I have a love-hate relationship with my home server. I’m on my second, the current being the HP Mediasmart 495ex. There’s a lot to love about this system, it’s flexible, mostly reliable, simple to maintain and easy to expand. It gives me lots of space on the network to backup files and serve media to the internal network.

There’s also a few major blind spots that I hate. One became very apparent recently when the server stopped responding. Rebooting the server would bring it back up on the network and everything would work fine for a little while. A bit of searching around led me to the excellent (and free) Home Server SMART add-in. This handy add in provides functionality that really should have shipped with Windows Home Server, it reads the SMART information off of your hard drives and provides warnings if a drive seems likely to fail soon.

As soon as I had installed the WHS Smart add in, the health light on my server turned red and it threw up a warning that the system drive had multiple read errors. Uh-oh.

At least this helped to narrow down the problem, my system drive was failing and needed to be replaced. OK, but how do you do that? On any additional data drive you can simply swap it out, but here’s a giant blind spot in the design of the original WHS os: The system drive is included in the drive pool, but can not be swapped out.

If your system drive has problems you’re pretty much screwed. Or at least that’s what it looks like. In fact you can fix this problem, cloning the system drive and with a little extra effort get it back to life. Why they never provided a simple way to do this is beyond me, it’s not a simple process, but here’s how I got my server back to life:

1. DIAGNOSIS

First step, make sure it’s your system drive that’s failing. The WHS Smart add-in is indispensible here and you should have it running on your system BEFORE you run into any problems. This will let you know of any potential problems as soon as they pop up.

2. BACKUP YOUR DATA

You’ll probably want to try to rescue any important files before you try this. If your server is running grab what you can off it. If you’ve got duplication running on every shared folder you should be fine anyways since anything on the system drive is held on another drive as well.

3. CLONING YOUR DRIVE

Here’s where it gets tricky. You can clone a drive using all sorts of software, but WHS will not recognize it if it has a different unique disk ID and your system will throw up all sorts of errors and be unreliable. This handy post tells how to work around that, and here are the specific steps that worked for me:

In that post Acronis is the recommended software to clone your system drive. There are multiple versions of that software, some paid and a couple of free version for seagate and WD drives. I was cloning from a Seagate to a WD drive, so I thought one of those would work. I was wrong. After multiple attempts I had no cloned drive and I didn’t want to buy more software in the hope that it would work, so I did a bit more research.

Then I found Clonezilla. This is brilliant free software that works a treat. I used Tuxboot to automatically download the latest version of Clonezilla and create a bootable USB drive with this software on it. I then set the bios in my second PC to boot off the USB drive and plugged the failing system drive and the new blank drive into external USB enclosures.

Clonezilla is not terribly pretty and its interface can be kind of intimidating. The important thing is to make sure which is your source and which is your target drive. If you do this wrong you can overwrite your failing system drive with the blank drive and then you’ve really lost everything you wanted to pull off of it. For me this was easy since my source and target drives were two different brands, but be extra carefull with this step. Here’s a walk through with screen grabs on how to clone a drive.

I first tried the automatic no error correction version of cloning and it failed. Not suprising since my source drive is failing. I then tried the repair errors option and though it threw up some errors for lots of dead sectors the cloning completed. I then took the new clone drive, put it in my server and booted up. One nice thing about this method of cloning (asides from being free) is that it clones the unique disk ID as well so that’s one less step you have to do manually.

As you can imagine, I was quite happy to see my system boot up with the new drive. Not only did it boot up, it was more responsive – the console loaded up quicker and everything felt faster. I’m guessing the system disk errors were slowing everything down.

4. EDIT REGISTRY

Here’s the final tricky step outlined in the original post by YMBOC. We don’t have to change the unique disk ID since Clonezilla takes care of that and if you used a drive that’s the same size you wont have to edit the start and offset data. The one thing you will have to edit is the manufacturer data if you’re using a different brand of HD like I am. Here’s how to do that:

24) Go to the Start Menu. Select Run. Type “regedit”. Press OK.

25) Updating the Name of the System Drive as it appears in the WHS Console “Server Storage” Tab:
In Regedit, navigate to HKEY_Local_Machine\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Home Server\Storage Manager\Disks.

There you will see a key (looks like a folder) for each drive that’s normally a part of your WHS system. Find the key that has “System” as its FriendlyName (in the right-hand pane). You can identify it by the key’s name which will begin with the same DiskID you set in part 2 of the instructions.

Navigate to the Attributes sub-key of the key you just identified.

Double-Click on ManufactureName in the right-hand pane and Enter the name of your new System Drive as it appears in the WHS Server’s Device Manager under the disks heading.

FYI: You can quickly access the Device Manager by going to the Start Menu, Right-Clicking on ‘My Computer’ and selecting ‘Manage’.

Check out the original post for more info.

5. DONE! (NOW WAIT)

Now you should be done! It’s time to reboot your server and try it out. When I rebooted my system it was still doing a few weird things. When I went to server storage in the console the ‘calculating size’ green bar seemed to run forever and the shared folders tab showed ‘unknown size’ for many of the folders. Uh-oh.

But here’s where the interruptions of real life came in handy. I had to leave for a few hours and when I came back all of the folder were showing their size and the server storage tab showed the pie chart. So give your server lots of time to incorporate the new drive before you get too concerned about storage display problems.

As of this writing the server has been running for few days with no signs of any more problems. All of my data appears to be intact and this little scare has served as a reminder: use duplication on any folders that are important to you.

First off, you’ll need the windows drivers – not sure where you can find those, but hopefully on a Fujitsu support site.  If anyone has used this process and knows where to download those drivers you can post it in the comments below.

Once you have the driver, go to the s300inf file (C:\Windows\SSDriver\S3Mini\S300.inf) and look for:

Code:
[Models]
%USB\FUJITSU_ScanSnapS300_____0.DeviceDesc% = S300U.Scanner,USB\VID_04C5&PID_1156

;——————————————————- for WinNT

Simply add a line to that like this:

Code:
[Models]
%USB\FUJITSU_ScanSnapS300_____0.DeviceDesc% = S300U.Scanner,USB\VID_04C5&PID_1156
%USB\FUJITSU_ScanSnapS300_____0.DeviceDesc% = S300U.Scanner,USB\VID_04C5&PID_117F

;——————————————————- for WinNT

Save the file and plug in your Mac scanner to your PC.  It won’t know where to find the driver, so tell it you’ll look for the device when prompted.  Navigate to your edited driver file and select it.

Your Scansnap 300M should now work on your PC!  Feel free to post your experience with this in the comment section below, and thanks to everyone who contributed to the original post!

PLEASE NOTE: lots of useful reader comments on troubleshooting this process in the older comments.  Click here to read all comments.

I live in an OS agnostic house, and the ability to back up Mac OS X via Time Machine along with the PC was a definite selling point.
But something happened on the way from concept to delivery. The HP home server is fairly well integrated with the Mac (it includes a handy media collector program that grabs photos, music and movie files from your computers to your home server) but I couldn’t get the time machine to function properly.

I kept getting network errors when I’d go to create my time machine backup disc via the preferences pane. It would always fail partway through. Now to be fair, my MacBook Pro is not standard – it’s got an internal raid and I was trying to create a 1.2 terabyte time capsule, but a quick web search showed that I certainly wasn’t the only person having this problem. Many people cant create a Time Machine disk bigger than 75 gigs. Many are reporting problems with the Time Machine function in the most recent version of the HP mediasmart software.
If you’re having this problem, here’s what worked for me.

WARNING: The following steps involve editing the registry on your server. You can mess things up if you do it wrong.
Time Machine seems to have a problem with the IRP stack size default on the Windows Home Server. Fixing it is relatively simple, though not without risk (you did read that warning above right?). Make sure your media smart software is up to date and reboot both your server and your Mac to see if that fixes the problem before you try the following.

First you’ll need desktop access to your server, this can be done with an external mouse and keyboard, but the easiest way is with an add-in. If you have Advance Admin Console installed you can use it’s built in show desktop feature, or if you want a basic add-in try To Desktop. Either of these will give you easy access to the server desktop from the console.

Once you’ve got desktop access you can do the following steps. These are from this Microsoft technical bulletin, with the addition of the specific number I used to get my system to work properly:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
3. Click Edit, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type IRPStackSize, and then press ENTER to name the value.
Note Type IRPStackSize exactly as it is displayed. The value name is case sensitive.
5. Click Edit, and then click Modify.
6. In the Data Value box, type the value that is appropriate for the network.

The value I used was 27 decimal. Type in 27 in the data box and click the button for decimal. Then click OK Close the registry editor and reboot the server. Then try to set up your Time Machine disk in the OS X media smart preferences panel again. Hopefully it’s now working for you like it is for me!

I spotted this on the way to work the other day: a bad-ass home made electric vehicle constructed out of various bicycle and scrap parts.  What I really love is the Rube Goldbergesque powertrain that speaks highly of ‘using what you have available’ instead of buying new parts.

In case you can’t see it in the pictures, what makes this thing move is two car batteries running through a power inverter to produce 120v wall current which then runs an electric drill which turns the geared assembly to move the wheel.

For some reason I picture the father and son from Cormac McCarthys’ The Road and how much more delightful their travels would have been with something like this.  Just would have needed a way to charge those batteries.

Did you notice that it also comes with it’s own beer cooler?  What else could you possibly need?

I recently bought a Fujitsu ScanSnap s300 – this is a compact portable USB powered duplex sheetfeed scanner, and first off let me say I am DELIGHTED with the hardware. It appears to be solidly built, well designed and has been completely reliable for the short time that I’ve been using it. Its small enough to fit in my laptop bag, and can be powered completely off of USB, although you need to use two ports. You simple lift the lid/sheet feeder to turn it on, and being able to quickly scan both sides of a stack of documents and turn it into a PDF that is text searchable is fantastic. Even the software that ships with it is serviceable for managing your scans, though not ideal.

So what’s not to like?

One thing. Fujitsu has tried to artificial separate the same piece of hardware into two different markets. They have a Mac OS X version called the s300m that is the one I apparently should have bought for my Macbook, while the s300 that I did buy is only for use on my PC.

..YET, here I am using the s300 (pc version) to scan documents on my Mac. How can this be? Simple. The Mac and PC version of the Scansnap are identical except for two minor differences:

1: the color of the plastic.
2: a small id code in the unit that says whether its the Mac or PC version.

That’s IT! Fujitsu is intentionally spending more to separate the same product into two different lines, apparently in the hopes that consumers will buy two, one for each platform. This is ridiculous. Surely I’m not the only one that uses both Mac and PCs, but doesn’t care to buy two of every peripheral when their hardware is the same. And it’s not only the s300 series, Fujitsu is pulled the same trick with the s1500 and s510 series.

So if you’ve switched from a PC to a Mac, or just want to use your scanner on both platforms, how do you fix this mess? Fortunately it’s not too complicated, but you really shouldn’t have to jump through these hoops to make their product work.

1. Download and install ScanSnap manager for the Mac (V22L12)
2. Download the s1500m driver package (currently V30L20W_S1500M.dmg) even if you are trying to get the s300 to work.
3. Mount the s1500m driver dmg, and copy the contents to your desktop
4. Right click on the copy and select ‘show package contents’
5. Expand ‘contents’ then ‘resources’ folders
6. In ‘resources’ open ‘InstallationCheck’ in text editor
7. Type exit(0); on the second line after #!/usr/bin/perl
8. Save that ‘InstallationCheck’ file
9. Run the installer from your desktop copy.

Your scanner will now work, whether it’s the s300, s510, s1500 etc!  I’ve tested this on the s300 and have been scanning lots in the last week.  One issue you may run into is that OCR text recognition won’t work.  You can download the Abbyy FineReader update (FR4SS.dmg) from the bottom of that Fujitsu driver page and install that to fix.  You will then need to turn off the OCR setting in ScanSnap manager and add FineReader as a processing app for after your scans.

So what did all those steps accomplish?  They simply told the install file not to check for the right ID number on your scanner before installing, so the FULLY FUNCTIONAL OS X drivers could be installed.  Fujitsu has announced that future s1500 models will be ‘mac and pc compatible’, but I haven’t seen any announcement that they will release cross platform drivers for existing hardware.  For now you have to edit the installer, which is a waste of everyones time.  Please Fujitsu, treating your customers like idiots is no way to run a company.  You’ve made excellent hardware, now can you design a machine that will purge the bad decision makers from your corporate structure?

PLEASE NOTE: lots of useful reader comments on troubleshooting this process in the older comments.  Click here to read all comments.

This is the EASY way I built an iPhone cradle for my car – using the ashtray.  I’m using a JVC KD-800 deck because it was cheap, had built in head unit control for the iPhone* (not just ip0d), and most importantly had 2 USB ports, one in the front and one in the back.  On a side note, I’m quite happy with this JVC deck.  It has all sorts of extras I don’t use, like bluetooth and is HD and Satellite radio ready (with an extra adapter).  I use the front USB port with a thumbdrive and have wired the back port to my DIY car cradle hack.

I plugged a standard iPhone charge/sync cable in the back of the deck when I installed the head unit, and ran it down behind the ashtray, which in my car is located in the same center console.  I pulled the ashtray out and removed the tray itself leaving only the drawer that held it.  I then needed a cradle to hold the iPhone.  I think you could use any standard iPhone/iPod charge cradle, but it would have required cutting to fit in my ashtray, and they’re only available in white.

I wanted a shiny black cradle, so I got this Scosche charge adapter which is supposed to help with charging issues in old cradles.  Why you wouldn’t just buy a new cradle if you had that problem I don’t know, since they cost about the same as the adapter, but it was perfect for my needs.

I pried the cradle part with the cable port in it out of the plastic base and it was almost a perfect fit for my ashtray – I expected to have to do some drilling to hold it in, but lo and behold, the two screw ports that held the ash tray in matched up with two wholes in the Scosche adapter.  I just plugged in the cable, attached the cradle to the inside of the ash tray drawer and popped it back into my console.  There are a few things I intended to fix about this installation, but since it ‘just works’, I’m not sure if I ever will.  This is what the ashtray looks like without the phone in, I haven’t bothered to hide the cable yet since it doesn’t interfere with the tray sliding in and out and the phone covers it when its in the cradle.

Here’s on more shot of the phone in the cradle.  It covers part of the ventilation controls, but you can still access them and I don’t find it inconvenient.

*a head unit built for iPhone control is important because decks built just for use with the iPod can pick up interference from the mobile phone causing extra static and stress while listening to music.

I’m fortunate enough to live in a part of the world where malaria is not a big problem, but I still hate mosquitos.  That’s why I desperately want one of these – it’s like a anti-aircraft canon that detects a mosquito by its wing beat frequency and then shoots them out of the air with a laser..  That’s just fantastic.

Check out the Intellectual Ventures web site for fantastic HD video of mosquitos being shot out of the air in slow motion.  The end motion gif above has frames taken from the end of the third video in that link.

The problem is that in their pursuit of elegance they dropped some basic things that I miss from my old smart phone.  One simple key feature is ring profiles.  Why the hell can’t I set this phone to not ring at certain hours?  Sure I can mute the whole thing, but then what if I forget in the morning to turn the ringer back on?  How hard is it to add a timer in software to control the sounds my phone makes?

And why not allow input from bluetooth keyboards?  I guess I should just be happy they’ve finally given me the ability to cut and paste text.

All these little frustrations finally added up to the point where I was willing to take the risk of jailbreaking my phone so I could use Cydia to add missing functionality.  I had fears of bricking my phone, but it turns out I had nothing to fear.  Thanks to the brilliant simple process allowed by the freely available blackra1n my iPhone now feels like MY phone.  I can enable features that were missing and modify the little annoyances this device shipped with.

Certainly Cydia is a lot uglier than the app store, and there is the very real possibility of bricking your phone – with great power comes great responsibility – but after a month or so of freedom I am so very glad I busted this mobile phone out of Apple corporate lockdown.

One note: After the 40th week of manufacture Apple changed the bootrom on the 3GS which adds an irritating limitation to the blackra1n jailbreak.  If you ever need to reset your phone, or your battery runs completely down, you’ll need to reconnect your iPhone to your computer and run blackrain again to reboot.  If you’ve got one of the early models, you’re in luck, you can reboot with impunity.  You can tell the week of manufacture by the 4th and 5th digit of the iPhone serial number. If that number is below 40 you’ve got an early phone.

You can download blackra1n for Mac or PC here.