Computer on Evan Hoffman

My brief love affair with Synology

Tue, 24 Jan 2017 20:11:59 +0000

For several years I’ve been missing the loss of my Linux file server and contemplating either building a new one or buying a home NAS. About 3 weeks ago I made the plunge and ordered a Synology DS416 from Newegg.

Setup was very easy, though I was surprised to learn the device doesn’t work at all without a drive in it. I expected there would be a built on OS volume for running native services but apparently everything gets copied onto the data volume once the drives are inserted.

I almost forgot that I hate computers.

Mon, 31 May 2010 23:29:39 +0000

I’d almost forgotten that I hate computers. Then I came home from Memorial Day weekend and woke my desktop up from Sleep in order to extract the pics I’d taken. The computer looked ok for about 15 seconds, then kind of froze. The cursor would move but it didn’t do anything. I watched it do (apparently) nothing for about 2 minutes when I hit the hard-reboot button. It hung at POST with the HDD light on solid. I couldn’t get into the BIOS, so I tried plugging into a different SATA port on the mobo, and finally got the thing to post by … unplugging the drive completely. I got into the bios, did a “load failsafe defaults” and tried plugging the drive back in and booting. It made it through POST this time but gave me the “INSERT SYSTEM DISK” error. After about an hour of messing around with it I turned it off and came upstairs to go to bed. The drive is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, 1000 GB, purchased less than 18 months ago (Christmas 2008). I know things die, but this is just dumb. Maybe tomorrow I’ll see if anything shows up using a USB-to-SATA adapter. Sigh.

I may never buy a Windows computer again

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:16:41 +0000

I guess it’s not really a fair comparison since I’m running 32-bit Windows XP, but it strikes me as mildly retarded how much better my stupid $350 Mac Mini performs than my ~$1000 desktop. The Mac has a Core 2 Duo 1.83 GHz CPU with 1 gig ram and an 80 gig HD, running 10.5.6 (or something). My desktop is a 3.0 GHz Wolfdale with 4 gigs ram and a 1 TB 7200 RPM sata drive. The Mac isn’t super speedy but it seems more responsive in everything except iTunes, and that’s probably due to all the MP3s being served off my ancient Linux box (over G wireless). Actually, I still completely detest iTunes, and think Winamp is about the perfect MP3 player. But anyway, the stuff you can do “for free” on a Mac is pretty amazing. I haven’t played with iMovie or a bunch of the other programs yet, but even just Expose is pretty remarkable.