Category Archives: Tech stuff

Iomega iConnect

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

A couple of weeks ago, I bought myself an Iomega iConnect.

I had been sniffing around for a while for a USB hub, and I happened to be in PC World so I bought that model for the pure and simple reason that it was the only USB hub they had in stock.

Basically all I wanted was the ability to plug my external drives directly into the network, and this seemed to be ideal for the job.

I brought it home, unpacked it and plugged it in.  I installed the management software and away I went.

Simple?

No!

I have had nothing but trouble with the damned thing.

Initially, I connected the yoke directly to my laptop in order to configure it.  Documentation was crap, but it was a fairly straightforward process.  I gave it a static IP address, and named it FServer.  That was about all I had to do.  I moved it into the area where I wanted to keep the drives (which happens to be beside my router), plugged it in and connected all the drives.  I then went back to my laptop to start the process of mapping the drives backing up software.

I did a network search for the drives, but there was no sign of them.  I could see there was a device on the network called FServer but that was it. No hard drives.

Since then I have……

  • Moved the iConnect between the office and my laptop.
  • On the rare occasion I could connect to it, I tried static and dynamic IPs.
  • I have tried it with and without hard drives attached.
  • I have tried resetting it, but nothing happens if I do it as per instructions (holding in the reset button for 15 seconds – I went up to two minutes but the reset never happened)
  • I have tried resetting it by de-powering, and then re-powering with the reset held in.  That at least turned the status light red (which is the required result) but the damned thing stays on red and the only way to get it back to normal is to re-power it again, but the reset still hasn’t happened.
  • I have tried accessing it using Linux, Windows 7 and Windows 2000.  Same results on all systems.

I have trawled the Internet looking for help.  Iomega have a users forum, and I found quite a few roughly similar problems, but Iomega’s response seems always to be that a static IP should be used.  Tried that.  No good.

I connected it directly to my laptop again today to have another go.

I plugged it in, and nothing happened.  The Management software can see it all right.  It lists it as FServer with an IP of 192.168.1.9 (correct!).  However it says that it cannot be managed, nor is there any sign of the USB devices.  I tried pinging that IP and get no returns.  If it weren’t for the management software, I would say it didn’t exist at all.

I can see it in the Management window –

Iomega screen

I can see it in Windows 7 Network mapping –

Win 7 screen

But that is all.

I think it’s about time for a return trip to PC World?

[Filed under Linux server management software]

How to screw up a brand new laptop

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I suppose some will argue that it is my own fault.

My new laptop screwed up on me during the week.

I suppose the easiest way is to chart the history that led to its downfall?

When I got the laptop home, I found that it had three primary partitions. The first was a small system partition that seemed to contain boot records. The next was the restore partition and the third was the main partition containing the OS and all the data.

I have always had a habit of separating my data from my OS, and many’s the time that has saved my bacon. I therefore split the main partition in two. So far, so good.

Then came my experiments in Linux.

I tried reducing the size of my data partition to make room for the Linux install. That was fine, and I ended up with about 40Gb of free space. However, Linux refused categorically to see it. This is when I learned that apparently one can only have four primary partitions.

Undeterred, I set about installing Linux within Windows itself. I didn’t want to use a VMC as that imposes too many restrictions. Linux Mint has the perfect solution – to create a file and use that as a virtual hard disk.

I liked Linux. It has come a long way since I first started messing with it in the early days when a UI was virtually unheard of. I liked it so much I decided to revisit the idea of installing it in its own partition.

Because of the four partition limit, I had to combine two of mine. There was a considerable amount of shunting around involved, but eventually I shifted all my data onto the OS partition, including my Mint installation, just in case anything went wrong. I deleted the old data partition and set about installing Linux Mint. It worked perfectly. I now had a duel boot windows 7/Linux machine.

As the old installation of Mint was no longer needed, I deleted it of my data disk. I also used a utility to delete the record from the boot record. That is where my problem started. The machine categorically refused to boot into Windows. It just went blank leaving me staring at a black screen. I couldn’t even access the factory restore partition.

I had previously made a set of DVD restore disks, so I stuck the first one in. I hoped it would have some hind of error checking but it didn’t. I found an old copy of Ultimate Boot Disk which had saved my bacon in the past, and that had a utility to edit the MBR. I edited it, to point to the correct partition but that just screwed thing up completely. Now I couldn’t get into Linux either!

I found a torrent for a Windows 7 restore disk on the Web. I burned it to CD and tried that. It immediately It told me that there were problems with my boot-up and claimed to fix them but it made no difference. Stuck again.

I decided the time had come to forget about my Windows data. I had most of it backed up anyway, though I didn’t fancy installing all my programmes again. I did a complete factory restore off the DVDs. It took ages, but eventually it announced that my machine was back to its original state. It wasn’t. Apparently the restore doesn’t touch the MBR which struck me as crazy!

I searched the Web again [luckily I had a spare machine!] and found one reference to restoring a Windows 7 MBR using DOS. I tried that and it worked. At last I was getting somewhere.

I now had a machine with Windows 7 but no programmes or data, and an installation with everything in it, but that I couldn’t access. I decided to reinstall Mint and suffer my loss of data.

During the Mint install, there was some confusion as to where I was installing it. It wanted to use a spare 3Gb of empty space, which was worse than useless. I eventually persuaded it to use the existing Linux partitions, and just for the hell of it, I told it not to bother formatting the main partition. It installed perfectly so now I was back in business, with just a case of installing all my programmes again.

I was wrong.

I booted into Linux and there was everything just as I had left it – all my programmes and all my data.

The more I see of Linux, the more I like it.

That full restore just about clinched it!

The Linux adventure continues

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I have always considered Linux to be a bit of a geeky system.

I had hoped that with time, the front end would make things simpler, in the same way that Windows more or less made DOS obsolete. That isn’t the case.

The more I have used it, the more I like it. It is extremely fast, solid and also versatile. It is now my default operating system, so all I have to do is switch on the laptop and leave it to boot up. I only have to hover over the keyboard if I want to go into Windows.

In my last post, I mentioned how I was having problems with reinstalling Linux in a virtual file. I still haven’t solved that problem (despite having put an appeal out on the forums), but am developing a couple of theories. One is that apparently a hard disk can only handle four primary partitions? I had never heard this before but it could be the reason for my problem. My hard disk came with three partitions already set up. There is one small one that has an uncertain function. There is another that contains the factory restore code and then there is the main one which is around 320 Gb in size. My first job was to split that into and OS partition and a Data partition, not realising that I had now used up all my four partitions. Some day, I may restore to the factory default and then leave Windows in one partition and Linux in another.

Because I wasn’t able to reinstall, I had to get by by restoring my Linuxmint directory, and that is what I’m working off at the moment. I was also stuck with the size I had originally specified, which was 19Gb. This filled up pretty rapidly leaving me with a setup that lacked flexibility. I hunted the Internet and came up with a solution. Apparently, Linux is able to increase a file size without recreating it. I did say that Linux was flexible?

I tried it out last night and it worked. Or at least it partly worked. This is what I did.

My NTFS Data partition is the one that hold my Linux install. Linux is mounted in a folder called “linuxmint”, in two main files – “root.disk” and “swap.disk”. I can access these files directly from Linux using the path /host/linuxmint/disks/.

Using Terminal as Root I used the following –

cd /host/linuxmint/disks
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=10240 >> root.disk
e2fsck -f root.disk
resize2fs root.disk

The second line is the one that does the main work. It takes a very long time to run, and it is set to increase the size of root.disk by 10Gb. This can be varied by changing the value of “count”.

My problem now is that “root.disk” is 29Gb in size which is exactly what I intended, but when I examine the properties of any directory in Linux, it tells me that the disk size is still only 19Gb. Somehow i have to work out a solution to this little conundrum.

I will say one more thing in favour of Linux –

It certainly keeps an old man’s brain active!

Enough space to swing a cat

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I mentioned that I had bought a new external hard drive.

Within days, it failed.

I went into eBay which is where I bough the drive to contact the vendor, and to my disgust I noticed that he had a no-returns policy.  More in hope than expectation, I wrote to him anyway.

I didn’t get a reply, so I marked the failure down to experience, and as I needed a backup drive, I ordered a new drive off a different vendor.

A day later, I got two mails.  One was from the new vendor to say that my drive had been dispatched, and the other was from the original vendor to say that he would replace any faulty components, which he proceeded to do.

I now have two new external drives, and one somewhat flaky old one,  I have just hooked them all up to this laptop.  It now has a total of 4.8 Terrabytes of storage!

storage

I remember back in the 90s when Microsoft introduced their Terraserver project (now apparently renamed MSR Maps) which was a precursor to Google Earth.  Everyone was aghast at the amount of storage required to host the project.  How could anything be so big as to require terrabytes of storage?  yet I could probably store the whole project on my laptop now!

Naturally, I am not going to lug the drives around with the laptop.  What I intend to do is to mount them on the network so they are accessible at all times without having to physically move them. 

As for the amount of space I now have, I would imagine that it is about right.  I will mirror the two 2Tb drives so that in the event of failure, I will still have a backup.  The 1Tb drive will be used as an auxiliary dump which I shall probably use as a media server.

Overall, I should have enough storage?

Upgrading

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I can’t remember exactly when I bought my first desktop computer, but I think it was around fifteen years ago.

Boy, how things have changed!

My first machine was a Tandon 386, with 1Mb of RAM and a massive 40Mb hard disk.  It had the standard 5.25” floppy drive, but I spent a little extra and got a 3,25” floppy as well.  I was forward thinking!

I have just taken delivery of a 2Tb external drive which is hooked up now to my laptop, along with a slightly unreliable 1Tb drive.  I have just been doing the maths on how this humble little laptop compares to my first machine.

The memory has grown from 1Mb to 4Gb, which is 4,000 times more.

The storage has grown from 40Mb to 3.35Tb which is an increase factor of 83750!!

The laptop has a 2Gh dual core processor compared to my old 16Mh Tandon which is the poorest improvement – a mere 128 times faster.

I haven’t seen a floppy drive in years, nor have I seen a floppy disk.  This yoke is DVDs (and CDs) only.

Of course the display and sound have improved beyond recognition too.

But by how much has the price increased in the fifteen years?

I actually paid about half the original cost on my current setup.  Allowing for inflation, I have spent considerably less.

Not bad. huh?