Journal

Getting geekier by the minute

  • Posted on: May 13, 2005
  • In: News, Personal
  • Comments closed

No kidding, soon I’m going to have my own shed full of gadgets, sitting in amongst them giggling like a schoolgirl.

Or maybe not.

What I have done though is sorted out my backup situation following my external hard drive failure after installing Tiger.

After much research I've opted for buying a Linksys NSLU2 (or 'Slug' as it's also known) and a Lacie 250gb triple interface drive for my backup needs. This saves me a bit of cash overe most of the other all-in-one consumer NAS solutions.

The NSLU2 is actually turning out to be an interesting bit of kit.

It's basically a interface between external hard drives or flash drives (USB2 x 2 ports) and an existing ethernet network (ethernet port x 1). The cool thing is it runs a stripped down version of Linux and has a rather large development community dedicated to hacking the crap out of it.

Some interesting things you can do with this seemingly remarkable bit of hardware:

All of this does require a bit of, or a lot of, unix familiarity (which I am not, at all) so we'll see how thing progess once I get it set up next week.

Now all I have to do is wait for Apple to fix the ongoing wireless problems I've got with the Netgear router.

Comments

http://www.slimdevices.com

its like airtunes, only it broadcasts to multiple rooms.

Gil's Gravatar

Gil
Fri 13th May 2005
at 3:31 pm

So, what backup software did you settle on?

Allan White's Gravatar

Allan White
Sat 14th May 2005
at 9:08 pm

I haven’t settled on anything just yet. I’m still waiting for the delivery (in fact dabs.com are being pretty slack about it all).

Retrospect would have been my first choice for work backup as I’ve used it before, and it selectively saves into an archive rather than a one hit duplication of an entire system. Although I’ve heard the Linksys NSLU2 has problems with Retrospect.

I should get the delivery this week, so I’m sure I’ll be posting about something going wrong!

Mark Boulton's Gravatar

Mark Boulton
Sun 15th May 2005
at 8:16 am

Was it a Maxtor Firewire External HD??? It didn’t fail!!! Try hooking it up via USB instead. There is something wrong with the Firewire Drivers for this HD in Tiger.

Chris Harrison's Gravatar

Chris Harrison
Tue 17th May 2005
at 2:29 pm

I’ve now settled on a OnetouchII, rather than the Lacie (as Dabs couldn’t get them in and also couldn’t tell me when they could!), so apparently it’s ‘on the van’ and I should have it this week.

Finally get to sort out all my mp3’s and photos!

Mark Boulton's Gravatar

Mark Boulton
Tue 17th May 2005
at 3:33 pm

I’ve been please with the Maxtor OneTouch thusfar… just know you might have an issue with Firewire and Tiger with the drive. USB will work without any probs.

Chris Harrison's Gravatar

Chris Harrison
Tue 17th May 2005
at 3:38 pm

I know it’s off subject Mark, but you have been passed the baton. If you should happen to not know what this means, then check out:

thebignoob.com

and

homeofthedave.com

David Lee Hemphill's Gravatar

David Lee Hemphill
Tue 17th May 2005
at 6:48 pm

Chris - Thanks for the heads up on the firewire issue. The Linksys NSLU2 is USB only but I bought dual port just in case.

David - Thanks David, I’ve been trying not to get around to this ;-) As this is the fourth now, I think the pressure is on.

Mark Boulton's Gravatar

Mark Boulton
Tue 17th May 2005
at 7:48 pm

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A picture of Mark BoultonI'm a graphic designer from near Cardiff in the UK. I've been a designer for over ten years now and primarily work on the web. I'm still partial to a bit of print every now and then though. I used to work for Agency.com in London as an Art Director before working as a Senior Designer for the BBC in sunny Cardiff. This was all before I took leave of my senses and formed my own design consultancy, Mark Boulton Design Ltd.

I've got a thing about grids and typography and occasionally ramble on about them to anyone who will listen.

If you're after simple, clean and effective web design; let me know.