thirdbeach.ca — Thotz

you will be assimilated

Usually nagware refers to watered down versions of software that are free to use, but have annoying pop-ups that “nag” you to download the commercial version—for a fee, of course. AVG Technologies’, formerly Grisoft, free version of AVG antivirus is famous for this. I guess they think that if you’re using AVG for free, they have the right to nag you with pop-ups. For a decent, free product, I can suffer the pop-ups. I’m benefiting from something I didn’t pay for. It’s free! But not free from aggravation one could argue. Symantec has a different take on nagware, they seem to think it’s okay to pay full price for it.

I’ve been using Norton Utilities, acquired by Symantec in 1990, since back in the days when it was a suite of DOS utilities produced by Peter Norton Computing Inc., a company founded by über geek, Peter Norton. Norton Utilities was pretty cool. It came with thick, comprehensive printed manuals—a geek’s paradise. Want to mess with your file allocation table (FAT)? No problem. I used to change my DOS error messages, “Disk Full” became “Burp!” Such fun. Since then, Symantec has gained a deservèd reputation for producing software that “takes over” your computer. Fr’instance, my computer takes a full ten minutes to boot because Norton Antivirus now scans my hard drive at start up, and damned if I can convince it to do otherwise. I use to love Norton Speed Disk, but after one of Symantec’s updates, it now takes overnight to defrag, whereas previously, it took only several hours—this on the same hardware and with even fewer files.

The straw that chipped the camel’s toenail, however, is Symantec’s own special hybrid of scareware/nagware, which kicks in 30 days before your subscription turns into a pumpkin…

It was a normal, sunny August morning. I’d just washed the pigeon poop off the balcony and was settling down to a productive day at the computer. As I stood before the coffee pot, staring vacantly into the vent hood, I reminisced about how I would grab a cup o’ joe whilst waiting for the spell checker to load on my old 8088 PC. It was festooned with two, 360K floppy drives, ran DOS 3.3 and Word for DOS 5.0. Compared to a typewriter, it was heaven. Ahhh, simpler times. The coffee pot burbled it’s completion. I poured a cup and wandered back to the computer, which should have finished booting by now.

What the… (and) Jumpin’ geraniums! Norton Antivirus greeted me with an error icon in the taskbar which was sprouting a talk bubble informing me that “There is a problem with your Norton status” and that I should “Open Norton Protection Center to view details.” In addition, the usual ZoneAlarm icon was AWOL. No antivirus? No firewall? This can’t be good.

I opened the Norton Protection Centre to be greeted with a most compelling and urgent message: Attention Fix Now. Okay, let’s fix it.

Attention. Fix now

I clicked the Fix Now button and was told to “Please wait while Norton fixes your problems,” and that the “Fix Now in progress” was for a “Norton Antivirus subscription problem.” No, No, you don’t understand! There is nothing wrong with my subscription; it still has thirty days. And no, I don’t want to renew it, and I don’t want to be nagged about it. Problem with my subscription? I think the problem lies elsewhere, Symantec. Is there a button to turn off your marketing department? Why couldn’t you just remind me once that the subscription was going to run out and leave it at that? But wait, there’s more!

You will be assimilated.

Now we are told, in no uncertain terms, what Symantec has in store for us:

Do not close this window.
You will complete the subscription renewal process on the Symantec website.

not, “Would you like to renew your antivirus subscription?” but You will complete the subscription renewal process. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. I love Big Brother…yadda, yadda, yadda. Of course you will be directed to, where else, The Norton Online Renewal Center website where you’ll be tersely warned, “YOUR PROTECTION WILL EXPIRE IN 30 DAYS” and “Don’t let your PC do the same!” Well, Symantec, my computer will still be here in thirty days. I’m not so sure about your products.

Don't let your PC do the same!

fEAR OF LARGE DRIVES

ThermalTake's Max 4 external drive enclosure

Disk drives, like cupboard space, don’t stay empty for long. If you’ve got space, you find ways to fill it up. Do you know anyone who actually has an empty cupboard? I don’t. There was a time, before I actually ventured into the world of large capacity storage, when I thought I was pretty unflappable about the whole subject. Ah, not so. I’ve breached my comfort zone, which, as I discovered after years of analysis, tops out at about 80 gigs. Oh, sure, I’ve worked my way up to 320 gigabyte drives, but those I’d installed on other people’s machines—I could install and run, I didn’t have to live with them afterwards (the drives, not the people). I’m feeling a bit like one of those flying dinosaurs: outdated and all in a flap (a tera-dactyl?).

My disk drives, unlike Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, are crammed full, and mainly with photos (a curse on those who invented the digital camera, do they all have shares in Fujitsu, Western Digital, Samsung, and Hitachi?). Facing my fear has become a necessity: go big, or go home (or somewhere else because I’m already at home). Fear may as well have a name. I’ll call it, terabyteofauxbia: “terabyte” because this is all about big storage, and “faux-bia” because it is not recognized as as legitimate disorder yet (give it time and capacity). Some say it’s all in my head. I contend that’s a good place for a phobia to be. My fear, however, is not entirely unjustified, more later.

eSATA—eYIKES

Seagate Barracuda 1.5 TB drive

There’s no sense in edging slowly into cold water, it won’t get any warmer and only prolongs the misery. So, I jumped in over my head and purchased a SATA 1.5 terabyte drive. Since I’m going to be using it as an external backup drive for several computers, I also purchased an external drive enclosure that supports both USB and eSATA interfaces. Universal Serial Bus (USB) is the fallback for computers (like mine) that don’t support the much faster eSATA interface. While USB will work with almost any computer, it may as well stand for “Universal Slow Bus”. For more lively paced data transfer, eSATA is the E ticket. It could stand for “External Smokin’ ATA”, but doesn’t. eSATA is an acronym for External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, a variant of the SATA interface that’s been tweaked for those of you who wish to store outside the box. SATA itself is a variant of ATA, retroactively dubbed PATA (Parallel ATA), which evolved from… Oh heck, just plug in the little connector thingy and store a bunch of crap on your big new drive.

eNCLOSURES

the Max 4 by day

Now I could have purchased an external drive all ready to go, something like the LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk which supports eSATA, USB, and FireWire 400 & 800 interfaces, but what fun would that be? Besides, the 1.5 TB model retails for $359.99 CAD. Ouch. I like to tinker, so I bought a bare drive, a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, model # ST31500341AS ($175.99 CAD), and an external drive enclosure, ThermalTake’s Max 4 Active Cooling eSATA & USB Combo, part # N0012USU ($45.99 CAD). I guess the ad execs thought “active cooling” sounded ever so much more techie than “comes with a fan”. I’m not fooled. I’ve used fanless enclosures before, such as VanTec’s NexStar 3, which sports neither cooling fan, nor vents. The drives get hot (and bothered, depending on what kind of pictures you’re storing), and after an hour or so, the enclosure becomes very warm to the touch. Though it will keep your coffee mug warm long into the wee-wee hours of the night, I’m not sure it’s good for the hard drive.

And now for some stunning photos, and equally stunned narrative:

Installing the drive in the enclosure is straightforward:

1. remove the half of the enclosure cover opposite the fan side (four screws);


Max 4 with top removed

2. remove the two plastic drive retaining clips (one screw each);
3. place a retaining clip on each side of the drive (plastic pins go into the screw holes normally used to mount the drive in a computer case);
4. place the drive into the enclosure and gently slide it forward, snuggling it into the connectors on the enclosure’s circuit board;


plastic drive support brackets (the upper one is in place)



drive not yet connected



drive nestled into enclosure connector

5. replace the screws that hold the drive retaining clips and gently tighten;
6. replace the enclosure cover and screws.

With the new drive nestled into the enclosure, it’s time to partition the drive so you can finally backup all your important files, and sleep better for it. To do this you’ll need to connect the external drive enclosure to your computer with either the USB, or eSATA cable.

cONNECTING WITH USB

With the enclosure’s power switch in the OFF position, connect the DC power cable to the enclosure (6 pin mini-DIN) and AC plug into a surge protector. You do use a quality surge protector, don’t you? Next, connect the external drive enclosure to the computer with the supplied USB cable. With your computer fired up, turn the enclosure’s power switch to the ON position. Exciting, huh?

cONNECTING WITH eSATA

If only things were simple…
There are two procedures for connecting with eSATA: hot plugging and cold plugging. Hot plugging is just like connecting with a USB interface, except, of course, an eSATA cable is used instead of a USB cable. With hot plugging, the external drive can be connected to the computer while the computer is running, no need for a reboot. Disconnecting a hot pluggable drive requires us to “safely remove hardware” before disconnecting the cable, or turning off power to the drive. This prevents data loss and/or corruption. There are three requirements for eSATA hot plugging: 1) the correct operating system drivers must be loaded; 2) the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) must be enabled in the BIOS; and 3) the disk drive must support hot plugging. This assumes that your computer supports SATA and that you have an eSATA connector on your computer. If your desktop computer supports SATA, but doesn’t have an eSATA connector, you can install the supplied eSATA bracket. If your Desktop computer doesn’t support SATA at all, there’s still hope—an eSATA PCI add-in card will do the trick. Sadly, not all notebook computers come with an eSATA connector, not even new ones; however, there are both CardBus and ExpressCard eSATA adapters available.

If your computer (or disk drive) does not support, or is not setup for hot plugging, cold plugging is in order. With your computer off, connect the power cable to the external drive, then connect the drive to the computer with the eSATA cable. Turn on the external drive first, then turn on the computer. You’ll have to leave the external drive powered up and connected while the computer is on. At the end of the day, shut down your computer first, then turn off the external drive. For more information on hot plugging eSATA drives, visit: wikipedia.org/wiki/AHCI.

pARTIONING AND OTHER WOES

New drives need to be partitioned before you can use them. If all has gone well, the drive will show up in Disk Manager (Windows) as unallocated, which means you can go ahead and partition the drive. In my case, although the drive enclosure was recognized (woo-hoo!), Disk 2, the new disk, was ominously reported as having “no media.” Windows was not seeing the disk drive (boo hoo!). Reseating the drive in the enclosure, and firing things up in various orders did not help. Windows would not recognize the drive for love, nor money, and I’d just forked over $248.62 (including taxes) of my well-loved money for 1.5 terabytes of storage that wasn’t. I told you my fear was not entirely unjustified. Admittedly, my computer is nigh on seven years old and methinks the USB implementation is suspect. Using a newer notebook computer to create the first partition solved the problem, after which I was able to create three more partitions using the old war horse.

cONCLUSION

The Max 4 external enclosure comes complete with everything you need: USB and eSATA cables, a stand for the enclosure, even an eSATA bracket is included, which is a nice touch. Assembly is quick and easy, and the blue light light from the drive activity and fan LEDs is the envy of alien spacecraft jockeys everywhere.

Max 4's blue LEDs—the envy of alien spacecraft jockeys everywhere

While the Max 4 enclosure is always recognized by my computer, the same can’t be said for the drive within. If I power up the drive, sans USB cable, wait a minute or two, then connect the USB cable and wait a few more minutes, the drive is recognized most of the time. Another problem is that both the Max 4’s USB and power cable connectors are a loose fit. Cables are easily dislodged from the enclosure—don’t move or bump the enclosure while transferring files or partitioning the disk (oops). As if that weren’t enough, it was impossible to burn a DVD using the external drive as the source. My Windows system log is littered with the following event IDs:

50 – Delayed Write Failed…
51 – An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk2\D during a paging operation.
57 – The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur.

These “events,” as they are so nicely referred to, may have been caused by the USB cable parting ways with the enclosure while creating a new partition. Deleting the partition and then making it anew didn’t help. Running fdisk /f on each partition seems to have solved the problem… we’ll see. Need some good news? I’ve since managed to burn two DVDs and transfer files back and forth without incident. I’m looking forward to trying out the eSATA interface when I finally get a new computer.

D-Link DIR-825 with Koala range enhancer

what’s this all about?
It’s about how I spent an “enjoyable” afternoon connect-
ing a wireless router to a wired router.  I suppose I should disclaim, perhaps defame, myself by saying that if you try any of this yourself, it’s at your own peril.  I’m not a computer technician and don’t claim to have any particular expertise.  That said, if you prefer to cut to the chase rather than wading through all the non-essential drivel, click here.  If you’re patient enough to humour me, I’ll try to humour you in the process, read on…

It seems I’m always plotting, then applying band-aid solutions to aging computers, forever trying to eke out another year or two from hardware that would rather sit in front of the tube watching Coronation Street while slupping Earl Grey tea from a slightly cracked, Royal Doulton Bunnykins mug.  Usually I’m shoe-horning one of Promise Technology’s disk controller cards into a boat anchor so I can run newer, larger, faster, hard drives—whew, I’m getting excited.  But this time I just wanted to hang on to my aging router/print server, a D-Link DI-704P.  My wife got a new laptop, so wireless internet is a must, or so she tells me.  I’m a cable curmudgeon myself, a borderline Luddite some would say.  I’ve resisted wireless.  Until now.

Going wireless is usually a matter of [insert undergarment joke here] retiring your old wired router, running out and purchasing a sparkling new wireless router, then spending many happy hours wondering why it won’t work.  We can’t dispense with our  Precambrian D-Link DI-704P router because it’s parallel printer port allows us to share our coal-fired Brother HL-1660 laser printer—don’t laugh, it gets 9,000 pages per toner cartridge.  Since no self-respecting, modern day 802.11n router would be caught dead with a parallel port protruding from its heiny, the aging DI-704P is assured a place of honour on our computer desk.

Problem:  How to retain the parallel print serving function of the DI-704P and add a wireless access point.  Hmm.  Can’t I just plug a friggin’ wireless router into my existing router?  Turns out you can.  But why would you want to?  Pick one or more reasons:

• your friends have stopped visiting you because you don’t have wireless internet access
• your neighbours won’t talk to you because they can’t steal your wireless-challenged router’s (differently cabled?) bandwidth
• your cat purchased an iPaws touch and is demanding Wi-Fi to keep in “touch” with friends on Furry-Facebook
• your kids keep telling you to make the leap into the 21st century, “Get with the program, Dad.  Parental units, honestly!”
• you actually enjoy being bathed in radio waves, and your cell phone alone doesn’t provide enough juice
• your spouse just bought a new laptop and wants to enjoy the internet without trailing an Ethernet cable to and from the bathroom.  Hope the onboard camera is disabled (I get flushed just thinking about this one).

Enough falderal, here’s the ruse:

1. decide which wireless router(s) you can’t live without;
2. discard first (and second) choice for being too costly—hey, I want to buy it, not take out a mortgage;
3. discard third choice because, although you’ve found it on the web, no one actually stocks it:  “Yeah, I’ve heard of that one”…then…”no we don’t stock it”;
4. settle on fourth choice which is more than you wanted to pay, but the dang thing can actually be found sitting on a shelf in a real store.  Give yourself bonus points if the shop is within walking distance from your lair, or warren.  My choice?  A D-Link DIR-825.  Why?  We’re not really sure.

Before laying cash on the line, I like to download the user manual from the manufacturer’s website so I can check out the specs and see if a product will actually meet my, ur, um, my wife’s needs.  I downloaded the DIR-825 manual and, whoa, Dude!  The manual describes exactly what I want to do on page 10:  Connect to Another Router.

Here’s my setup:

1. I have a shiny new D-Link DIR-825 wireless router sitting on my desk mocking me;
2. I have a broadband modem (ADSL in my case, but it matters not) connected to a D-Link DI-704P wired router which connects to a couple of computers. It works and I’m happy, but my wife is not;
3. The DI-704P is configured as a DHCP server and, of course, the Network Interface Cards (NICs) in the two computers are configured to acquire IP addresses automatically. The DI-704P is the default gateway. This is a common configuration for home users sharing an internet connection.

gettin’ down and dirty, or go configure For those of you who opted to cut to the chase, this is the chase: In brief, or boxers if you prefer, here’s what I did to configure the DIR-825 wireless router for this particular setup:

• disable Universal Plug and Play (UPnP)
• disable Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
• assign a new IP address not already in use
• configure wireless security

And now, a little more detail:

1. Configuring the DIR-825 wireless router
   Power up the unconnected DIR-825 router, then, using an Ethernet cable, connect one of the router’s LAN ports—not the Internet (WAN) port—to the Network Interface Card (NIC) on one of your computers using an Ethernet cable.
2. Log into the DIR-825 router’s Admin panel
   Open a web browser, type http://192.168.0.1 (the router’s default IP address) into the address bar and pummel Enter.  At the login window, set user name to Admin and leave password field empty.  Click Log In.
3. Disable UPnP
   Click on Advanced, then Advanced Network.  Uncheck Enable UPnP.  Click Save Settings.


disable Universal Plug and Play

4. Disable DHCP Server
   Click Setup, then click Network Settings.  Uncheck Enable DHCP Server.  Click Save Settings.


disable Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

5. Assign router a new IP address
   Under Router Settings, enter an IP address not already used by your network—I used 192.168.0.2 and left the default subnet mask:  255.255.255.0 unchanged.  Click Save Settings, then reboot the router.


assign new IP address

6. Note:  after rebooting, you can’t connect to the router with the newly assigned IP address.  Your computer is expecting the wireless router to assign it an IP address dynamically, but we’ve just disabled the DHCP Server function on the wireless router. Not to worry.
7. Disconnect the Ethernet cable from the DIR-825’s LAN port and reconnect the computer’s NIC to one of the DI-704P’s LAN ports—just like it was before we started all this silliness.
8. Using an Ethernet cable, connect one of the DI-704P router’s LAN ports to one of DIR-825 wireless router’s LAN ports (the Internet (WAN) port of the DIR-825 doesn’t get used in this configuration).
9. Don’t put the kettle on quite yet.  If all goes well you should be able to fire up your browser and log into the DIR-825’s admin panel using its newly assigned IP address:  192.168.0.2.  Time to enable wireless transmission, configure security measures, and apply an intimidating Admin password.  I won’t cover the details here, but the manual has all that good stuff.  Okay, now it’s time to put the kettle on.

Admittedly, the setup wasn’t entirely smooth.  I had to reset the DIR-825 twice when, mysteriously, I couldn’t save the new settings in the admin panel.  Never did figure out why.  “Dear…have you seen my Bunnykins mug?”