Photos – and this will make any parent’s blood run cold – the only copies, of our childrens’ first years!

Lost!

But not irrecoverably!

Shortly after ordering the new PC I ordered some more memory, a new graphics card and an external hard disk drive (HDD) enclosure. I’d been into PC World to look for the enclosure and they only had IDE and PATA enclosures. The hard disk I wanted to mount was a SATA disk, which meant ordering over the web. The memory was proprietary, and so the store had to order it in, and I had to wait, and wait!

I plugged in the memory, powered up the machine, and, …, it works – a bit quicker.

Shut down, insert graphics card, plug in funny monitor dongle, and monitor, and, …, it works, beautifully!

Now the bit I’d been dreading, …

But installing the old hard drive was simplicity itself, a matter of unscrewing and unplugging from the old machine, and then re-plugging and screwing into the enclosure, then connecting power and USB cables and turning on. Win XP already had the drivers.

I’ve got my photos back! And my monitor no longer says that a higher resolution would give better pictures!

By the way, the mount from Akasa has a barcode AK-ENP2SATA-BKUK, and is described as an integral/eSATA HDD external enclosure for 3.5 inch IDE PATA and SATA HDD.

Technorati Tags: akasa, external drive, graphics card, hard disk, lost, memory, new, sata, usb

The price of computers has dropped to such an extent that, for the amount I paid for the original, I was able to buy a laptop and a desktop. Both are HP and were delivered quickly by dabs.com.

Now, with two machines to connect to the internet, I have invested in a Belkin N1 wireless router. This works fine, when it is working, but seems to drop the connection in the middle of the day just as my wife tries to connect.

Thankfully, I hope, a new firmware pre-release for the F5D8632 (1.00.07, an upgrade to the installed 1.00.06) is available from the Belkin site here.

Installing firmware on a new product is a scary job, but the routersetup system did the job and the router is working again.

Update (29 January 2009)

The firmware upgrade has been a success and has solved the problem – the router has been “always on” for the last ten days or so without dropping the connection even once.

Technorati Tags: belkin, hardware, HP, new, router, wireless

Setting up WordPress, the platform for this blog, has been a piece of cake. Now we just need to add water and watch it grow!

I hope to share some of my experiences in blogging, SAS and other IT related matters, and would really like to hear your views.

After being deluged with spam comments I’m now using akismet, this has found spam. Hopefully this will mean that I can concentrate on responding to real comments.

Technorati Tags: new, reflections, setup, WordPress