The Quest for a Cheap, Compact, Silent Network File Server for Home - Solved

I managed to get my Compaq Evo D510 USDT all set up a few weeks ago. I popped a whopping big hard disk into it and gave it a RAM upgrade. I successfully installed a copy of Windows XP (licenced) that I have from a now long dead PC and installed all of the updates etc.

I have set up a small home network which seems to be pretty reliable and the everything is neatly tidied away behind the vanity panel of my desk out of sight. Not quite out of hearing range though, as although it is quiet, the new file server isn't quite silent and there seems to be some sort of resonance going on in the little gap between the vanity panel and the wall, which I will need to address at some point., but for now I am happy with the way everything is set up.

The Epson printer even fired up without any issues and although I'm out of colour ink (or it has dried to a powder) I can print, albeit noisily in black which will do for now.

I have been carefully copying files off of my PC to the file server, nothing important at the moment just junk that I can't quite reconcile myself to permanently deleting. Soon I will start moving important stuff to help reduce the usage on my PC so that I can get to the business of scanning. I have a ridiculously large collection of negatives that need scanning and the scans consume a lot of space a 24bit scan saved as a compressed TIFF file uses about 35Mb and a 48bit scan uses about 120MB of disk space.

The only problem with little server is that I bought a USB Bluetooth adaptor for it so that I can sync my phone with it, but every time I reboot the machine it 'forgets' that it is connected and the only way to 'remind' it is to unplug and reconnect the USB adaptor, which I cannot reach because it is tucked away behind the desk. I'll need to find a solution to this as it takes 15 minutes to disassemble the desk, fix the USB key and reassemble the desk, not the end of the world but at the rate Microsoft keep releasing critical security updates it is going to be a real pain.

The Quest for a Cheap, Compact, Silent Network File Server for Home - Revisited

I've been considering the need for a small cheap easily concealed silent home network file and print server and have finally made a decision. I've revised my requirements and thrown out the need for it to act as a mail server as this just added too much complexity to the project, and have ordered a second hand Compaq Evo D510 USDT from a seller on eBay.

Why did I opt for a 5 year old PC from a company that doesn't exist anymore? Well there are a number of reasons. Primary reasons are that it is cheap at under £70.00 (excluding memory & HDD, but I've got some memory and a HDD from other machines that I'll use), small enough to be easily concealed, thereby making it reasonably secure and more importantly tidy, and it has a max power draw of 50W (which I'll be considerably under once its up and running).

Secondary reasons are that by using an old PC I'm effectively keeping it from being added to landfill which combined with the low power consumption means that its pretty 'green' and there is a lot of documentation out there for the hardware if I should run into any problems. Also I did bid on a number of Linksys NSLU2s but they kept going for between £40.00 and £50.00 which considering their limitations and power requirements seemed much too close to the £70.00 for the Evo D510 for it to be a sensible purchase.

Hopefully it will arrive in a few days and I can get it all set up for the weekend, when I'm hoping that I'll be able to move it and a few other unsightly bits and bobs (modem, router, etc) into a small gap between my desk and the wall where they won't be unsightly. I'll also hopefully be able to resurrect my printer which hasn't been used for over a year. However I'm not holding out much hope that it will work as it is an Epson and they are notorious for the heads fatally clogging after protracted periods of inactivity (which in Epson time is anything longer than a few days).

So the quest is over, now I can begin to build a home network which is something I've been meaning to do for some time now.

The Quest for a Cheap, Compact, Silent Network File Server for Home

I've recently been interested in purchasing a small easily concealed silent home network file and print server. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think that it has always been in the back of mind.

What I really want is something quite small, without any fans, with a bit of internal storage and the ability to add large external hard disks, with a network card. It must also be very stable and reasonably energy efficient so that I can leave it on 24/7 without worrying about killing Eisbären. Oh yeah, it must also be cheap, really cheap.

I've been doing some research and there are a surprisingly wide number of options available. I could buy an off the shelf Windows or Linux capable mini PC like and a Mac Mini or a A-Open Mini-PC, but these are reasonably expensive and if the reviews are anything to go by not really silent so they don't really meet the criteria. If I had the money I'm sure that they would be sufficient, but even on eBay they still cost a reasonable amount.

At the other end of the spectrum I could just buy a NAS device like a Buffalo Linkstation Pro Network Storage Centre or a Western Digital NetCenter Network Drive. Both of these meet some of my criteria, being small, low powered, and having the ability to act a a print server for one USB printer. They even have FTP servers built in so that I could access my files remotely. But they aren't very flexible and I really would like to be able to run applications like an IMAP mail server.

Andy has a Linksys NSLU2 and swears that it is the best thing since Ubuntu. I have looked into it and apart from being cheap, there are a lot of mods and even a few Linux OSs for it, all of which are promising.

I spoke to Laurie about my predicament. he didn't like the NSLU2. He recommended that I look into Soekris but their cheap website and anemic products didn't appeal to me. Then he found OpenBSD/landisk which looks interesting and meets his primary criteria of being able to run OpenBSD (if a computer doesn't use BSD he won't go within 4 feet of it), on the plus side it is really small and silent, but like the NSLU2 it requires an external hard disk, and really doesn't look powerful enough to do all the things I really want to do.

After ditching the requirement of being able to run Windows I came across the Little Linux systems for projects and products website, which was a great find. Many of the systems on the page I had already come across but there were so many more options that I hadn't seen.

I am very keen on some of the products by E-Way Technology Systems. The TK Tiny 800Mhz Fanless VIA Nano Embedded System looks the business. Reasonably powerful, silent, small, low powered, cheap and with some internal storage. There are only two USB ports, but then you can't have everything.

The other alternative is of course to build my own PC based on a Mini ITX motherboard. It would be a bit more quite a bit more expensive than the TK Tiny, but then I could have exactly what I want and it would still be cheaper than an off the shelf PC. I was looking at the stuff on http://www.mini-itx.com and there is a lot to choose from. The EPIA EN 12000G Fanless C7 Mini-ITX Board looks like a great place to start building my own, but the motherboard itself is twice the cost of a complete TK Tiny.

Decisions, decisions.

Digital Photo Frames

I've been looking into digital photo frames recently as I thought that one might make a good Christmas present for someone.

I went to John Lewis so that I could get my mits on the new Philips Digital PhotoFrame™.

Whilst they were quite interesting they did look a little cheap and plasticky, and were fiddly to use. More annoyingly (at least for me) they has a nonstandard aspect ratio of 3.3333:2 which is really bizarre. The resolution was quite good though at 800x480 pixels, available in two sizes 7" and 9". I preferred the 7" frame.

There was also a BT 9FFCW0 LCD Digital Photo Frame, which whilst being quite small at 5.6" at least had the virtue of having a 3:2 aspect ratio display. Unfortunately the resolution was very low at 320x240 pixels.

Dissapointed in the selection I had a look online where I found a number of frames of varying sizes from 5.6" to 10", unfortunately they all had relatively low resolutions and were for the most part 4:3 ratio screens. There was a 15" frame with a 1024x768 pixels screen, but again that is a 4:3 ratio.

Finally I decided to take a look on Amazon which has a surprisingly large selection of digital photo frames and I stumbled across the Linx 8" High Resolution Digital Photo Frame which has a 3:2 aspect ratio and a reasonable resolution of 720x480 pixels. It even has a remote control! Wicked the perfect gift.

Well it would have been if I had any money left! Christmas shopping, it is always a nightmare.

Musings on e-mail

Laurie has added an interesting entry on his blog relating to his strategy for dealing with e-mails.

Whilst I have to say that it makes sense, I have to say that I deal with my mail a little differently. For starters I use MS Outlook and Exchange which makes life a little easier. I can use 'Rules' to filter my messages based upon a number of criteria into 7 main folders (some with many sub-folders). This makes it easy to identify what is important and what isn't. However it doesn't deal with the context switching issue, but that is more a discipline thing. I don't necessarily reply to messages as soon as I have read them, or read them as soon as they arrive, so I don't have the same problem Laurie has.

An ever so slight problem or rather inconvenience is that I have a number of e-mail accounts. This does make categorising my mail a little easier but it does mean that keeping track of messages is more difficult. My work mail goes through an MS Exchange server, I have a few POP accounts and then I also have Hotmail, Yahoo! and GMail accounts. Finding a nice way of aggregating the collection or at least viewing of all of these different accounts in one highly functional e-mail client has proved thus far to be impossible. I use Trillian for messaging and this does have to ability to notify me when there is mail in my Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail account which helps. I haven't been able to get the Jabber connection to work however so GMail notification is out of the question.

A problem I do have, or rather used to have is Spam. I get shed loads of the stuff, over 200 messages a day through work and the POP accounts, and about the same on the three web based mail services. The best solution I have found for this so far for mail collected by Outlook is SpamBayes a probability based mail filter which is surprisingly effective. My only issue with it is that I can only run it on the e-mail client which is a pain because I check my mail from a number of clients and occasionally use Outlooks web access facility. The three web based accounts all have their own filtering and are reasonable effective.

I guess in the end everyone finds a solution that works for them, unfortunately for some people this seems to be not using their e-mail.

The Tao Of Programming

'Let the programmers be many and the managers few - then all will be productive.'

A program should follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment'. What is this law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the way that astonishes him least.

For more pearls of programming wisdom visit The Tao Of Programming

Effing Computer

My effing PC is playing Chernobyl again!!!!!!!

Kept overheating and shutting down, for no reason whatsoever! Causing me to loose the last post, which is probably not such a bad thing.

I have now spent the last fifeteen minutes swapping the fans around so that the fan that came with the heatsink is now acting as a case fan and one of the more powerful case fans is now blowing air onto the CPU heatsink. I am hoping that this will alleviate the problem somewhat.

The new combination has brought to light an issue with the motherboards supply of power to the CPU fan. The fan that was happily spinning at 2700rpm is now holding steady at just under 2500rpm, and the fan that was previously cooling the CPU which never managed to get above about 2400rpm is now spinning at over 2500rpm. Go figure.

There was a slight scare with the power supply when I rebooted, it sounded like a washing maching at max spin cycle when you leave a couple of glass marbles in it (don't ask), but a quick kick, literally; soon sorted that out and it is now operating within normal parameters once again.

Anapod Explorer an iTunes Alternative at last?

If you love the sleek, stylish looks and great ergonomics of an iPod, but have been put off buying one due to the awful iTunes software that you are required to use to manage your music, fear no more. Martin has discovered a possible solution to all of your iPod related problems - Anapod Explorer.

I've had a look at the website and a couple of reviews online and it looks like it is a real alternative. Yes you have to pay up to $30.00 depending on the iPod you have, but surely its worth it if it allows you to feel free to own an iPod.

If you anyone has already tried Anapod, let me know what you think, I'd like to hear from you.

Anapod Explorer is an essential tool for power users who crave more sophisticated control over their iPods. - Cnet

Red Chair Anapod Explorer
Anapod Explorer is an essential tool for power users who crave more sophisticated control over their iPods. - ZD Net Australia

Upgrade

As many of you are aware, I have been experiencing problems with my PC over the past few months and decided that there was no use procrastinating any more, I was going to have to make some changes.

I made the decision to replace my CPU heat sink and fan to a larger more powerful model which should also be quieter, and in order to keep my case cool a few extra fans. Lastly I was going to replace my main hard disk drive as it was beginning to sound like a cross between a banshee and two duelling tomcats. This is the story of what happened...

I woke up very late on Saturday with a bag full of parts and very keen to get on with things; brunch be damned, I was straight into the cupboard for a screwdriver. Sat down with a cup of coffee and decided how best to proceed wasn't sure so I asked the cats for some advice.

After finishing my coffee (and consulting with the cats) I had a plan of action. I was going to remove some hardware which I never use any more, remove the two fans that I borrowed, replace the heat sink/fan combo, install the new fans, rearrange the two hard disks drives, install the new hard disk drive, do a sector copy of the failing disk, change over the IDE master and Slave settings for the devices and that'll be that.

Removing the now redundant hardware was easy, sure I had to disconnect a few cables and remove the front facia from the case (which was more difficult that it should have been and required the gentle use of a small hammer), but it only took about twenty minutes. Happy with my progress I had a quick fag break and another cup of coffee.

Next came the heat sink/fan combo. No problem removing the old one, installing the new one required what felt like motherboard snapping force and the use of a screwdriver but that wasn't too bad, only took five minutes. Turned on the computer to make sure everything was okay, watched the CPU temp for about 5 minutes to make sure that it was okay, and then switched off again.

Onto the fans. Nothing in life could be easier than removing a pair of 80mm case fans, done in ten minutes. Adding the new fans took a bit longer because of those damnable self threading screws. You need to apply an obscene amount of torque to get them screwed in tight. As I was working in quite a tight space, I had to use my left hand quite often, it was a bit of a pian. Once they were installed I noticed an extra 3-pin fan header on the motherboard - excellent, not I could monitor the speed of the one of each of the fans at the front and back of the case. To top things off these new fans have funky LED lights that give the case a nice glow when they are in use. Things were going swimmingly. Time for another fag break and another cup of coffee.

Rearranging the hard disks was a bit of a pain, I moved the upper disk down to the bottom of the drive bays because I had worked out that I would be able to leave an empty bay above each disk once they were all installed which would allow good airflow from the newly installed fans at the front of the case. Moving a disk into the bottom bay with a full length SCSI controller in front of it just wasn't happening so out came the controller, in went the disk, back in went the controller and than I realised the IDE cables wouldn't reach - arghhh! After rearranging the IDE cables I switched the PC on and made sure everything was okay, which it was. Somehow nearly two hours had passed, strange I though to myself, didn't fel that long.

Shut down windows - time to install shiny new disk drive. A quick check of the jumper setting and it slid in like a dream. Plugged in all the cables and switched on the computer. BIOS automatically detected the drive and windows notified me of the new hardware when it started. That's what I call progress. Onto copying the data thought I. I quick scan of the instructions for Norton Ghost and I was away. I selected all of the relevant options, copy master boot record, check for bad sectors, verify data, expand partition to fill new disk space, etc, etc. And off it went. Should take a few hours so it was time for brunch.

After brunch (about an hour) returned to view the progress and something wasn't quite right the status bar hadn't even started and the progress report said 2% completed. Hmm preparation time thought I, and wen't to watch some telly. Returned to view the progress after and hour and a half solid TV watching. 10% completed. 10% completed in two and a half hours! That’s two and a half hours!!!

It was now around five in the afternoon, and at the current rate it would be six o'clock on Sunday before it was finished. There were bits of computer lying all around, the cats were getting very friendly with the cables, and I was beginning to simmer.

Three hours later - a special kind of hell. Yes I was in a special kind of hell, the kind where you do nothing but stare at a monitor for hours hoping that the progress bar will move, feeling overjoyed when it does, and then realising that the tiny movement to the right took an hour. Thinking about all of the things you could be using your computer for, but can't because despite running for what feels like days, the hard disk copying is still at under 20% and its eight o'clock and the noise of the new fans that you were so happy with is beginning to drive you slightly potty. So potty that you think that there are two glowing eyes glaring at you from inside the PC case, tormenting you. Then you notice that everything in the house is pitch black and that you hadn't noticed because you have been staring at the progress bar, willing it onwards, knowing that it will take as ling as it takes, which is too long. All this time asking yourself "will the old disk last long enough for the process to complete?". Everything after that was a blur; I can't remember anything until...

The following morning. Wake up on the sofa at around eight to the sound of the neighbour hoovering with a killer sinus headache. Go to the kitchen to make a coffee, realise that that sound isn't the neighbours hoover. It is in fact my PC. Turn on the monitor and am greeted by Norton Ghost telling me that it is 100% complete, with no errors. Thank the Gods. All of them in turn.

Switched off the PC, rearranged the cables and jumper setting on all of the IDE devices, tidied up and tied up all of the cables, nice and neat. Turned on the PC, went of make my coffee. Came back and sat down to the wonderful message

Please insert bootable media...

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Two hours later, after replacing IDE cables, putting back the original IDE cables, rearrranging IDE master and slave devices, kicking the PC, and doing the dance of shame - twice. I finally get the bios to recognise all of the devices and the PC to boot. Finally we are getting somewhere. Windows boots, thank the gods, all of them in turn. Take a quick photo before putting the case back together.

Well, that was my weekend. The PC still sounds a little like a hoover, and despite my wishful thinking the new CPU heat sink/fan combo is actually a little less efficient at cooling the CPU (it is quieter though). But I now have a working computer again and it glows in the dark :)

I will probably disconnect some of those funky fans in an attempt to reduce the noise, there are six 80mm fans in there now, which is probably too much. But that is a project for another day.

Got parts!

Splashed out on four fans, a new heatsink/fan combo and of course a new disk drive. Hopefully I'll be able to install it all later today without breaking anything. Will post all about the experience afterwards.

Wish me luck. :)

Added a couple of extra 80mm fans to my PC last night. Seems to be doing the trick. No screeching from the hard disk, all temps seem to be hitting new lows. Still not risking anything, waiting for the replacement disk to arrive......

Just finished performing open processor surgery on my PC and it is a resounding sucess. Woohoo!

The computer had been giving me grief for a few months especially through the summer months with random shutdowns. I installed some monitoring software and it turned out that the CPU was reaching 89ºC within a few minutes and then it would creap up to about 93ºC before the motherboard killed all power, effectively shutting down the PC.

I opened up the case to measure the space around the heatsink, intending to get a more powerful cooling solution, no need it would appear. The heatsink was caked in dust, and I mean literally. It took serious scrubbing with a stiff brush to even start clearing it away. Ditto the CPU fan.

Well, now that I have cleaned the heatsink and fan (they look almost like new) the CPU is holding steady at about 61ºC and the fan is spinning about 1100rpm faster and making less noise to boot :)

Moral:

Clean the inside of your computer at least once a year. I'm not talking about sticking a hoover in there for a minute either (I do that at least twice a year). I mean take it apart, clean each component and then put it back together again.

Panoramio

A nice idea pulling together different google technologies with the addition of user submitted photos to create a virtual tour of places around the world.

When you have an opportunity it is worth spending 5 minutes playing with panoramio to see how it works, if you have photos of your town then contribute :).

gDisk

A possibly useful tool, gDisk Allows you to use your gmail account as a portable hard disk, accesable wherever you have an internet connection.

I'm sure that Google didn't intend for gmail to be used like this exactly, but they must have been aware that people would use it a little like this so I have no reservations in sharing my find.

I found this new Google facility called Google Reader a few days ago. It looks like a good idea in principle but I can't for the life of me get the bloody thing to work!

Have a look and and see if you can do any better (if you can let me know), I know that it is still in beta but, the basics should work.

Just thought that I should give you a heads up in case it ever becomes useful.

Ubuntu

Andy has alerted me to the existence of Ubuntu. He must think its good as he's restyled his website subtly in what appears to be an homage to the new OS.

From a read of the website looks quite good but I haven't got any hardware to install it on yet.