In Search for Home NAS (Network Attached Storage)

Over the past couple of weeks I have started considering my needs at home for a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device to add to our little home network. While I maintain what I consider to be a great annual backup solution for my photos, it is not so convenient for everyday backups, iTunes, media and shared file storage.

The current solution that I employ is either using the primary hard drive on my machine for primary storage for my media, photos, and large files and then a larger secondary 500GB SATA hard for backing up both mine and Ashley's computers. There are a number of reasons that it is lacking, mainly that given the number of photos I take, my main hard drive is filling up -- and I would prefer to use the secondary drive as scratch space to add a little additional performance. An added plus of a NAS would mean that Ashley could also access "shared" files on my computer when I am traveling and I can turn of my computer to save energy. And, every little bit helps.

As every good technologist knows, the most important part about any project are the requirements that you have. Without them, you can get lost in a multitude of possibilities and evaluate just about every product under the sun. So, from my perspective the requirements that I have are as followed:

• All in cost of $500 or less
• RAID 1 support. Hardware RAID preferred, but not required.
• 1TB minimum raw storage (500GB RAID 1 mirrored)
• Support for at least two SATA drives
• Network Attached Storage (NAS) - the device needs to connect
• Windows Vista / Windows Networking compatibility
• Gigabit / 1000Base T capable
• uPNP / Media Server support

With those requirements in mind, I started a search and the first two products I came into contact with were the D-Link DNS-323 and the Linksys NAS200 device. While historically I have always preferred Linksys products to the D-Link , in this particular case the Linksys does not support the 1000Base T gigabit speeds. (I have seen a few suggestions that you can connect a gigabit adapter via USB, but that defeats the purpose) While I liked the overall appeal of the Linksys, that was a deal breaker. Still, I was not too sure about the D-Link product, so I continued my search.

Now I brought a few more products into the mix to look at:

• SANS DIGITAL MN2L
• NETGEAR SC101T
• THECUS N2050BD
• ZYXEL NSA220

I was just starting my research and a decent deal came up on a pair of Barracuda 500GB 7200RPM drives that I could not pass up. Now with the imminent shipping and arrival of the hard drives, the pressure is on to make a decision quickly.

At first look, all of these newcomers are looking particularly promising, especially the THECUS N2050BD and it's hardware based RAID. So now it is time to do some more research and make that choice.

By chance have you tried out any of these NAS devices or are there any other that you would recommend I look at in the same price range?

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Hard Drive in Your Freezer to Recover Data

Both a technology urban legend, as well as a fact of physics -- putting your hard drive in a freezer can work to "repair" your hard drive long enough to pull your information off of the drive. It can be used as a last ditch effort when your hard drive has crashed and left you in a bind -- providing up to two hours of time to pull the data off!

This technique usually works with damaged or problematic hard drive where the failure was not of a mechanical nature. The reason for this is that by lowering the temperature you are changing some of the chemical / physical aspects to the drive - head geometry, electrical resistance is lowered, and the electrical contact points are adjusted. All of these can add up to a temporary (and possibly permanent if you repair or re-format the hard disk) working solution for you valuable data!

In fact, it is a technique that many data recovery specialists have known about for years. So, I explain all of this to tell you of my recent experience with trying to pull some data off a hard drive.

If you recall, my Lenovo T61 laptop gave me the 'Error: 2110 HDD0 (Hard Disk Drive)' error a couple of weeks ago leaving me without a working drive. Giving me no other choice after trying to slave the drive to another machine, the freezing the hard drive was my last chance.

For those who have not experience the trick, here are the important steps that give you the opportunity for this to work. Pictures below are from my actual test.

1. Remove the hard disk drive from the device - computer, laptop, or USB / Firewire holder.


2. This is a very important step that many people leave out! Place the hard drive into an anti-static bag to protect it from any static energy or discharges. A freezer, because of its cold and often dry nature has a ton of static electricity present. You need to do everything you can to protect it.


3. Place the hard drive in a Ziploc or Glad Lock baggie. Preferably a freezer bag, the quart size seems to work very well. This step protects the electronics in your drive from moisture and condensation which could cause damage during the freeze process or while warming.


4. Put your hard drive into the freezer to start the freeze process. This is the where the variability comes in. In some cases it can take up to 72 hours of freezing for the process to complete. Others have had success in as little as two hours of freezer time. My advice? Let the first try be at least 24 hours, and up to 72 hours if you can wait. That will give you the biggest chance for initial success.

5. Pull out the hard drive, connect it to the device -- the best opportunity, depending on your drive situation is to put the drive into a USB 2.0 or Firewire case and connect to your computer. If you need to put it in your computer or laptop and boot up, you may lose 10 minutes of valuable data recovery time. Now pull the data off of you disk.

How did this attempt work for me? First, because of the drive's encryption -- I needed to boot from it rather than slaving or attaching it via a hard drive cage. That meant I was going to need to boot and bring up the operating system. Still, my outcome was not good. My drive, even after freezing would not get beyond the 2110:HDD0 error.

A little bit of a bummer, but still worth the limited time it took to give it a couple of tries. I first tried a 24 hour freeze of the hard drive and then tried a full 72 hour freeze. Neither attempt made much of a difference, leaving me to believe that the drive's failure was mainly mechanical. Who knows.

Did this trick work for you? Let me know with a comment!

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A New Hard Drive Philosophy

Be nice to your hard drive. This is the new lesson that I learned this past week.

But, it is not only because I lost my hard drive on my Lenovo T61 Thinkpad. Although, it did contribute to my new philosophy.

What really got me started on the new philosophy was Brian. We were sitting in a meeting and I turned over my laptop while it was still on and pulled the battery to charge my other battery (Hmmm, now that I think of it -- Brian still has my other extended battery.) for the trip home. Brian gave me a strange look and asked me if I did that very often with my laptop.

I replied that basically I did it all the time, that was the whole Lenovo ThinkVantage hard drive active protection system was about. It was supposed to protect the drive when there was movement. Plus, if my drive light was not lit, there was not a ton of drive activity -- so the risk was minimal. I thought my perspective made some sense.

I got a look back from Brian that basically made me think he did not agree. Honestly, he would know better than I do.

And with that, just a few hours later -- that is when the drive crashed. Ironic.

Then I started thinking about it a little more. I was constantly moving my computer around while the drive was spinning.

Shut down and undock to go home. I would never wait for the machine to move into sleep mode. I would just shut the top of the laptop, immediately undock and then move the laptop into my laptop backpack.

And that was not the only thing, I had not been very careful when doing most things with the computer whether or not the hard drive was spinning or not.

Thinking about it a little more, and given the failure of my drive recently -- I decided to adopt a new hard drive philosophy. Minimize the movement of the laptop while the drive is on. In fact, do not move it much at all unless it is in the sleep or off state.

So now, when I need to change out my battery or undock my laptop I have changed my behavior a little. First I shut the top, wait for the laptop to complete the sleep process with the drive powering down and only then do I undock.

Hopefully my new philosophy will lead to a longer lasting, more reliable hard drive. Thanks Brian, too bad we did not have this conversation earlier!

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Bad News! Lenovo HDD0 2100 Initialization Error & Bad Hard Drive

If you get the "HDD0 2100 can not read hard drive" error code or stop message on your Lenovo Thinkpad -- it's bad news.

Really bad news.

Unfortunately on Wednesday night, I encountered the HDD0 2100 error message when trying to reboot my Lenovo Thinkpad T61 running Windows XP. It seemingly came out of nowhere, as most drive failures do.

Note: If you are running Microsoft Vista, please see the comments below for a possible fix, thanks Khaled!

I was having and issue trying to sync up my Microsoft Outlook email just a couple of minutes before my flight left Washington Dulles airport. For some reason, my Cisco VPN connection kept disconnecting after 10-15 seconds. I went ahead and just performed a reboot -- and received the message.

During the flight home, I messed with it a little bit, even using the internal hard drive diagnostic feature on the Lenovo Thinkpad T61 to test the drive. It did not tell me other than the drive had an error and to contact Lenovo support.

After I got home, I went ahead and checked the Lenovo support page and this is what it turned up.

2100 Initialization error on HDD0 (Main hard drive)
Steps to resolve:
1. Reseat the hard drive
2. Repair/Replace Main hard drive
3. Repair/Replace System board

I went ahead and reseated the hard drive, no luck still received the HDD0 2100 error. At that point I realized it was most likely the worst case. Not to mention the loud clicking sound the hard drive was making on boot really pointed me in that direction.

Confirming it the next day, it was time for me to start over with a new drive. While normally not a big deal, my Lenovo Thinkpad T61 was barely a month old -- I had not setup my automatic ROBOCOPY backups. So, that along with a completely encrypted hard drive means that recovery is unlikely and not worth spending the $1000-$3000 to try and recover data from the hard drive.

I have learned my lesson (again?) -- make sure and setup the backups as soon as you start installing any software on a new machine.

Hopefully, you will not encounter this HDD0 2100 initialization error. If you do, I feel bad for you -- it may mean your hard drive has gone bad. Best of luck!

If you have these other similar errors, you may be in dire straits as well with your drive.

2102 Initialization error on HDD1 (Ultrabay hard drive)
1. Reseat the hard drive
2. Repair/Replace Ultrabay hard drive
3. Repair/Replace System board

2110 Read error on HDD0 (Main hard drive)
1. Reseat the hard drive
2. Repair/Replace Main hard drive
3. Repair/Replace System board

2112 Read error on HDD1 (Ultrabay hard drive)
1. Reseat the hard drive
2. Repair/Replace Ultrabay hard drive
3. Repair/Replace System board

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Low Level Format of your Hard Drive Done Easily for Free

With my newer, or newish at this point Dell Dimension e520 -- I have started to prepare my old Dell Dimension 2400 for disassembly. The main reason of course is to provide addtional funding for things to post on this blog. For example, since the new computer only supports SATA hard drives, the Ultra ATA drives in my old computer and specifically the 250GB backup drive is no longer necessary. Probably an easy $50-$75 on eBay there.

As with any hard drive, whether it is for a desktop computer, laptop, or Apple iPod -- you should be very concerned with just doing a basic format of the drive and then dropping it on a site like Craigslist or eBay. Because, even though a Windows format may wipe the data out from the operating system view -- the data is not overwritten and can be recovered easily by someone with minimum technical skills.

What you want to pursue is data destruction or a low-level format to overwrite all the data several times to make sure it is not accessible by any prying eyes. So, without a current toolset in hand, I set out to Google to find a good tool -- hopefully for free. Initially, I searched for (without quotes) "windows format hard drive low level" which brought me to a tool and site as the number one result -- Active Kill.

While it was a free download, the unregistered version only writes all zeros to your hard disk which is not a very thorough our secure method of wiping, erasing, or destroying the data on your disk. Any other methods such as the effective Gutmann method are not supported without paying for the full version.

The goal here was to find a tool that hopefully was free of charge. After entering a few additional search terms like "wipe hard drive data" and "disk cleaner freeware format" I came across a pretty good product, DBAN, or Darik's Boot and Nuke (Hard Drive Wipe) at http://dban.sourceforge.net/.

The tool here, both free and effective is a great application that can be used to delete all the old data from your hard drive. Plus, the process is relatively seemless and effective.

First you need to visit the site and download the latest ISO version which is 1.0.7 as of this posting. Then, you simply burn that ISO image to a CD/DVD and then reboot your machine. Follow a couple of simple prompts (be very careful on which drive you work with if you have multiple drives, as it does destroy data) and approximately 2 hours later your hard drive is effectively wiped using the very effective Gutmann method.

Now they are ready for eBay! Were you able to use DBAN? If so, let me know with a comment.

Similar terms: erase, eraser, disk eraser, wiper, dos, erase hard drive, disk cleaner, low level format, destroy hard drive data, wipe out hard drive, guttmann, gutmann, gutman, guttmann.

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Apple iPod 60GB MK6006GAH Drive Upgrade Purchase - 4th Generation

A couple of weeks ago, I began my search for a “cheap” hard drive upgrade for my 4th Generation Apple iPod which went out of warranty some time ago. In short, my findings were that if I wanted to increase the capacity to 60GB with the MK6006GAH hard drive that the cost was going to be around $90 for anything that had a warranty associated with it. The 40GB drive was not much better from a value perspective, with the MK4004GAH drives being in the $70 range with shipping.

There was the outside chance of getting something in the $20 range; however the majority of those items were either in ‘not tested’ or ‘unknown’ status. Given the value difference between a ‘tested’ and ‘untested’ hard drive; it is a safe assumption that the money would be wasted on a broken hard drive. Not worth the risk in my opinion.

So, the reality I was faced with if I really needed additional capacity on my Apple iPod was should I spend around $90 for a 60GB upgrade to my device or should I go after a 5th generation 80GB device for the $350 device. It ended up being a relatively easy decision – my 4th generation 20GB hard drive is in great condition and has had zero problems, so I elected to go for the 60GB hard drive upgrade with the purchase of a MK6006GAH 60GB hard drive.

The drive I purchased was in the $90 range with shipping and a 1-year warranty on the drive from eBay. The drive just arrived this week and I plan to initiate the upgrade in the coming days. Of course, I will cover that experience here in a future post so you can see how it went!

Plus, given the great working condition of my 20GB MK2004GAL hard drive – I figure I can recoup $30-$40 of the upgrade price!

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5-Minute 500GB Hard Drive Upgrade for my Dell Dimension E520

Since I had upgraded to my Dell Dimension E520 a few months ago, I had been living in the world with a single hard 300GB SATA hard drive. This always concerns me given the number of hard drives I have had go bad on me in the past causing lost data. Usually what I prefer is a second, larger hard drive in my machine that can be used as a primary backup drive for both of our computers.

In Friday's ad for Fry's electronics, they had a $40 price break on a new Seagate SATA/300 500GB hard drive for $109. I have had really good luck with Seagate drives in the past (fingers) crossed and the majority of the losses were from either Western Digital or Maxtor driver. With that, I dropped by Fry's while out on errands and saved a few bucks on shipping.

I have replaced or installed at least 50 hard drives in my time ranging from some old 20MB ones to the current generation of 500GB drives. The process specifically with Dell in the past had somewhat painful, often needing to grab a mounting bracket or some other piece of hardware from someone on eBay. With this Dell Dimension E520, the upgrade takes 5 minutes from the time your machine is shut down until you have it turned back on and seeing the new drive. No joke!

All you need to do the installation is your bare hard drive and a SATA interface cable. No screwdriver, no additional power cord, or any other sort of mounting hardware! Dell's chassis design makes this almost as easy and quick as a hot-swappable SCSI or Fibre-Channel device!

Here is how the process went for me:

1. Unbox you new Seagate 500GB hard drive. The retail kit does come with a SATA interface cable, so you can use that without purchasing a new one.



2. Unplug your computer after it is safely shut down. Remove the cover from your Dell Dimension E520 (or similar). You can do this by sliding the black lever on the top of the computer back, releaseing the right side panel which the top will rotate down so you can lift it off.

3. Place your computer on its side and locate the drive carriers and installation bay in the lower left hand corner. On the bottom drive (empty bay) push the two side tabs in to release the drive carrier and remove from the computer.



4. Unwrap your hard drive from the anti-static bag and insert into the plastic carrier by carefully bending the carrier. The large blue plastic tab should be on the electronics side of the drive next to the SATA interface and power controller. The pins will insert themselves into the drive screw holes.



5. Snap the hard drive carrier back into the computer chassis and connect both the power cable (already there) and the new SATA interface cable to the hard drive. In my case, the included SATA interface cable was not as long as the other cables in my computer so I had to route it over the CPU fan cover into the clips there and then down onto the motherboard.



6. Insert the other end of the SATA interface cable into the open slot on the motherboard. Since I have a hard drive, DVD burner, and CD-ROM burner on my machine, there was just one SATA interface cable slot open in the main section of the board.



7. Place the cover back on the computer, plug it in, and power it up.

8. When the machine "posts" or shows the "Dell" logo, hit the F2 key to enter the BIOS setup to configure that SATA channel to the "On" position. In my case, the new drive was located on channel 5, where channels 3 & 4 were unavailable on this chassis. Save the configuration and exit.

9. The computer now recognizes the hard drive on boot, and you can either go to your computer management or disk management in Windows (Windows Vista in my case) or you can use the included Seagate Disk Utility software to setup the drive on the Operating System.

Congratulations, you are now done with the upgrade -- all in about 5 minutes of effort!

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