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.

This ATA router features both a web server admin page and a voice prompt admin gateway. This means that if you can’t get access to the web admin you can use your telephone handset to setup and maintain this little device. The tricky bit is that you need to know what touch tone codes are used to control what settings. For future reference I post those codes below:

I was making some pasta at the end of a long workday recently, and hunger had caught up with me. Now I don’t know about you, but when I’m hungry I get cranky and rather unpleasant to be around.

There’s something primitive that happens when you start to get hungry, theres a bit of the territorial lizard brain that kicks in as if you need to stake your claim to what food there is, even if there’s plenty. In my case I know this territorial instinct tends to manifest itself in a lack of social grace. When I’m hungry I tend to have very little patience for other peoples input, ideas, questions or interruptions. It also tends to affect my empathy and the filters for what I say or the way that I express myself.

I can work on my own fine when I’m hungry, in fact sometimes there even seems to be a slight edge that can help to make me more efficient, but in that state I’m not good at dealing with people.

I was in this state as I was making dinner when I started thinking about Jobs and his eating habits.

Jobs had inconsistent, but very restrictive eating habits. He would go for weeks at a time eating only a single food (like apples or carrots). He seems to have had a life long fascination with starvation diets. With limited calorie intake, I have to wonder if this had an effect on his notoriously rude and cruel interpersonal interactions.

I’m not suggesting that Steve Jobs would have been a fat and jolly man who never abandoned a child if he had a more normal diet. The man was an asshole and a perfectionist who helped drive teams to either self destruct or create some truly amazing things. I just wonder if he would have been slightly less of an asshole if he had eaten proper meals.

I imagine that you are as interested as I am in seeing a gigantic robotic spider meet a gigantic robotic snake (from a safe distance) so here you are – Mondospider meets Titanoboa.

This video comes courtesy of Johnathon Tippett who designed and built the leg structure on that giant rideable robotic spider. The Titanoboa is partially complete project by eatART, once it’s finished it will be a 50 foot long 1 ton full scale robotic version of the original titanoboa that roamed the earth some 60 million years ago when the temperature was just 6 to 8 degrees hotter than it is today.

It was only at these warmer temperatures which are at the upper end of climate change predictions that the cold blooded beast was able to reach these sizes. Today, as fossilized life is exhumed and burned relentlessly to fuel modern progress, primordial spirits have been stirring. This fossil beast has been brought back to life as a provocative omen on the eve of catastrophe.

How’s that for a discussion starter?

If you like that, you’ll probably also be interested in Jonathon Tippets next project – Prothesis, the Anti-robot.

Offsite backups can be trickier, especially if you have a lot of data. Most services have limits to the data and monthly fees can add up. After looking around and comparing a few different options I settled on Crashplan. There are a few things that I really like about their service. First of all the software is robust and free. You can use it locally, or even across a network with a friends machine for free without any service subscription. If you do opt to use the crash plan servers the cost structure is very competitive and they offer a discount for prepaying up to four years in advance which I really like. If I’m going to use a backup system I’m going to use it for more than a year. They also offer web access to your backed up files and you can create backup sets to prioritize your files and schedule the backups.

I’ve been using crash plan for about a year now. I’m writing about it today because they just added a new feature that changes it from a great backup service to an indispensable daily tool – Crashplan has just released a mobile app for iOS and android. I’ve just tested the iPhone and iPad version and am blown away by the quick access to all of my files. It may be because the tool has just been release and not many people are using it, but navigating my backup file structure is zippy- it’s like browsing a local directory. To view a file you click it once and it downloads the file, then click it again to view it.

I can see this app being a huge lifesaver. Huge kudos to the Crashplan team for their service and this fantastic new app!

Obviously I’m posting this via the Blogsy app.

The interface is decent, I could see it taking a bit of time to get used to. My favorite feature so far is the two sided editor. You swipe the main screen to flip between the HTML code side and the media formatting side.

My least favorite thing about it is that there appears to be no way to upload photos from the app. You can insert photos from your flickr or picasa account, but you’d have to plan ahead and have your images already uploaded, or leave the app to add new images from your iPad.

It does have an in app browser and google image search tool, which would be nice for finding stock images to add to posts.

I’ve added my flickr account and am adding a photo from that here to test image embedding:

You can also add a YouTube account link, but for whatever reason that does not appear to working right now. I get to the ‘approve access for this app’ screen, but granting access never seems to stick. It would be nice if there were other online services that you could add, as I prefer vimeo for hosting my video work.

For certain kinds of blogging I can see this app being very nice. If you’re syncing your photo library with flickr or picasa and want to use them in an online diary, this app will work well for you. For me it feels to limited without in-app photo uploading and no way to set the wordpress feature image for the post.

Whoa. The killer photo app for the iPhone is made by.. Microsoft?!?

If you’ve got an iPhone and want a simple way to make panoramic photos check out the new Photosynth app for iOS.  It’s dead simple to use, very effective at stitching images in the phone and completely free.

Microsoft Photosynth has been available as a windows desktop app for a while and if you want to do huge HDR gigapixel pano images that’s still the way to go, but as a simple portable way to capture scenes without any extra gear this iOS app is pretty fantastic.

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!

If you came from an all PC background and used an old windows smart phone you know this isn’t too complicated. You could use outlook and sync it with your phone.

But what if you’re a switcher, a turncoat, a technical wanderer? Apples iPhone is a great combination of hardware and software, but they left some pretty basic stuff out, one of which is a to-do list.

For the last year I’ve looked around for a solution to this lack, never really finding the right combination of iPhone and desktop software that would work together flawlessly.

The closest solution looked like it was Things by cultured code. Things is an elegant task management program that is very flexible and has an iPhone app that works with it. Problem solved right?

Well, not exactly. Things is Mac only and I’m platform agnostic. The iPhone app can only sync manually over wi-fi, and worse than that is the price. The desktop app is 60 bucks and the iPhone app is $10.

$70 bucks for a task list? Really? I guess Apple users are willing to pay more for everything.

So after all my searching and complaining and being cheap, what’s the point of all this?

The point is I found the dream solution I was looking for.

Wunderlist runs on Mac, PC & iPhone and they say an Android app will be released soon. Wunderlist does wireless cloud syncing and is the right combination of simple, powerful and pretty. And how much does this elegance cost?

Nothing.

Nada. Zip. Not a penny charged for the desktop or iPhone version. There isn’t even any advertising in the various app versions.

WTF? How can they do that? I have no idea, but after just a few days of using it I can highly recommend it.