I've got 50,000 of them.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:11 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Gone! But wait... They originally came as part of Corel Gallery 1.3 million, a package long since forgotten, but I should still have the CDs. (Laughter from the gallery.) In fact, I managed to turn up twelve out of the original sixteen or seventeen disks, which is a pretty good effort considering that I haven't seen them for five years. The package was almost entirely crap... Except for the photos, which while low-resolution (384x256) were sharp and clear, with good composition and a wide variety of subjects. They occupied three of the sixteen (or seventeen) disks... and I found two of them.

Argh! Argh! I can't believe I didn't make a backup! One of the reasons I chew up so much disk space is that I'm paranoid; anything that is useful and cannot be easily replaced is copied and recopied. If it's something I created myself, a copy will sooner or later show up on every partition of every disk of every computer I own. Which is the only thing that will save you when two disks fail from a RAID-5 array. (Which is what appears to have happened.)

But not in this case. In fact, I came across a directory that seemed to have once held a copy of my photo library, but has since been cleaned out to save disk space.

Probably, if I trawl through eBay for long enough, if I search enough file-sharing applications, if I pester enough people, probably I can find a copy of my lost CD #7 of Corel Gallery 1.3 million. But if only I had made a quick copy of it; less than two gigabytes of data for those photos, which is less than three dollars at todays disk prices. Just drag and drop the directory onto one of my many servers; name it something obvious like Pix so that I immediately know what it —

Oh. Look! Look what I found! Now copy. Copy the copy. Burn to DVD!

Only the files of the paranoid survive.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:01 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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I decided on Mahoromatic, since the first DVD was kind of fun. So I went to pop it in the DVD player, and there was already a disk in there.

The disk was Big Trouble in Little China. Which means that I haven't watched any DVDs for six months.

A little catching up to do over Christmas, I think...

Update: First DVD in six months and I pick one I've already seen. Go me.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:12 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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(Via Ghost of a flea)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:38 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Those files might be corrupt.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The cables! The terrible cables!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:15 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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I think I already had everything interesting copied off. I can no longer tell for sure, because after trying a quick reboot to see if that fixed the problem, the filesystem will no longer mount. Or even fsck.

Of course, this happens just before I get my new server set up and copy everything over to a new home. Of course.

Fortunately, the vast majority of the files on there were either (a) anime and other videos that I have backed up to DVD-R or (b) backups of my other computers, which have not suddenly and irrevocably died on me. As yet.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:25 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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P.S. Look, you idiots, I don't have a floppy drive. Device drivers are supplied on CD-ROM these days. The only reason anyone uses floppy drives any more is to load your blasted device drivers. Would you at least try to join the 90s, even if you can't quite make it into the new century?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:54 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The only thing I'm not 100% sure of is whether the new IDE controller is working in DMA mode. If it is, then this box will shortly be ready to go.

I've reserved 45GB for Windows XP so that I can dual-boot and play around a bit. I'll report in when that's done - or when I trip over some other horrible problem.

Pixy's Tip of the Day

When a mid-tower case specifies that it has 12 drive bays, this does not mean that it is physically possible to install 12 disk drives in the case. It means that you have 12 different bays in which to arrange your 7 or 8 - or if you really push it, 9 - drives.

Also, IDE cables still suck. If I'd known that I wasn't going to be using my 3Ware controller for this, I would have done things rather differently. SATA cables are a substantial improvement, but something like Firewire, which can be daisy-chained and supplies both data and power on a single lead, would be even better.

I took a couple of photos of Yuri before I closed the case up. It looks like Cthulhu is trying to escape from within - but has become entangled in fishing line. There are cables everywhere.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:42 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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(Thanks to the Quizmistress of Chaos. Not to be confused with the Linkmistress of Chaos.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:37 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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