Pip has had major hard disk failure issues this week, which has prompted me to bite the bullet regarding larger hard disks and a better fileserver, rather than clinging to old hardware. So I’m going to order: 2x 1Tb Samsung Spinpoint F1 SATA hard disks, they’ll be a bit noisey but they’re the fastest and cheaper than Seagate; A Pentium Dual Core E5200 2.5GHz CPU, which is essentially the same chip as a Core2Duo E7200 with less cache, for a damn site less cash (see what I did there?

I’ve been looking at the hard drives I have spare or in various external enclosures, and the drives I have in my current fileserver and in my old desktop that will become my new fileserver (on top of 1.25Tb in my new desktop). I’ve found: Old desktop: 3x250gb and a 200gb SATA Fileserver: 2x500gb and 2x250gb SATA, 80gb IDE Spare: 160Gb 2.5″ SATA (in eSATA enclosure) 6Gb 2.5″ IDE 20Gb 2.

Its been a while since my last post, so here’s an update. I got back from my trip to Dover/Ramsgate, I can’t stand the hussle and traffic, the weather is shite too, it was freezing and rainy for three days. The new ferry was nice, but the crossing was slow and the sailing times are useless. The new iGO 8.3.2 GPS software worked well – I like the way it pronounces the roads now instead of just “turn right”, and also as you’re approaching an exit you need to take it displays the lane signs, highlighting the one you need to be interested in.

It was Mum’s birthday yesterday, Pip & Co and I went over for a little party which was lovely. We got Mum (and Dad) a jacuzzi. Today I’ve been playing with the new version of iGO 8 on my GPS – 8.3.2, which meant more setting up of maps, speedcam databases and backing up of favourites/POI’s etc. I’ve got it working nicely now, with the March09 software and November08 maps, so can test it out when we go to England – I’m taking a backup SD card with 8.

Well if the DNS has propagated properly I’m writing this on my new virtual server! Our co-lo hosts put their prices up and then decided to get out of the market altogther, so the Netra will be winging its way back to us, and I’ve gone for a UK-based VPS which costs a fifth as much and seems to perform better – well sun4u is pretty dated hardware compared to a slice of core2quad xeon!