Geek – Page 6 – Kevin's Blog

Failed External Backup Drive

Damn it. Just when I’m getting ready to backup my PC for that ever-exciting OS upgrade, my external backup hard drive died… a strange death, too. I was deleting an old backup set to make room for the most current and the drive started to hang. Once it finally cancels out, the drive disappears from the computer entirely. Reboot. Plug back in. And then comes the big ‘uh-oh’ … Windows can’t read the drive and wants to format it.

Logical guess: looks like the controller for the external drive has failed. Time to pull it out and stick it in the server.

[edit] Yep… my Adaptec USB 2.0 external enclosure released the last of it’s remaining magic blue smoke. Dropping the drive into my Windows 7 server box rebuilt the drive indexes and recovered the data via chkdsk.

go daddy gone

I dropped GoDaddy.com as my webhost last week, and so far it looks like it was a great choice. I’ve switched over to 1&1 via Firewallender’s recommendation and I have not been disappointed.

Continue reading go daddy gone

Windows 7 Beta available Friday 1/9

From WindowsTeamBlog.com:

On January 9th, the Windows 7 Beta will be available for Windows enthusiasts to download via the Windows 7 page on Windows.com. The Windows 7 Beta is going to be available download-only (we’re not sending out physical media) and available for a limited time to the first 2.5 million people who download the beta.

I’m super excited about this. Like, compeltely ecstatic. I’ve been talking up Win7 now for months to my friends and now we really get to show it off and have a ton of people try it. Yes, I’m pimping out my work because I’m damn proud of it!

Most important, “Give Feedback”! Everyone who uses Windows 7 will have the opportunity to give Microsoft feedback on pretty much everything. It’s the best way you can help Microsoft understand your experience with Windows 7. And, yes, we’re listening. :) There’s an easy lil button for you to click that sends us your comments and thoughts and musings. So, if you find bugs, report them!

For more information, see the Windows 7 page here (http://microsoft.com/windows7). If you want to get it as soon as it comes out, there’s an RSS feed that will let you know as soon as the public Beta becomes available (feed here: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/MainFeed.aspx).