Re: [opensuse] Re: High Disk Temperatures
2008/10/29 Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer@gmail.com>:
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 6:16 PM, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen@gmail.com> wrote: <snip>
. Only in the past few weeks have I seriously considered switching drive manufacturers, though, after an email exchange with WD in which they say that their product is unsupported under Linux.
The rep went on to clarify that warranty failures would still be replaced, however, things like firmware updates (this is an issue on some WD 2.5" models) and some other tools would only be handled via Windows.
Actually I'm surprised they even support windows.
Most firmware updates are done via Dos Boot floppies from what I've seen. They typically provide a free version of dos to boot from.
Here's the kicker: the boot floppies are made with a windows-specific tool. Actually, it seems to do nothing more than unpack a tarball to the floppy. I am certain that it could be done in Linux. However, the online instructions are written for mousemaids and don't mention Linux at all. It would literally only take 4 lines of HTML. Furthermore, WD support has no clue that it could be done in Linux, in fact, they claim that it cannot be done. I should mention that the Windows tool in question requires admin access on the windows machine, so it cannot be done at, say, your local library. -- Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com http://gibberish.co.il א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת ä-ö-ü-ß-Ä-Ö-Ü
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 6:27 PM, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen@gmail.com> wrote:
2008/10/29 Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer@gmail.com>:
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 6:16 PM, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen@gmail.com> wrote: <snip>
. Only in the past few weeks have I seriously considered switching drive manufacturers, though, after an email exchange with WD in which they say that their product is unsupported under Linux.
The rep went on to clarify that warranty failures would still be replaced, however, things like firmware updates (this is an issue on some WD 2.5" models) and some other tools would only be handled via Windows.
Actually I'm surprised they even support windows.
Most firmware updates are done via Dos Boot floppies from what I've seen. They typically provide a free version of dos to boot from.
Here's the kicker: the boot floppies are made with a windows-specific tool. Actually, it seems to do nothing more than unpack a tarball to the floppy. I am certain that it could be done in Linux. However, the online instructions are written for mousemaids and don't mention Linux at all. It would literally only take 4 lines of HTML. Furthermore, WD support has no clue that it could be done in Linux, in fact, they claim that it cannot be done.
I should mention that the Windows tool in question requires admin access on the windows machine, so it cannot be done at, say, your local library.
I bet they are using a Windows Tool to write a full dos floppy image to the floppy. I've seen that before. If so, the file they are copying should be about 1.44 MB In Linux, to put that on floppy its just: dd if=floppy-image-file of=/dev/floppy bs=512 Greg -- Greg Freemyer Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer First 99 Days Litigation White Paper - http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 28 October 2008 15:34, Greg Freemyer wrote:
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 6:27 PM, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen@gmail.com> wrote:
2008/10/29 Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer@gmail.com>:
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 6:16 PM, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen@gmail.com> wrote: <snip>
Only in the past few weeks have I seriously considered switching drive manufacturers, though, after an email exchange with WD in which they say that their product is unsupported under Linux.
That's a curious notion. They obviously must The Western Digital drive I just bought (see below) does include some Mac-specific software that performs the breathtaking function of telling you (in a system menu) how much of the drive is currently occupied by file data _and_ (get this) presents this utilization fraction in a front-panel bar-graph-style display comprising 8 white-light LEDs behind the front panel. All very cute...
The rep went on to clarify that warranty failures would still be replaced, however, things like firmware updates (this is an issue on some WD 2.5" models) and some other tools would only be handled via Windows.
I just bought a 1TB external WD drive. It has a triple interface (eSATA, FireWire and USB) and I got it to use as a kind of roving backup for my Macs and select data from my Linux boxes. I picked it in part because of the multiple interfaces and in part because I trust the WD name. When I bought it there were much better prices on drives whose names I'd never heard before. Those no-name drives may be the best drives in the world. For all I know, they're WD hardware, but when it comes to quasi-commodity hardware items like disk drives, I tend to think that reputation is worth paying attention to.
...
Here's the kicker: the boot floppies are made with a windows-specific tool. ...
I bet they are using a Windows Tool to write a full dos floppy image to the floppy. I've seen that before.
If so, the file they are copying should be about 1.44 MB
This has been my experience on several occasions. It certainly can't hurt to try the simple dd approach (cat image-file >/dev/floppy should work, too). If the disk boots, then you know it was just an image file. Besides, everyone should do this or something like it from time to time to remind themselves of the glacial pace an miniscule capacities of the drives that our forebears (or our former selves) had to make do with...
In Linux, to put that on floppy its just:
dd if=floppy-image-file of=/dev/floppy bs=512
Greg
Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Wednesday 29 October 2008 09:35:32 Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Tuesday 28 October 2008 15:34, Greg Freemyer wrote:
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 6:27 PM, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen@gmail.com>
wrote:
2008/10/29 Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer@gmail.com>:
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 6:16 PM, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen@gmail.com> wrote: <snip>
Only in the past few weeks have I seriously considered switching drive manufacturers, though, after an email exchange with WD in which they say that their product is unsupported under Linux.
That's a curious notion. They obviously must
The Western Digital drive I just bought (see below) does include some Mac-specific software that performs the breathtaking function of telling you (in a system menu) how much of the drive is currently occupied by file data _and_ (get this) presents this utilization fraction in a front-panel bar-graph-style display comprising 8 white-light LEDs behind the front panel. All very cute... [...]
The ironic thing is that many if not most of these WD "MyBook" drives actually run BusyBox (embedded Linux) under the hood. The "My Book World Edition" (which, out of the box, is probably one of the most unreliable pieces of network kit I've ever played with) can, with a little bit of judicious hacking, be turned into a full-blown file/print/mail server, albeit one with a very slow network interface (I think because the ARM processor in the unit is so underpowered). I have had to recover 2 of these units for their owners - the original hard disk images that WD used to build the drivers had corruption/errors that would cause the units to remount their shared partition as read-only at random times. The only fix was to remove the drive and mount it on my desktop machine, repartition/reformat and reload known-good software images. Incidentally, I got exactly the same response from WD tech support. The documentation states that these drives use Samba and can be mounted in the conventional way under Windows ("Tools, Map Network Drive"), yet it does not work properly. WD Tech Support said, "The samba support is incomplete and we never intended them to be used that way". They should have told their documentation writers. Nevertheless, after the rebuild (and upgrading Samba, enabling ssh access and installing a few extras such as ClamAv (run periodically from cron) and a couple of other goodies they turn out to be pretty useful little NAS devices. OK, enough OT rambling. I guess it just goes to show that just because WD don't support Linux, it doesn't mean that they don't USE it in some of their products. They just do their level best to hide the fact... Cheers, Rodney. -- =================================================== Rodney Baker VK5ZTV rodney.baker@iinet.net.au ===================================================
On Wednesday 29 October 2008 05:28, Rodney Baker wrote:
On Wednesday 29 October 2008 09:35:32 Randall R Schulz wrote:
...
Only in the past few weeks have I seriously considered switching drive manufacturers, though, after an email exchange with WD in which they say that their product is unsupported under Linux.
That's a curious notion. They obviously must
Huh. It looks like I didn't finish that thought. I was going to say that they obviously must support all the pertinent standards for the interface they support, which makes the essential functions entirely agnostic to the OS and hardware that accesses the drive (assuming it, too, implements the pertinent standards properly).
The Western Digital drive I just bought (see below) does include some Mac-specific software that performs the breathtaking function of telling you (in a system menu) how much of the drive is currently occupied by file data _and_ (get this) presents this utilization fraction in a front-panel bar-graph-style display comprising 8 white-light LEDs behind the front panel. All very cute... [...]
The ironic thing is that many if not most of these WD "MyBook" drives actually run BusyBox (embedded Linux) under the hood. The "My Book World Edition" (which, out of the box, is probably one of the most unreliable pieces of network kit I've ever played with) can, with a little bit of judicious hacking, be turned into a full-blown file/print/mail server, albeit one with a very slow network interface (I think because the ARM processor in the unit is so underpowered).
Mine is the "Studio Edition" and is just a disk, no NAS / SAN / SAMBA / NFS / etc. capabilities.
I have had to recover 2 of these units for their owners - the original hard disk images that WD used to build the drivers had corruption/errors ...
I hope the drive hardware isn't as bad as you describe the networking software...
...
Cheers, Rodney.
Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Wednesday 29 October 2008 23:23:47 Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Wednesday 29 October 2008 05:28, Rodney Baker wrote:
[...snip...]
Mine is the "Studio Edition" and is just a disk, no NAS / SAN / SAMBA / NFS / etc. capabilities.
I haven't played with these at all. I did get a chance to play with a LaCie unit though, which had USB2/FIrewire400/Firewire800 and eSATA interfaces. No documented Linux support but plugged it in via USB2 and it worked out of the box, auto mounted with no intervention whatsoever. The owner of one of the MyBook World Edition drives bought it as a backup for the MyBook for 2 reasons; first, the MyBook's transfer speed via ethernet is painfully slow and second, so I could copy all of the data from the MyBook to the LaCie before recovering the MyBook...
I have had to recover 2 of these units for their owners - the original hard disk images that WD used to build the drivers had corruption/errors ...
That should have read, "...build the drives...", not drivers.
I hope the drive hardware isn't as bad as you describe the networking software...
The hardware seems fine, although the World Edition's processor does appear to run pretty warm (as do many these days, I guess). The main thing appears to be the default software on the thing. It can be fixed though, by anyone with reasonable Linux knowledge (and no help from WD Tech Support). With one of the units though (my Father's), its latest trick is every few days it just stops talking to the network. Every few days Dad will call and say, "I can't access MyBook again...". So, I tell him, "Power it off and back on again", then I ssh into his Linux box and remount it for him. He's a Linux newbie and a Windoze non-expert, but he does enjoy using openSUSE on his desktop machine, simply because it does everything he needs and is more reliable (and faster) than Vista on his laptop...it also means that I can fix things remotely, which saves a drive...:-) (This is getting more and more OT - I've got to stop doing that...;-) Cheers, -- =================================================== Rodney Baker VK5ZTV rodney.baker@iinet.net.au ===================================================
2008/10/29 Rodney Baker <rodney.baker@iinet.net.au>:
...it also means that I can fix things remotely, which saves a drive...:-)
(This is getting more and more OT - I've got to stop doing that...;-)
Not OT at all. We were discussing drive temps and you showed us another method of saving a drive :) -- Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com http://gibberish.co.il א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת ä-ö-ü-ß-Ä-Ö-Ü N�����r��y隊Z)z{.�ﮞ˛���m�)z{.��+�Z+i�b�*'jW(�f�vǦj)h���Ǿ��i�������
2008/10/29 Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer@gmail.com>:
I bet they are using a Windows Tool to write a full dos floppy image to the floppy. I've seen that before.
If so, the file they are copying should be about 1.44 MB
In Linux, to put that on floppy its just:
dd if=floppy-image-file of=/dev/floppy bs=512
Just like my ISP does not "support" Linux, I know that what I need can be done anyway. That's not the point. The point is that a hard drive manufacturer, who's hardware will no doubt be used in Linux servers, does not acknowledge that Linux exists. And if you _do_ format the floppy in Linux and the update borks, guess who eats the drive? Printer manufacturers and webcam manufacturers who are selling to desktop computers can ignore Linux and it's 2% market share. Hard drive manufacturers who want a slice of the server market, cannot. -- Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com http://gibberish.co.il א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת ä-ö-ü-ß-Ä-Ö-Ü N�����r��y隊Z)z{.�ﮞ˛���m�)z{.��+�Z+i�b�*'jW(�f�vǦj)h���Ǿ��i�������
participants (4)
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Dotan Cohen
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Greg Freemyer
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Randall R Schulz
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Rodney Baker