC server: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/1600sc_specs.pdf

A guy taking apart his Quantum Fireball:
http://www.takeitapart.net/archives/quantum-fireball-ex-hard-drive/

A cogent post on why it's better to leave your computer on most of the time. I will have to put my power meter on my NAS (has 3 x 500 GB drives in it) to see how much it really does use.
http://www.pcguide.com/care/care/gen/power_PM.htm

But another opinion (from the same guide) that seems to suggest that even powering up & down 10x per day for years is not close to the duty cycle of most drives:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/qual/spec.htm

Canvas prints at Shutterfly:
http://www.shutterfly.com/shop/product_c10065-p2004/Prints_Posters_Canvas_Prints