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Some of you who've been reading my ramblings for a while might think that I have a storage obsession..... and I might. However, as anyone who has ever worked professionally in the IT world will tell you. That's actually the norm. We get paid to be prepared for and to recover from disasters of digital/ Binary proportions! See what I did there.....
Although I haven't worked in that world for over 10 years now, those principles are ingrained into my thinking. So, backing up and storage capacity is always on my mind. Right now, I'm in the process of taking my file server from 3 drives and 6 terabytes of HDD space to 4 drives and 8Tb. Some might consider that excessive, but really not so much when you consider that each of the 2 HTPCs have at least 500Gb as a scratch disk for temp storage and my desktop workstation has 4Tb by itself. .....and that's not counting any of their relatively small SSD boot drives. My rough rule of thumb is always to have at least as much as the combined capacities of all of our home computers' storage space in the file server that functions as backup AND media server.
What I had done in the past when using Microsoft's Windows Home Server was to simply trust in it's built-in redundancy schemes and call it a day. Well.....first of all, I've decided to move away from M$ now that WHS is a dead product and secondly decided to move to a more sophisticated (read secure) backup/redundancy set up. I think I've previously discussed migrating to NAS4Free before, so I'm not going to get into that here other than to say that in order to fully implement ZFS in an efficient manner I needed a 4th, 2Tb drive which will allow me to still have 6Tb of storage while losing only one drive's capacity to parity. I'll do a detailed "build-up/rebuild" post on the retooled Spectre when it's up. So, that's it? That's all I'm going to talk about this morning? A rebuild that hasn't even happeded yet?
Oh NO!!! Not by a long-shot! I'm going to talk about this: the Drobo Mini.
As you can see by this image, it's external storage.... with a twist! So; it has 4 bays, "so what"? Ah....let me start from the beginning and tell you a little story.
Much like House with Wilson, many of my little ideas come from conversations with someone else. This last summer while my "location video" producing brother-in-law was here with his family, we discussed all things computer but as part of our little project to rip our DVD movies to digital files, he made mention of the fact that he had many external hard drives that he's collected and used them as necessary to store the many gigabytes of video files for his job. And that they are just kind of a necessity of his work-world. My question to him was that; "aren't they too slow" at USB 2.0 speed? His reply was, that it was pretty much the best he could do since Firewire was dead and that Thunderbolt was too difficult to find AND too expensive. Holy Interfaces Batman! That sounds like a challenge!
After consulting the Bat-Computer, I came across the Drobo line of storage. Yes; that which is most beloved of professional photographers and Mac-o-philes the world over.Of course, being of the "great unwashed" (PC users), I knew squat about them, but I did learn that they were pretty much "desktop" devices "Rats! Foiled by the Riddler"! Wait-a-minute; according to the bat-computer (that's Google to you, Bat-brain), there was a portable version that had hit the market in 2012.
Even better, it would allow you to intermix drives of all different capacities and makes, all while keeping a RAID scheme going giving.....TA-DA..... DATA REDUNDANCY!!! Oh; it gets better! There's a bay to take a mSATA SSD to allow caching acceleration, has BOTH USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt pass-through interfaces! All built into a 7" x 7" carbon-fiber reinforced "soft-touch" case with 2 whisper-quiet cooling fans and the smallest power brick-ette you ever saw. What's not to like?!? .......uhhh.....the $649 "List Price" (yikes)!!! Even the $399 Amazon price is pretty stiff, since remember; you have to provide your own drives!
Yeah; this is about what I felt like. For a tech-head like me, it's pretty much like the 16 year old who saw, fell in love with, then went to the Porsche car lot and looked at the price sticker. That price is all well and good for a professional who's writing this off as a business expense and is expecting to make money with it, for an "enthusiast" like me, it amounts to taking a Saturday afternoon and going by the Ferrari and Aston Martin dealers to look at the new models!
Then, this happened! On occasion, you can still find really good deals on eBay! On Tuesday; St. Patrick's Day, just randomly surfing, I came across not just a Drobo Mini on eBay at a decent price (about $150 at the time), but it was fully populated with 4 Western Digital Blue 320Gb drives AND a Crucial M4 256Gb mSATA SSD! OK, so after I slowed down the heavy breathing, I decided to just keep an eye on it "just in case" it didn't go into an astronomical price-point that I couldn't justify. I got home yesterday afternoon and it was at about $190. At that point, I put my eBay strategy into play; which is deciding what it was worth to me, the max that I was going to be willing to pay for it and setting that as a limit. The amount was $250. Here's my rationale (such as it is for something I don't need to have):
- At worse, I can sell it for at least that and get my money back since they sell for well over that amount on a regular basis. Know you product!
- The amount was reasonable given it's price at that point and since "that point" was within 45 minutes of the end time (which as an awkward weekday, before the evening so most folks are still at or trying to get home from work).
- I could completely "walk away" without a blink of an eye since I really didn't "need it", and I can afford it right now since I'm doing a series of computer jobs that would pay for it.
- It was fully populated meaning that I can put it to use immediately without paying one more dime to buy any drives, although I have several sitting around right here. Further more, this would allow me to buy bigger ones (2Tb) over time and replace them and the Drobo is set up for me to replace them "on the fly" and restore the data on the ones that were in use since that's one of it's major selling point/features.
- And for some reason that guy put a 256Gb mSATA SSD in there as the "accelerator" which was completely unnecessary since the firmware sets a 64Gb cache limit! Again; do your research and know your product. Therefore, I at some future date can pick up a 64Gb drive for that purpose, and move the 256Gb one to my ThinkPad X1 with has an empty mSATA socket to up the storage capacity of that machine which I was planning on doing anyway!
- In the final calculation, I had to figure about $70-90 on the plus side for the mSATA that I'll end up using in my ThinkPad. I could if I was so motivated, sell the 4, 320Gb drives for at least $15 each. That total would be around $130.
In the end, I bid $237, which was below my "cut-off", and won it at $225 (free shipping). If I deduct the other amounts which was the drives in it that I'm going to retask or replace, that will put the "bare" Drobo Mini at less than $100. At the end of the day; if I find that it's not useful or I just want to get my money back out of it, the transaction should turn a profit. Will I do that? Doubtful: I'm certain I'll be able to use it as a semi-portable storage solution that has built-in redundancy and is upgradeable. And in the today's digital world; is there's no such thing as having too much storage!?!
The first thing on my computer related list for this summer is to rip a "good" number of our movies on DVD into a universal portable format. From where I stand, "universal" video format would mean MP4. Please understand, that when I mean "rip", I don't mean to download! I mean to take DVDs that we've bought, own, and convert them to a different format for our personal use. I'm going to bet that, that fits in the vast majority of peoples' definition of "Fair Use". I'm going to leave the how part of it up to you to find out in the wilds of the internet. There are plenty of sites that describe the process in detail. The fact is that we are going to be spending a fair number of hours in vehicles, cabins, and hotel rooms this summer and the obvious use of movies in some computer file format will be advantageous.
The need for this comes from our family's conversion to the common use of tablets; iPads to be specific with the exception of myself (Android). You know of course that the iPad has no facility to physically connect to external storage. So an intermediary needed to be found. Earlier this spring, I came across the HooToo Tripmate as a wireless means of getting files to my students in the classroom. In the midst of that, I realized that it could just as well stream media to various platforms as long as they had the Tripmate App. About a month ago, I tested it with my ThinkPad Tablet (Android) while my friend Pat did the same thing on his iPad Air. I put a movie converted to MP4 on a flashdrive which was plugged into the HooToo Tripmate Elite (Newegg special, about $20). We both streamed the movie to our respective machines without issue. All that needs to be done is for each device to log onto the Tripmate's access point, open the App, navigate to the folder/file that the user wants and voila', INSTANT STREAMING MEDIA. Unfortunately, there is the "Teddy Roosevelt" digging the Panama Canal part, which is to laboriously rip and convert the a decent library of movies for the kids to access!
Item #2? Yeah, a power supply replacement. I recently came across a very nice Seasonic M12 II, 80 Plus Bronze semi-modular PS unit for about half of what the normally sell for.....so...... at some point, when I'm really ready to pull the giant Cosmos II back out from under the desk, then I'm going to switch it out from the Cooler Master 600w PS that's in there. So I needed this? No! But I'm a big Seasonic PS believer and they are quiet and run cool. I'm all about that. Plus; the price was right. About $45, after shipping.
My garage isn't exactly an e-waste dump, but I've really got to get in there and do some cleaning out. Most of what I'm going to get rid of will go to the new computer club but there are some items that need to be sold....
....which of course, leads to this sub-list. Items to sell off! This is very difficult for a border-line hoarders like me, but I've gotta do it.
Unfortunately, all this good planning to get things done isn't completely contingent on my motivation alone. I really need for my wife to figure out where she's going and get all the stuff in the garage into her new classroom! When that's been taken care of, then I'll be free to get my cache of computer parts out of the garage. Till then, the main trick to to NOT add to the pile!
Sometimes things (obvious things) just come falling out of the sky and they hit you square on the head! Last week, it happened to me. I don't even really remember what I was looking for, but I ran across an X300 ThinkPad. It was listed "For Repair, As Is", with a cracked screen, no hard drive or cover, and no A/C adapter, but with 2 batteries. Fully working otherwise! I'm not even certain what the guy wanted for it, but there was a "make offer" button on it, so I figured..... what the heck? I offered $45..... and he took it!
Let's be clear here: a working X300 for $45 ($55 after shipping). Came with 2 (1 OEM, 1 Aftermarket) batteries which routinely sell for $40 ea on eBay. Turns out, after I messaged him asking about the drive cover, he not only found it, but agreed to include an A/C adapter that he was also able to find. OK, I get that I have an X301 that I just upgraded to, but here was a functioning unit that I knew for a fact was worth more than twice the price in parts alone! On top of that, I have one more 1.8" 64Gb SSD sitting around somewhere, and although I knew the unusual WXGA+ LED screen was expensive, I figured I'd be OK to wait for a good deal on one.
After a little bit of research on said screen, things didn't look very good. I was seeing prices ranging from a low of $175 to a high of over $300! This screen is different than most others. When the X300 was released in February of 2008, it sported one of the very few LED lit screens, and at 13.3" (unusual size), with a high resolution of 1440 x 900..... we'll just say that not a lot of companies rushed out there to adopt it. In my mind, I thought: hey, at least I got a couple of batteries and a power adapter out of this deal, and prepared to leave it sitting on a shelf for a while.
Apparently, things were not through falling on me. The computer came, I examined it, and sure enough, there were 2 good batteries (about $60 worth since one was not OEM), there was 4Gb of RAM in the sockets (another $40 worth), and an A/C adapter (worth maybe $25). At this point, the value to me was already at $125. Then I checked that the machine did indeed work, so let's just say the parts value would be a conservative $125, making this things value at around $250. But you know me. Can't leave good enough alone. So, over the course of the next several days, I'd periodically scan eBay for a screen or a dead X300 with a good screen. I even considered giving/trading it to my friend Kym who has a severely "bowed" (don't ask, but I'll just say it involved UPS) X300. He could swap in his screen and be in good shape. Then something small fell on me. I saw a screen that the guy wanted $115. A little quick math puts a working X300 at $170. That's not too bad! But I decided to look around a little more. That's when the "big object" fell out of the sky and smacked me! A listing for a "working pull" screen for $59, with my friend, the "Make Offer" button! It had an issue in that there was a little "bloom" in the lower left corner, where the backlight is a little out of whack. It looks like somebody is shining a tiny flashlight from the corner into the screen. It's about a quarter of an inch long. After picking myself up out of the floor, I made an offer.... for $50. I got confirmation in about 5 minutes that he took it!
The screen came today, and I got it out of the box, and swapped into the X300 in record time. I'd say that I got it done in about 10 minutes. We had my son's school program to go to, so I didn't get to finish till just a little while ago. It did take me a little while to realize that the original 64Gb Samsung SSD from my old X300 was still in the daughter's dead X61! I pulled it out, simply plugged it straight into the "new" computer and it booted! It didn't like it, and wanted to know if that's what I really wanted to do, but sure enough, it when right on through the boot after I told it yes! It was a rough start up, but it worked. Now, I'm getting updates done since, as you can imagine, the drivers are a mess. The total comes to $105.
Sometimes, it better to be lucky than to be good!
OK, my little obsession is out! My wife called it the other day when she came home and asked me about the big "rollie" case in the garage. I said that it was the case I kept at school in case I needed to bring home lots of stuff. She laughed and said, that bags/cases must be my little addiction. Of course, we Chinese are well known for our little intricate boxes and all manner of fitted cases, etc. For my part, I've always been compulsive about using the correct bag or case for the task when it comes to my cameras, or portable computer equipment. Over the years, despite my best efforts to pare down, I have quite a collection of them stashed away.
I'll have to level some blame/excuse on has become a favorite source of them in the last couple of years. And that's Goodwill. REALLY; Goodwill! It started some time ago when we decided that we were better off donating our stuff instead of accumulating it for a garage sale. So on occasion when I was tasked with dropping off, I'd go inside and look around as well as drop off the bags of kids clothes, toys, old computer parts, what have you. And over the years have found all manner of useful items cheap, like cassette decks for $8, iPod dock/clock radio for Katie or $6 to cases and bags.
Yes, Goodwill is an awesome source of high-end computer and camera bags. I learned many years ago, that computer cases/bags don't hold their value; no matter how much you paid for that Brenthaven or Port bag that was $100-150 when you checked that box while ordering that new laptop. They can regularly be found on eBay for less than it costs to ship it; somewhere in the sub-$20 range. On top of that, they are often "lifetime" guarantee items, so if you want, you can send it back and get a new one if that zipper breaks! But, even better, they can be found pretty regularly at Goodwill for about $6 if you know what you are looking for and patiently go through their piles of old luggage that people donate. Another source is companies who handle surplus computing equipment. When they take laptops "off lease" or "surplus" they often come with the cases that were originally issued with the computer. Sometimes they haven't ever been used since many of those laptops were essentially used as a desktop their entire service life. If you find those places, they're be large bins of Dell, HP, Port, etc. cases for about $15-20 each. A good tip is to find the one you like best, then swap the strap around till you find the one of those you like best as well. The two are rarely one and the same, AND they pretty much all clip on the same way. Also, make sure you check to see that they one you want has all the padding and misc. accessory bags that supposed to come with it. These places (as with Goodwill), couldn't case less on the brand of the case. They are all priced the same.
Recently I was able to make the switch from a ThinkPad backpack to a very nice Timbuk2 Messenger bag courtesy of Goodwill for $6. They also make an insert for this bag to turn it into a stealth camera case that's far less likely to be targeted for theft versus a $60 case from Best Buy emblazoned with a Nikon or Canon logo! Mine has a bonus of a padded laptop/tablet section that's separately access in the back.
A few years ago, I needed something special when we were going to Alaska. After a lot of searching, I found that the Adventure series from Tamrac was perfect for a single bag that carried everything onto a plane. On a day-to-day shooting basis, I needed something that not only could stay our of the way on my back, but quickly slide around so I could get out equipment. That was the sling style Velocity 8. Although neither came from Goodwill, I was able to get them at good prices (about 50% of retail) from Amazon and eBay respectively.
A couple of weeks ago, I found an "As Is" Halliburton 105 case on eBay for about $30 after shipping. After I get replacement latches and foam for it, I'll use it to store equipment here at home so that I can have ready access to it. The back story behind these Zero Halliburton cases is really pretty interesting. Many years ago, THE Halliburton company of Texas/Oklahoma oilfield fame decided that they needed to have cases that could withstands the rigors of their work environment and keep their sensitive equipment safe. So they started making their own cases. They were so impressive that Zero corporation bought out that division and has continued to make the cases every since. These are arguably the most coveted and copied cases in history used by everyone from field engineers, to photographers, to drug lords, to the mythical James Bond, to the most famous of all......the "nuclear football" that travels with the President of the United States.
One of my favorite eBay scores was this backpack. It's one of the cases made for Lenovo specifically for the ThinkPad line of laptops. A few years ago, my wife injured her knee right before school started. As an elementary school teacher, she carried all manner of stuff with her back and forth on a daily basis. On crutches for the better part of 2 months, she needed a backpack style case which had the capability to stow a computer safely as well. So I went looking on eBay. One of the surplus outfits that I use on a regular basis out of Pennsylvania had a few of these things that were selling cheap. I mean cheap, something like $20 for an item that originally cost about $100. So I bought one. Unfortunately, it had a tear on one of the little auxilary webbing attachment points. I asked about it, and the seller sent me another almost identical to it while telling me to keep the original one! I use the bad one as my travel bag for when I'm going to a client location for my IT side business. It holds my laptop as well as any tools, cables and software that I might need.
With all these bags, do I need another? No, I don't need anything; especially after I found another Timbuk2 messenger cases in the "small" size for my Micro-4/3rds system. However, I've always coveted one of Zero Halliburton's Attache' style cases made for laptop computers. Especially in the unusual Gun Metal Grey color!
As much as I love technology and would happily hold on to my random "stuff" till they pry it from my cold fingers, I periodically have to do a clean-out. Now, this isn't the strategic "sell-off" that I've discussed which occur so that I can upgrade. Now there is a bit of that going on here since I have a few projects/targets I'd like to get done. But in reality, I just need to get rid of stuff! Since we don't live in one of our famous American "Mc-Mansions", I just don't have room, plus there are a few items that are in a time-sensitive situation. A good example are minidiscs which are in a "out-of-production" timeframe right now and a little bit of a collectors period, but not yet in the "worthless" part of their life cycle. So, now was a good time to sell. Although I had a number which sold in the $5 range, several were $10-15 and a Pink Floyd double album sold for over $90! This made the whole group of 24 end up going for $250+. Of course that meant that I was going to be selling off both of my decks, all 3 of the portables AND the 45 recordable disks. All-in-all, that made my virtually never used Minidsic rig create about $600. Sure, I'm kind of sad to see it go, but "good grief", that's a chunk of change for something that just sits and gathers dust.
The miracle that is eBay (as frustrating as it is to use sometimes) isn't as appreciated as it should be. I often use it as a barometer to tell what things are selling for (whether it's selling at all), what should be gotten rid of, and what I should be paying for something. I also use it as a research tool things such as finding part numbers, which parts work with what, and what is going to be available. Recently, less than an hour on eBay told me that it wasn't going to be worthwhile to replace a cracked LCD, so we sold the old machine for about $50 and bought a better one for about $125! The treasure-trove of information is without hours, borders, or currency barriers. It is often entertaining for me as well. I know; it's really geeky!
Beyond the minidiscs, I used the virtual garage sale to get rid of computer carcasses of machine that are leftover after I finish, and they will often bring close to $50 for a completely non-working laptop. This often allows me to do work for friends for "free". I don't charge them for finding a "new" working machine and transfer their data to it and they leave me their old dead machine that I'll eventually sell to recoup the time I've spent on their behalf. Yes, I know it's cheap labor, but these are often friends and family members.
Another area that I've used eBay successfully is with photography equipment. It allows me to find parts, etc. cheaply so I can experiment. I wanted to try out "Strobist" techniques and was able to find a Sunpak 422D shoe flash for cheap. Years later, after loading up with Nikon flashes, I sold the old one for nearly as much as it originally cost me to buy. The principal here is that it was something I wanted to try, but couldn't spend a lot of money on. As I became better at it, and found some good deals on more sophisticated equipment, I could sell off what I was previously using back into the same system that I had acquired it from in the first place. If you are careful in your shopping in the first place, you can in fact, often resell at a profit. Another example was my Tokina 80-400 lens. I bought it a few years ago when I was getting into auto-focus photography and wanted a super-telephoto in Nikon mount that didn't cost an "arm and a leg". It was in the low $300s when I bought it. I used it for 3+ years; found that I used other lenses far more often, sold it on eBay for almost $360. Can I take a vacation on the difference....NO. But tell me of something else that you can buy, use for quite some time and sell for more than you paid for it!?! And the fact is, that the person who bought it will have gotten a very decent lens and experience virtually the same effect when they get done with it. $360 was a good deal for it.
In the end, it was a pain in the neck, but well worth the time and effort to do in terms of financial payback. Plus it has cleared up space for future endeavors. Am I finished? Not even close......I've got all manner of stuff ranging from original a James Bond movie poster to computer stuff and even vinyl records that still need to go! I'll bet you do too.
