Dieu's Stuff

DieusPrograms.com

2020-11-01T08:09:00.001-08:00

Thank you for visiting! DieusPrograms.com is a new company that we are starting with the hopes of it growing into a self sustaining company. We are a company focused on building useful mobile apps for Android and IOS phones.

We decided to not pay for webhosting, and instead use our blog to post information about our company, helpful hints, how-Tos, FAQs, etc. to support our users, and customers.

If you have any questions, please let us know by sending your questions and comments to:

CustomerService@DieusPrograms.com

We look forward to hearing from you!

Have a great day!

DieusPrograms.com

Entering the Game Programming World

2018-08-24T17:41:00.003-07:00

Story
I've recently gotten into Game programming for mobile devices. I first searched for books that taught how to build TD (tower defense) games, because those are my favorite to play on mobile devices. I found an outdated one on eKobo, and another one on Amazon Kindle. They were very cheap, around $6-$7, and I think eKobo gave me a coupon for $5, so I ended up paying around $1.50 for the book, and the one on Amazon was around $2-$3.

I ended up reading the one from eKobo first, and the tutorial took me to YoYo's GameMaker. I ended up downloading it, and installing it. I followed the tutorial about half way, bringing in my own assets/graphics for the towers, and I drew new bullets for them using Paint.NET. I only got as far as putting in a background, a tower, a monster for the tower to shoot at. It was neat how easy it was to do all of that with only copying and pasting a few lines of the sample code. I was up to 2am working on it, as it was so much fun! I was going to continue working on it the next day. Before going to bed, I looked into the pricing for using the GameMaker to deploy to Android and Apple phones, and it was around $400, steep! but it was a one time payment for the license.

Next morning, I woke up, and thought, do I really want to invest all my time and learning into the GameMaker platform? Is it the best platform (Game Engine) to learn? That's when I decided that maybe before I do that I should research to see if there are other platforms out there, what their capabilities are, and pricing. I spent the morning doing that, mostly did a search for top GameMaker platforms/software, and I checked out a listing that stated "Top 8 Game Engines", "Top 5 Game Engines", and one other.

Choice of Game Engine
Long story short, after investigating all the game engines, and pricing plans. I decided to choose "Unity", because it doesn't require you to pay anything until you have revenue of $100,000, or more. It is popular. And it seems many have used it to create games of many genres. It seems from the reviews I read that Unreal Game Engine was harder to use if you hadn't been using it all along, which wasn't the case with "Unity".

I didn't like the pricing plan for Unreal either. Also, it was stated in a review or 2 that it was a much steeper learning curve to learn how to use the Unreal Game Engine.

Tutorials
Seems I shouldn't have bought those online books after all, there are plenty of free resources online via Unity, google, and Youtube for people wanting to teach you how to program a TD game. I remember trying to build one years ago, and there weren't as many tutorials, well back then, I actually only found one, and it was teaching using a grid, it shrunk everything down to the bit level, which was horrible.

I worked my way through the interactive tutorials that were built into the Unity Installer, they were pretty neat, but didn't go into how to develop the game. It just walked you through making small changes to fix certain things in a mini-game.

I then jumped into trying to follow an "Intermediate" level tutorial for programming the "Tower Defense" type game, which is what I really wanted to learn from the get-go, but the instructions were really high level, and I just couldn't follow, since I'm very much a beginner. So, I decided to start at square 1, and choose a tutorial at the "Beginner Level".

So, I worked my way through "Roll a ball", pretty cool what you can do with this Unity IDE, and this is only the beginning. After creating my game, I had so many issues with building the game, and deploying it to my phone, error after error. I'll outline my steps at a high level below, hopefully it will help some of you out there trying to start game programming.

Procedure
1. Download and install the latest version of "Unity"
* https://unity3d.com/get-unity/download
* Click, choose your unity and download

2. Download and install the latest version of "Android SDK Manager"
* this part can take a long time if you are crazy like me, and want to install everything. It probably took 1-2 days for me, my internet is only 30MB/s, so the download is slow, and my computer is about 7 years old, so it's not so fast
* if you only install the Android SDK for your phone, then it shouldn't take long
* https://developer.android.com/studio/
* looks like you might have to install the studio, or maybe you could select the option to install only the "Android SDK Manager", back when I installed it, years ago, I was able to install only the SDK Manager, but it looks like things have changed, but I'm sure you can figure it out

3. Download and install the latest version of "Java JDK"
* http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk10-downloads-4416644.html

4. Make sure you download and install the USB Driver for your phone, if you want to be publishing to it, and debugging
* google search it

5. On your phone, you have to enable developer mode,
* googled it, and it's something like going into your settings, and then go into the about, then tapping multiple times on the "Build" information. It should then display a message onscreen saying that "Developer Mode" is enabled
* you should then be able to access the "Developer Mode" options from the main settings menu
* I enabled "USB Debugging" option, and enabled the "Stay Awake" option

6. When you go to build, File > Build Settings, for testing purposes, I have the following settings:
a. Texture Compression: Don't override
b. ETC2 fallback: 32 bit
c. Build System: Internal

e. Run Device: <your device name should be selected>
* if you don't see it, click refresh beside it
* if you still don't see it, make sure that your computer properly detected it, and the drivers were properly installed
* after the drivers were installed, I had to unplug the phone, replug it in, scan for hardware changes from the Computer > Manager > Device Manager
* I had to reboot my computer after the drivers installed
* when windows loaded, then unplug the phone, and re-plug it in to the USB, then finally it recognized the phone

f. Development Build: unchecked
g. Compression Method: default

h.SDKs for App Stores
* Xiaomi Mi Game Center
* when I click to add this, then built, it caused an error that when I googled the error, people said the cause was duplicate files, not knowing which files were dups, I decided to remove the package, and worry about it later

7. Next, I had to set the "Player Settings" from the "Build Settings"

PlayerSettings:
* Company Name: <set this>
* Product Name: <set this>

Other Settings
* Identification
** Package Name: com.<company name>.<Product Name>
** Version: <set this>

Publish Settings:
* Keystore
** for debugging purposes, the Keystore uses a default one, so this doesn't need to be created at the moment

Build
* build System: Internal
** this should match what you set in the "Build Settings" window > Build System
** I think this changes automatically to match what's in the "Build Settings" window

8. Attempt to Build
* if you are lucky, it will work, but if you are unlucky like me, you might get an error as follows:

CommandInvokationFailure: Failed to sign APK package.
C:\Android\android-sdk\build-tools\28.0.2\apksigner.bat sign --ks "C:\Users\Dieu\.android\debug.keystore" --ks-pass stdin --ks-key-alias "androiddebugkey" --key-pass stdin "F:\Unity Game Development\Roll-a-Ball-Extreme\Temp/StagingArea/Package.apk"

stderr[
Picked up JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS: -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8
]
stdout[
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for 1048576KB object heap
]

9. I spent all day today (August 24, 2018) searching on google to try figure this out
* well, it was actually 3 or more errors before this, but if you follow my procedure, you should be able to avoid the other errors that I encountered
* so, how did I finally fix this error, I actually didn't find the answer specifically on any post, I ended up investigating the ".bat" file that is used for signing the ".apk" file, in there, I found defaults for the size of the VM that it creates

The ".bat" file is specified in the error message:
C:\Android\android-sdk\build-tools\28.0.2\apksigner.bat

Open it up in your favorite text editor, I used "notepad++",
* the section reads as follows:

REM By default, give apksigner a max heap size of 1 gig and a stack size of 1meg.
rem This can be overridden by using "-JXmx..." and "-JXss..." options below.
set defaultXmx=-Xmx1024M
set defaultXss=-Xss1m

I changed it to:

REM By default, give apksigner a max heap size of 1 gig and a stack size of 1meg.
rem This can be overridden by using "-JXmx..." and "-JXss..." options below.
rem Changed defaultXmx=-Xmx1024M to 512M
set defaultXmx=-Xmx512M
set defaultXss=-Xss1m

Result
When I tried to build again, all errors were gone!! So happy!!

Remember, I'm just starting this journey to learn game programming, so if any of this seems elementary, it's because I've only started 2-3 days ago.

Sorry, no screen captures this time, I only have time enough to write up this story.

Anyways, I hope this helps others out with this error, and with setting Unity up to work in test mode with your device.

If you find this post useful, please leave me a message, it will motivate me to share more often.

Good luck, and happy coding!

Car Won't Start hearing clicking sounds only

2017-01-28T13:23:00.005-08:00

Story

My wife's car wouldn't start the other day. I suspected it was the car battery, since something similar happened to my car after not driving it for a while. All my car did with it's low battery was click, and thanks to the push-button start, I couldn't turn it off after, so the clicking continued until the battery was completely dead. My car started working with the help of road-side assistance, they brought a battery booster, and right away once they plugged it in, everything lit up on the dashboard, and when I attempted to start the car, it started.

So, the other day I was surfing Canadian Tire's website, and found a sale on the 'Eliminator' 1400 Amp car starter for around $150. Here's the link if you are interested, though regular price is about $200:
http://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/motomaster-eliminator-1400a-booster-pack-0111913p.html#srp

I ordered it online, and charged it for 40 hours like it said to do. Today, I hooked it up to the battery, and engine block screw (Honda Civic) like it said in the manual, and right away, I tried to turn on the engine.

SIDE NOTE: Make sure to check your manual to see where to connect the black connector from the battery booster. From the videos online it says to connect it to any unpainted part of the chassis, but every part appeared to be painted, so I didn't know where to connect it until I checked the manual.

All I heard was clicking. I turned off the 'Battery booster', and waited a few minutes before trying again like it said in the manual. Yet when I turned the battery booster on, and tried again, it still didn't work. The 2nd time, I held the key on so long that smoke started coming up from the engine. I thought I had fried the starter. Oh no, I thought.

I came into the house, went to my computer, and did some research to see what I could find, and most people said it was either their battery, or car starter that had to be replaced. I also watched the demo video on Canadian Tire's website on how to use the battery booster (see the product page, link above). I saw that I did everything as they said to do it. I pondered a while, and remembered reading about how the cigarette lighter battery boosters work, and that is that you hook them up in order to charge the battery for 15-30 minutes, unhook them, and then you try to turn on the car.

So, I went to get the battery booster again, reopened the garage door, and hooked it up. i.e. Red to red battery terminal, and black to engine block screw. I left it connected for maybe 20 minutes. I kept checking up on it to make sure there wasn't any smoke, or anything burning. I was crossing my fingers that the smoke I saw earlier was not because I permanently damaged the car starter.

The moment of truth, after 20 minutes I went out to the car, and turned the key, and it started!! Whoohoo! I was so happy! I quickly unhooked the battery booster, shut the hood, and drove the car out of the garage. I kept it running for around 20-25 minutes, even drove it around on the road a bit. It worked just fine, but strangely, some warning lights turned on due to the battery being dead before, ABS, Brake light, and power steering light. I steered the car with ease, and was able to break hard without any problems, so I think these lights may have just came on, and stayed on due to the dead battery problem.

Solution

WARNING: Don't hold the key in the "ON" position for too long as it may cause the starter to burn out, or start smoking. If it is clicking, then turn the key to the off position immediately.

1. If your car doesn't start after hooking up the booster battery, and turning the key, try hooking up the battery booster (turn on the battery booster once you've confirmed that the connections are correct), wait 20-25 minutes to let the battery booster charge up your dead battery, and then try turn the car "ON".

NOTE: if your battery booster has an "ON" switch, make sure that after you have the cables correctly connected to the car, that you turn the switch to the "ON" position to allow it to start charging your battery.

I hope this helps anyone out there that has encountered this problem

Today is Vietnamese New Years, so Happy New Years to all my readers!

Great Refurbished Wireless Router!

2015-09-25T14:37:00.002-07:00

Hi,

I just wanted to share with everyone/anyone that reads my blog about a router I bought recently to help extend my wireless network at home. I just wanted something cheap to broadcast the network SSID to cover the gaps.

I saw this router on Bestbuy.com:

D-Link Wireless AC Router (DIR-810L/RE) - Refurbished - Online Only $24.99 + tax

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/d-link-d-link-wireless-ac-router-dir-810l-re-refurbished-dir-810l-re/10374136.aspx?path=664dc14a52c27444024ed9431f58bb89en02

And when I received it, I set it up, and when I tested it's broadcast area... Wow! It has a really, really, strong signal! I walked around with my tablet using an app that measures signal strength, and it showed either full signal strength, or 1 bar down throughout my entire house!! It's amazing, and for so cheap!! I can turn off my other 2 routers (old, bought them years ago, one was a gift)

So, if you are looking to buy a router, I would totally recommend this router. You can buy a new one from BestBuy.com as well, but I think the refurbished one works just fine. I didn't have to pay shipping either, just $24.99 + tax.

If you don't like refurbished, you can buy it new using this link:

D-Link Wireless AC Router (DIR-810L/RE) New $59.95
http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/d-link-d-link-dual-band-wireless-ac750-router-dir-810l-dir-810l/10257102.aspx?path=52167797ffe0d43cae39ae405300b88fen02

Tip1: When setting it up, if you don't want to use the setup wizard, just click 'Cancel', and it will let you log into the configuration UI and manually configure it.

Tip2: Required Action: Make sure you setup an Admin login password, because the router comes pre-configured with no password, which is a dangerous situation if you allow remote/wireless configuration. I believe the remote configuration is off by default, thank goodness!

Hope you have as great an experience that I did!

Dieu
* Share your experience if you have time by leaving a comment

Recent Laptop Comparison - Great Value - The Low-End and the High-End

2015-01-01T17:31:00.004-08:00

Story
I was helping my wife pick and choose a laptop to buy really cheap and affordable, but a machine that would not go out of use too quickly.

Uses it must handle:
* browsing
* Skyping
* email
* YouTube

I compared laptops from 3 websites where she lives, but the one below had a better selection, and comparable prices to the other 2 websites, so I'm just going to include the one website:
https://www.thegioididong.com/laptop/?trang=1

If you visit the website, you will see they sell many brands, including:
* Acer
* Asus
* Lenovo
* Dell
* HP
* Mac

What I was looking for

I was looking through all the offerings within the last few days, and comparing the power that each machine offers which includes comparing the following:
* Note: The most important factor to me is the processor, without the right processor nothing else matters!

Factors Considered:
1. Most importantly, the processor
* right now software seems to run okay on 2 core processors, which means the future is more than 2 cores. I like to buy with the future in mind, because I don't like to buy something and have to replace it so soon after. This meant that I only wanted to look for and find 4 core processor laptops.

2. The Memory
* right now, 8 GB is best to have, 4 GB is minimum, so anything 4 GB or higher

3. Graphics Card
* if you don't do gaming, which my wife doesn't, an integrated graphics card will do just fine, but if you do some gaming, you should look for one that has a graphics card that is not integrated as it will perform better, especially if it doesn't have to share memory with the rest of the laptop

4. Hard Disk Drive (HDD) - not very important
* 500 GB will do for most people, so anything more than that is bonus

I think, if you buy a laptop based on brand, you are cheating yourself out of finding a good deal. What you should be comparing first are the above, taking into account your budget.
* Most people say to take into account how you are going to use it, but I think it's best to buy the best machine that your budget can buy you, that way you won't have to replace it so soon after buying it, depending on your budget.

Budget
The budget really was the cheapest machine that would be able to handle the tasks she performs.

In this case, I compared all machines to find a 4 core processor, I wasn't sure I would find one, so I kept a tab on the 2 core processors as well, keeping track of the most powerful one within a small budget. Small budget means a few hundred dollars. I was thinking $400 - $500 CAD.

Findings

To my surprise, I found a machine that fit my wife's use, and was affordable, and had 4 cores.

Acer Aspire ES1 411, 14" Laptop
* Processor: Intel Pentium N3540 2.16 GHz (Turbo 2.66 GHz)
* RAM Memory: 4GB
* HDD: 500 GB
* Graphics Card: Integrated
* Link: https://www.thegioididong.com/laptop/acer-aspire-es1-411-004
* Cost:$7,290,000 VND (approx $396 CAD)

Drawback:
I guess a draw back would be that it doesn't have a disc drive.

Intel's Website for Processor Details:
http://ark.intel.com/products/82105/Intel-Pentium-Processor-N3540-2M-Cache-up-to-2_66-GHz

Side Note about the Processor:
I'm not sure what kind of processor this is other than it is an Intel Pentium processor. Usually on Intel's website they would say Celeron if it was a Celeron processor. I know the website where it is listed is calling it a Celeron, but I'm not sure that is right or not. I thought it might be an Atom processor, because I came across a posting that talked about the Atom Processor, saying something positive about this release of the processor.
* I usually don't buy Celeron because it is slow, no sure if this one is Celeron or not, though if it is, it's okay, as I was just so happy with it being a 4 core processor that it made it okay

Other Reviews:
I checked out some reviews online, and most people said it was a great value for the price. Of course at this price range, you won't be impressed with the material, or design, that's a given. If you are like me though, that stuff doesn't matter, it's what's inside that counts, and this cheap affordable laptop had what counts, and what I was looking for.

I also looked at 2 websites for bench marks comparing it to other processors, but the charts didn't show any of the i3 and i5 processors I was comparing, and so they didn't affect my decision much. I just know that having more cores is better for multitasking. I'm not so sure I go for the hyper-threading technology. I thinking having 4 physical cores is better than having 2 cores processing 4 threads (2 threads per core).

Anyways, I sent my wife the findings, and she was okay with going to buy that laptop. Though, the next day, I found out that she didn't buy it, saying that it was ugly, and she wasn't impressed with the quality of material, and webcam resolution. I told her that she shouldn't be concerned about those things when buying a laptop/computer, and so after some discussion, she agreed that would be the best laptop to buy. Though, in closing, she added that she wanted to spend a bit more money to get a laptop that would last a while.

Reviewing Higher-End Laptops
Due to my wife's last remark, I decided to have another look at the laptops to see what other 4 core processors the website offered. I looked through all the i3 and i5 processor laptops, and none of them offered the 4 core processor I was looking for. I even looked up the i7-4510U processor, and it turned out to be a 2 core processor. There's no way I was going to even think of spending that amount of money on a laptop that had only 2 cores.

On that website, you will see the i7 4510U laptop offerings range from 17,590,000 VND to 19,990,000 VND (approx $954 CAD to $1084.90 CAD)

So, I looked at the even more expensive laptops, and found

Lenovo Y5070, 15.6" Laptop
Processor: i7-4710HQ 2.5 GHz (Turbo up to 3.5 GHz)
RAM Memory: 8GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 860M, 4 GB
HDD: 1 TB
Link: https://www.thegioididong.com/laptop/lenovo-y5070
Cost: $24,990,000 VND, which is approx $1356.26 CAD

Wow! I thought. This is such a powerful machine, and it doesn't even cost that much. Okay, so it is a lot of money, but for the power you get, it's really good value! It has great design, is pleasing to the eyes, and has more power than a normal user would ever need. Perfect!

So, the next day, I spoke with my wife, and told her to consider buying the Lenovo Y5070. I spoke to her later that night, and she told me that she went to see the Lenovo, and wanted to buy the Lenovo Y5070, but it was out of her price range, and they didn't offer a payment plan, so she couldn't buy it. So instead she bought the Acer Aspire that I recommended first.

I did some additional checking to see how much they sell Online to the Canadian market, and the prices are comparable, about the same. On Lenovo's home website, they offer many different configurations for the same model laptop, Y5070. Some have more RAM memory, more or less graphics card memory, more or less had drive space, some come with an internal disc drive.

I think laptops really have come down in price since the last time I bought one which was actually a very long time ago in 2003 but I remember paying $1500 + tax (for my Pentium III 3.2 GHz with hyper threading), or Lenovo has really good prices! For this laptop that has 4 processor cores, 8 threads, you pay only $1029 + shipping + tax. See partial details below. That's the price on the Canadian website. If you are looking for a laptop, I'd say buy this one!

NOTE:
* If you are more of a gamer, buy the one that has 4 GB of graphics card memory, and possibly more RAM memory, it cost a bit more, but it seems there is a lot of value for a great price. Plus, it should last many years to come as many new software, and operating releases work just fine with 2 processor cores at the moment.
* If you don't need a CD/DVD drive, it can be even cheaper! :0)

This is a direct link to the Canadian website for the laptop. This laptop has 2 GB less memory than the one offered on the Vietnam site which is a part of the reason why it's cheaper. For me, 2 GB of graphics memory is good enough, and should be good enough for normal users up to even light gamers:

Lenovo Y50-70 $1029
* Processor: i7-4710HQ (2.5 GHz, Turbo up to 3.5 GHz)
* Ram Memory: 8 GB
* Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M 2GB
* HDD: Hybrid 1TB 5400 RPM+8GB SSHD
* Link: http://shop.lenovo.com/ca/en/laptops/lenovo/y-series/y50/?sb=:000001CA:00005F5B:

Anyways, hope the information I've provided helps you in one way or another. Happy hunting!

AppleSyncNotifier.exe - Entry Point Not Found

2014-02-17T05:29:00.003-08:00

Story
Have you ever run into this issue before? I have, twice now! It seems to happen every time I install, or reinstall 'apple itunes'.

Here's the error message box I get after I've installed/reinstalled 'apple itunes' software.

Message Window Title: AppleSyncNotifier.exe - Entry Point Not Found
Description: The procedure entry point sqlite3_wal_checkpoint could not be located in the dynamic link library SQLite3.dll

Screen Capture

What a horrible message this is. It doesn't even tell us what folder it is look for the file in.

Debugging
1. I did a google search for the exact message, and the first result wasn't helpful at all
2. I tried to remember what I did last time to fix this, and I actually remembered. It was a long time ago, so I can't remember the source, so I'll just include the solution.

Solution
1. To fix this issue, you have to copy SQLite3.dll from one apple program folder to another. SQLite3.dll should be on your computer, just not in the folder that the Apple Sync Notifier is looking.

Copy file:

SQLite3.dll

from

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\Apple Application Support\
* this is where I found the SQLite3.dll file.
* If you can't find it in this folder, do a search in the following path to find the file:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\

to

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\
* this is where I found the "AppleSyncNotifier.exe" file
* again, if you don't see the .exe file in this folder, search for it in the folder
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\
and then copy the SQLite3.dll file to this folder

2. Reboot your computer, and the error message should be gone

Conclusion/Comments
Apple really needs to fix that installer of theirs, but until they do, this should fix your issue.

(Again, I like to hear from you if this posting helped you out or not, so leave a message.)

Drobo Pro - Can't Access Files After it is detected by Windows 7 and not detected by Drobo Dashboard - What a Nightmare!!

2013-12-29T20:07:00.002-08:00

Story - What a Nightmare!!
I initiated a large folder copy, and move operation to backup a folder on my C:\ drive to my Z:\ drive (Drobo Pro backup). Windows popped open the normal copy window with the normal calculation... message. I waited, and waited, and waited, about 10-20 minutes, and the window had still not finished calculating, and still didn't start copying/moving the files. I decided to wait another 30min-1 hr (forgot exactly how long), when I came back, windows still didn't start moving the files! Okay, now I'm getting really impatient!! I decide to cancel the move operation, and windows opened it's cancel window, but nothing happened... waited again, and still nothing happened, already having lost my patience, I decided to force Windows Explorer to shutdown. It stopped responding, and wouldn't shutdown. I tried to end the task via 'Task Manager', and it still wouldn't shutdown. The only thing I saw happen was that the windows task bar disspeared, and everything was frozen on my computer.

Next, I decided to shutdown my computer via the windows key on my keyboard since I lost access to the windows taskbar. No response.

Last resort, I held down the computer power button until my computer powered off. I turned it back on after waiting 30 seconds. I can't remember if Drobo turned off or not at this point. Anyways, the computer booted back up, but now the Drobo volumes could not be accessed even with 'Drobo Dashboard' displaying the drive, and 2 volumes.

I took off the cover plate on my 'Drobo Pro', and the 2 lights were solid green. I waited for the 'Activity' light to turn off, but it never did, and I wasn't copying anything to the drive after the reboot, and there were no other flashing LED lights for each drive, so now that I can't access the drive, and I've determined it's not busy, I use the power button on the back of the device to power it off.

Next, I power it back on after it had powered off. It came back on, but strangely the number of blue lights had reduced from 4 LEDs to 3 LEDs. This scared me a bit, thinking it could only mean that there was data loss! This started a slow panic. I still wasn't sure if the data was lost or not, so I tried to keep my cool.

Next, windows detected my drive, but strangely 'Drobo Dashboard' did not. Uh, oh, now what? I clicked on the Y:\ volume, and it displayed the content. Then I clicked on the other volume Z:\ and explorer stopped responding. I wasn't able to access my files, uh oh!!
* Now I'm really considering that I've lost all my files, I start to panic!!

Google
I head onto Google to do a search to see if anyone has ever had this problem. I don't come across any postings that list a crash after a failed copy command, with the drives no longer responding, and Drobo Dashboard no longer detecting 'Drobo Pro'.
* I did multiple searches, and even followed the directions on the following 3 drobo forum pages, but it didn't work:

http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/621
http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/445/session/L2F2LzEvdGltZS8xMzg4MzcxOTMwL3NpZC9Za0NUdzRKbA%3D%3D
http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/161

I didn't call tech support, as I no longer have the free support. I think my unit is 3-4 years old, so it's long expired. Though, I was highly considering the call.

I felt like I was having a nightmare, and started thinking of all the data that would be lost if I couldn't get the Drobo to come back; Photos, files, videos, going back to who knows when that I've never burned up on disc. Oh boy, I was really regretting not doing that now! My thought now was, if I get this to start working again, I'm going to buy everything onto DVDs!

I spent the next hour or so, rebooting my computer after it froze from trying to access Drobo, and rebooting Drobo each time as well. I must have tried this 3 times before deciding it wasn't a problem that could be fixed with a fresh 'shutdown/reboot' of both my computer, and the 'Drobo Pro Unit'.
* now what??

Solution
* Perform at your own risk, I will not be responsible for anything that goes wrong!! I only know that the following is what I tried, and what worked for me. Be very careful when removing your Hard Disk Drives that Drobo is off, otherwise it will think the drive failed, and attempt to rebuild, or even fail and you may lose all your data
1. Running on desperation, I decided to do something I wouldn't dare do, but that I read about a long time ago about how you can move your drives from one drobo unit to another. And from something I had just read from one of the forum pages about what a normal Drobo boot looks like, I decided do the following because I want to see if my Drobo Unit is still good or not. I also know that removing all my drives with Drobo turned off is okay, as long as they are all reinserted with the power off, before the power is switched back on (as if moving from one unit to another):
i) I shutdown my drobo unit with no activity lights on, using the switch at the back of drobo
ii) After it turned off fully, I popped out every drive that I had in the unit, far enough so that none of them would be detected in the unit
iii) I rebooted my computer - for safety measures (probably not needed, but I did it anyways)
iv) After my computer booted up fully, I turned on 'Drobo', and without any drives installed, it booted very quickly, and lit up one drive LED in red (I didn't take note of what the other LED colours were)
* you may want to remove the power cord for safe measures, to make sure Drobo is fully off
* this seemed normal, so I concluded that there was nothing wrong with my unit
v) Next, I used the power button on Drobo to power it back off
vi) With the 'Drobo Unit' fully off, I reinsert all drives into the Drobo Unit, making sure they all drives are fully inserted
* you may want to remove the power cord for safe measures, to make sure Drobo is fully off
vii) Next, I power on the 'Drobo Unit', and wait it boot
viii) It powers on successfully, but I notice that there are still only 3 LED blue lights instead of 4, but in Windows 7, I'm able to access the files on each of the 2 volumes in my Drobo ... relief at last!!
* knowing this, I suspect the 4th blue LED light is off because the Dual Redundancy checkbox must have been unchecked by the issue at some point
* I check the Drobo Dashboard menu, Drobo Settings > General, and what do you know, the 'Dual Redundancy' was unchecked, so I rechecked it, and clicked 'OK' to save my change
* the lights blue lights changed from 3 to 4
ix) The array appears to need to rebuild itself, estimating 4 hours

Closing Comments
So relieved!! I can't even believe that the random (thought) removal of the drives, and reinserting them was what fixed the issue, but Boy! am I happy it did!! I felt like my heart was going to stop for a moment there when I thought all my data was lost!
* so glad I didn't have to call tech support too as I've read many bad reviews on the support provided

To Do List
1. Burn all files in my Drobo Pro to disc - JUST IN CASE!! :0)

(Please leave your questions, and comments, I'd like to hear if this helped anyone else.)

Setting up my 2nd Drobo 5N

2013-11-23T16:46:00.000-08:00

Note: Second Drobo 5N Device Configuration Story
* This is a continuation of my first posting. This is an update on how my 2nd Drobo 5N setup went.

Story
Even though I knew that a 'Reset' of the Drobo settings would probably make this Drobo recognize the drives, I wanted to see if I could capture the error messages that I didn't capture in the first Drobo 5N setup. Drobo behaved differently, possibly due to me already attempting to set it up previously but failing to do so. Yes, so this is actually my 2nd attempt to setup this Drobo 5N.

Here's what happened with this unit.

1. I decided to follow the quick start guide this time. I put the 2 hard drives (2 TB) into the top 2 slots as shown in the quick start guide.
2. Having already updated the Dashboard software on my computer, I connected the Network cable to the device and the other end was connected to the router. I connected the power cable, and then turned the device on.
3. Strangely, it only detected the drive in the 2nd slot down , and then it entered data protection mode, and took 1 hour to run, even though there was no data in the drives
* it's like it detected the top most drive, but couldn't recognize it, and saw the 2nd drive, and was able to install it, so it might of thought that drive 1 just died or something along those lines

Below is a screen capture of what I saw in the Dashboard. It says to add a drive to the top bay, but I had a good working drive already in that slot.

4. Next, I decided to do a full reboot of the Drobo 5N device to see if it picks up the top drive. When it finished rebooting, the lights on the unit were solid red. Here's the error messages I got next from the Dashboard:

Error Message - Drobo Dashboard
You may have removed or replaced too many hard drives from your Drobo at the same time. Re-insert the hard drives you removed. Important! When removing or replacing hard drives, make sure you remove or replace them one at a time. Never remove a drive when the drive bay indicators are blanking green and yellow.

Error Message - Error Popup Window (bottom corner)
Drobo doesn't recognize some of the drives you have installed in the data bays. They may have been previously formatted by Drobo or are from another Drobo. To troubleshoot, please consult the User's Guide or visit http://www.drobo.com/support.

5. Seeing how I could not get the exact same error messages from my first Drobo 5N setup, and seeing how Drobo 5N wasn't able to detect my hard drives even though they are good drives that should work in the device, I decided to apply my solution that I found from my first Drobo 5N configuration, i.e. Reset the device to factory defaults from the Drobo Dashboard

Solution

6. Reset the device to factory defaults from the Drobo Dashboard

* Drobo Dashboard > Tools > Drobo Reset > 'Drobo Reset'

7. When the Reset of the Drobo 5N completed, the hard drive lights were all green, and the device was ready to go!!

Hope this helps those of you out there that have encountered this error, and like me spent hours trying to solve it!

If you found this posting helpful, please leave me a comment!

Thank you for visiting! Hope you have a good day!

Drobo 5N - Initial Setup Issues - It doesn't recognize my Computer Hard Drives!!

2013-11-20T22:00:00.003-08:00

Story
I bought 2 brand new Drobo 5N's recently from TigerDirect.ca for Christmas presents for my sisters. They were on sale at a good price, good for Drobos anyways. Still high, but it was within the range I was willing to pay for them. It took only 3 days to receive them, not counting the weekend. I ordered them Friday, and they came Wednesday, today.

I was so excited to open them up, and setup them up with the 2 TB hard drives that I pulled out of my unit. I had 4 of them ready to go. I didn't think it would take so long to get the unit up and working, so I started working on it at 10pm. To my surprise, I had so much problems with it that I stayed up until 12:30am on a work night! Yikes! I'm the kind of person that has to solve problems with my computer once I've encounter it, so I got stuck working on it until I fixed it around 12:00am.

Anyways, I should continue with my story. I opened up the first box, and it was nicely packaged. I took the unit out. It was smaller than expected, which was nice, since my sister's don't like the big and bulky electronics. Since having the DroboPro, I decided to not follow the instructions exactly, since it's a pretty smart unit, and it just auto-detects hard drives when they are inserted. So, here's what I did.

1. I plugged in the network cable
2. I plugged in the power (with no hard drives installed yet)
3. I started my dashboard, but it didn't see my Drobo
* forgot that I had turned off 'auto-discovery', so I turned it back on
* you can access the 'Drobo Discovery Settings' from the 'All Drobos' tab
4. After I turned it on, it found the Drobo 5N which was connected to my router
* though, it showed the Drobo 5N as a 4 Drive Bay Drobo
4. So, with the Drobo still connected, I visited their website,
http://www.drobo.com/start/drobo-5n-start.php
and downloaded the latest software version 2.5.2 for windows.
5. After it finished downloading, I ran the install without uninstalling the previous version
* it did ask me if it could have permission to shutdown, and restart the Drobo Windows Service, and Dashboard when it finishes the install. I clicked OK
6. It completed the installation successfully without issues

Next Issue: Drobo Requires Initialization
1. It reported that 'Drobo requires Initialization'
2. I didn't know what that meant, so I searched google, and found nothing... that wasn't helpful
3. Running on a hunch, I took the drives out, and put them into my StarTech.com Hard Drive dock, and found that 2 of the drives had not been initialized, and the others needed to be formatted
* I stuck one drive into the drive dock at a time, and had the 'Computer Disk Manager' open
** in windows 7, you can get to it if you click on the Windows Button > Right Click 'Computer', and Select 'Manage', then from the list on the left, under 'Storage', select 'Disk Management'
4. With this window open, when I put in the drives that required initialization, it immediately popped up a window asking if I wanted to initialize the drive
* for the first one, I didn't know if it was the correct drive, so I clicked 'no'
* I scrolled down to the drive, and where it lists the title 'Disk #', if you right click there, you can choose to initialize the drive, and then I chose MBR (i.e. Master Boot Record)
* After I initialized it, I did a quick format
* I repeated for all drives

5. I turned Drobo 5N off, then I put the drives back into the Drobo 5N unit, then after I put the drives in, I turned it back on
* I had found an article on the internet that said Barracuda drives can take up to 20 minutes to initialize (Drobo Forum), so I was patient and I waited, and waited. When it was done, all lights were solid red, and it said it didn't recognize the drives I had installed. It said I should get the latest firmware updates.
* I followed the instructions, and found out that I had the latest firmware already, so I didn't need the update, but what that appeared to mean was that my hard drives won't work in this unit, that I would have to go out to buy brand new ones - I definitely could not afford to spend anymore money on these Christmas Presents... so... as a last resort, I tried the following. See 'My Solution' below.

My Solution
I was so fed up at this point that I was willing to try anything. I was looking through the 'Tools' menu, and thought that maybe a 'Reset' of the 'Drobo' back to factory default setting might do the trick. And low and behold, it worked!!!
* I reset my unit with the hard drives installed, with the Drobo dashboard reporting that it can't recognize the drives installed
* After the reset, all lights turned green, and the unit was ready to go!!
** I was sooo happy at this point, that I had to write about it!! :0)

Man! The unit had me worried for a very long time. I thought I would have to return it. Instead of an easy 10 minute setup, I spent 2-2.5 hours debugging, trying different things with my hard drives. I even pull another one out of my DroboPro to see if it would work in the 5N before the reset, and it didn't. Now I've got to wait for my DroboPro to rebuild itself... uurrrgghhh!! It estimates 14 hours! Darn it!

Here's how the dashboard looked after the Reset completed:

Well, I guess the best thing is that I now know what to do to setup the other Drobo 5N. Start with the 'Tools' > Reset > Erase'. Hopefully that setup will go a lot more smoothly.

Drobo's Solution
I later found this on Google, but it was after I had already found the solution myself. I reviewed it, and I think it says to perform more steps than needed, probably to be safe. My solution worked with just the Reset. I didn't even have to reboot my computer. See link below:
1. http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/683/kw/drive

Hope this article helps you out! If it does, let me know. It helps motivate me to write about more issues I've encountered, and solutions I've come up with. :0)

Alienware - Door Controller has stopped working

2013-10-05T05:38:00.002-07:00

Issue
After installing the latest Alienware Command Centre I encountered this strange error on booting into windows. The lights on my Alienware Case stopped working, and it stopped reporting internal temperature, fan speed, and all that jazz.

Though, like a lot of things, it didn't bother me too much at first, but after a 3 weeks of seeing this error, I decided to look into what it could be. It seems the latest version that I updated to has some sort of bug in it.

Looking for the Alienware Commend Centre Software
- NOTE: This didn't work, don't follow it, see section below named Solution: Found Alienware Command Centre - using Good Old Google!:

~~I didn't know where to get the Alienware Command Centre, so:~~
~~1. I looked to see if I had the CD that came with my Alienware desktop computer, but I didn't see any disk that included it.~~
2. Next, I went to the Support.Alienware.com website, strangely it redirected me to Alienware's home page instead of taking me to their support page. That irritated me. Nonetheless, I hovered the mouse over "Support" and clicked on "Device Drivers and Downloads" from the dropdown menu.

~~Next I selected the following from the dropdown lists:~~
* http://support.alienware.com/Support_Pages/Restricted_Pages/driver_downloads.aspx

~~1. Select an Operating System: Windows 7 x64 (you should choose your own OS)~~
~~2. Select a Component: Desktop Systems~~
~~3. Select a Manufacturer: Alienware(TM) Corporation~~
~~4. Select an item: <Select the desktop you purchased>~~

~~Click Search~~

~~Clicked on Drivers and Downloads, and it took me to Dell's general support website...~~
* GRRR, what the heck are they doing????

Oh my goodness! Can they make it any more harder to find!?

Solution

Found Alienware Command Centre (using Good Old Google!)
1. From here, I decided to use google to search for the Alienware Command Centre
* typed into google: alienware command center download

2. Then I clicked on the 2nd link as it showed a newer version of the Command Centre 2.7.25.0
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/driverdetails?driverid=39XW1

3. Click 'Download File'

4. Uninstall Current Version of Alienware Command Center
1. Windows 7 > Windows Button (Start) > Control Panel > Programs and Features
* Alienware Command Center, click to select it from the list
* Click Uninstall button (above)
* Click to 'Remove All'
* Click Next until it starts, and finishes

2. When it was done, I rebooted my computer for good measure

3. I found the 'Alienware Command Center 2.7.25.0" (.exe) file that I downloaded from the Dell's website, and double clicked it to run it (where ever you saved it)
* follow the prompts, and click next until it starts installation
* at the end, it will reboot your computer

4. When Windows is finished rebooting the 'Door Controller..." Error will come up again.
* at this point, I thought "OMG", but then I tried to "Repair" the installation
* go into Control Panel > Programs and Features > Alienware Command Center, click to select it from the list
* Click Uninstall button (above), but this time, Select the option to repair/reinstall the program
* Click Next until it starts, and finishes

5. When it's done repairing, it will reboot the computer

6. For me, when it came back into Windows, everything was working again!
* No stupid "Door Controller..." error, and my lights worked again, and all the other monitoring systems in the 'Alienware Command Center' worked again.

Time Wasted
It took me 1.5 hours, but I tried the repair option with my first install without uninstalling it fully, and in that instance, it didn't work. The problem only went away after a full uninstall, and reinstall, followed by the repair. Weird if you ask me. They really should fix their installer!!

Okay, hope this helps those of you out there that have encountered this problem!

Have a good day!

Dieu

Looking for a taskbar for Multiple Monitors?

2013-08-09T17:51:00.003-07:00

Story
This ones going to be short, as I just want to share my findings. This short posting is about the 3 Multiple Monitor taskbar programs I've tried.

Short Reviews

Multi-Monitor (Free Version)

* they have a free version, and it use to look good back when the main windows task bar wasn't translucent, but now, it looks dull, old and boring
* this is the first program I used which a fellow colleague at work referred me to way back when. It was free at the time. I think they didn't have the paid version yet.
* If you like dull and boring, this ones for you

Here's the link to their website:
* http://www.mediachance.com/free/multimon.htm

To Download
Click the download tab, scroll down a bit, and choose which version you want. I'm not into paying for things, and so I tried only the free version

Actual Multiple Monitors
* this one has only a trial version for 30 days or so, and by the halfway point a dialog will open up each time windows boots up, and ask you to buy, enter your code, or continue. I found this most annoying!
* this is one of the best task bars I've tried. It has the nice windows 7 look and feel, and it also has the Windows Start button on it, so if you want to get at the Start Menu, you don't have to move your mouse back to the main monitor to get at it
* big downside is that there is no free version
* by day 22, I uninstalled it and looked for a free version

Here's the link in case your are interested, and possibly interested in buying it:
http://www.actualtools.com/multiplemonitors/download/

To Download
1. Scroll down the the 'Current Version' table, and click the link under file name to start downloading

Dual Monitor (Open Source) - *** RECOMMENDED!!
* I found this free Windows taskbar today that I never knew was freely available, so I got excited, and wanted to share it, hence this posting.
* what this program does is extend your current task bar onto other monitors that you have extended your desktop to. It doesn't have the 'Windows Start Button', but it does have the nice Windows 7 look and feel which is important to me
* most importantly, it's FREE!

If you are interested in getting a taskbar that works, looks good, and your don't have to pay for, here's the link:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dualmonitortb/

It says they've tested it with: Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7. I currently have it installed on my machine which runs Windows 7. If you don't have either one of these, then try it at your own risk.

To Download
Click the big green download button

Conclusion / Recommendations
I guess now-a-days, with the internet, and Open-Source, everyone should really look long and hard for free Open-Source tools, testing them out to see if they suite your needs, before paying a cent for Software.

I recommend you trying out the "Dual Monitor" open source product. It might just be what you've been looking for and need.

Though, maybe if you have so many monitors that moving your mouse back to the main one to get at the start button, and you don't have a Windows key on your keyboard, it may be worth your time to check out the "Actual Multiple Monitor" software product.

Hope this posting was helpful! :0)

Shopping for a Streaming Media Box Player

2013-07-19T18:01:00.005-07:00

(I meant to post this earlier on this year, when I did the research, but never got around to it. I still feel that what I found, and would buy to still be the same, so I decided to finish the posting, and post it)

Here's my Story
Last year 2012, during boxing day shopping I helped my older sister pick out a new Media Box with very limited knowledge of them, and their capabilities. I had read only a bit on the Roku XS, XD version, and I know my brother-in-law a different device that plays files only. Other than that, I didn't know very much about them. I ended up telling my sister that she should buy the 'Roku XS', and if that doesn't work, she can return it to get the 'Boxee'.

We tried out the 'Roku' after she purchased it, and it worked to play the media files that she bought the device to play. I decided at that time that it probably wasn't worth looking any further into it, to see what other media files it can play. Boy! was that a mistake! I found out later that it only plays 2 formats, or something like that. It's great at streaming as a lot of articles I read say, but it isn't so good at playing files or different formats.

Leading to Conclusion
After looking and comparing Roku, Sony, WD Media Player, and some other media devices, I can't remember the names of the others, but there were a lot I looked at, I think the 'Boxee' has the best mix of apps, media streaming, and file compatibility, and price. Though it's actually one of the more expensive ones. At the time I compared, Sony was the only one selling for more. Still $200 CA isn't bad I don't think for the functionality and features that you get with the device.

Conclusion/Recommendations
Well, if I were to buy a media device, I would go out and buy the Boxee, the version that plays nearly all the media type files. I think they have a new one coming out at some point that may not be able to play as many media file types, so I wouldn't get that one, and I read that you may have to pay monthly for some sort of service. I'm not a fan of paying monthly for anything, we all have enough expenses as is.

So, for me, Boxee wins, it's my choice for media players, and the one I would buy if I wanted to own one.

Research Results for Helping my Friend Find a Good Laptop around $530 CA in London, Ontario, Canada

2013-07-19T17:38:00.001-07:00

I'm posting my email that I composed to my friend where I did some research to compare laptop offerings from the 3 major stores in London. I'm posting it just in case anyone else is looking for a laptop similar in criteria to what my friend was looking for. I did some comparisons between the 3 major stores in London, Ontario, and the following are my findings.

Criteria First

* Around $530.97

* 14" if possible, 15" otherwise

* Processor around 2.7 GHz (2 core)

* 4 GB RAM, or more

* 500 GB HD, or more

* Video Card, doesn't matter, mostly word processing

* Sound Card, doesn't matter

* other inputs/outputs, doesn't matter

Hey Friend,

I was looking at some laptops in your price range for you, and I'd recommend these

But first, you said price-wise, you want to spend only $600 (includes taxes, and enviro fee)

$600 / 1.13 (taxes) = $530.97

* [I'm not going to subtract Enviro fee, because I don't know how much it would be for a laptop]

Also Note that they do charge a premium for 14" laptops because they are smaller, and more convenient. It might also have something to do with smaller electronics in it, that cause the price to be higher, which is why going with the mainstream size of 15" is better. Battery life on 15.4" seems to all be averaging 4.5-5 hours.

Futureshop Offerings

1. Toshiba Satallite 17.3" Laptop $529.99 - Refurbished

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/toshiba-toshiba-satellite-17-3-laptop-silver-intel-core-i3-2328m-640gb-hdd-6gb-ram-windows-8-refurb-pskflc-00n007/10248744.aspx?path=c6f7e23b8134201cfee8c09f056a7b4cen02&SearchPageIndex=1

Notes

* I know this one has a big screen which you may not want

* battery only lasts up to 4 hours

* refurbished, but honestly, I would buy refurbished. My ipod is refurbished, and it works fine

* everything else checks out

2. Lenovo IdeaPad 15.6" Laptop $529.99 - Refurbished

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/lenovo-lenovo-ideapad-z580-15-6-laptop-grey-intel-core-i3-2370m-750gb-hdd-4gb-ram-english-refurb-z580/10234982.aspx?path=1871a020c8b16bdfbdce6aeb36aed446en02&SearchPageIndex=1

Notes

* Up to 5 hours on battery

* everything else checks out

3. Lenovo Ideapad 15.6" Laptop 2.5 GHz 750GB HD 6GB Ram $549.99 - Refurbished

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/lenovo-lenovo-ideapad-15-6-laptop-grey-intel-core-i5-3210m-750gb-hdd-6gb-ram-english-refurbished-p580/10232141.aspx?path=e195f6284d3c9cc9fcb8cf7426966349en02&SearchPageIndex=1

3. HP Pavilion 15.6" Laptop 2.4 GHz $549.99

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/hewlett-packard-hp-pavilion-15-6-laptop-silver-intel-core-i3-3110m-750gb-hdd-8gb-ram-windows-8-g6-2235ca/10242259.aspx?path=d0a59630434d160aeabfcddcf4f73017en02&SearchPageIndex=1

* If you don't want Refurbished this would be the best choice from Futureshop

3. Asus 15.6" Laptop 2.4 GHz $549 - Web Only

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/asus-asus-15-6-laptop-black-intel-core-i3-3110m-500gb-hdd-6gb-ram-windows-8-english-k55a-dh31-ca/10235667.aspx?path=9d696d6171076d73f7753e5e087bc187en02&SearchPageIndex=1

Notes

* Up to 5 hours on battery

* everything else checks out

14" Laptop

4. Toshiba 14" Laptop 2.4 GHz $649.99

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/toshiba-toshiba-satellite-pro-14-laptop-black-intel-core-i3-3120m-4gb-ram-320gb-hdd-windows-8-english-c840-003/10241759.aspx?path=32da5017722d3aac1b28473b2109fda9en02&SearchPageIndex=1

Notes

* has the 14" screen you want

* Up to 4 hours on battery

* over budget

* everything else checks out

Staples Offerings

I just looked at Staples, and found 2 good contenders. The speed of the processors isn't as fast as I specified (2.7 GHz), but for you, maybe it could be fast enough since you don't need too much speed. Staples has some good refurbished ones too, but I'm not going to write them up, because I don't think you want refurbished. See below:

*1. Acer Aspire 15.6" Laptop 2.5 GHz Intel Core i3-3120M, 4GB Ram, 500 GB HDD, $399.93 - OUT OF STOCK
* on sale until 7/23/2013 - that price is discounted $100
http://www.staples.ca/en/Acer-Aspire-156-Laptop-25GHz-Intel-Core-i3-3120M-4GB-RAM-500GB/product_169408_2-CA_1_20001

Notes
* Bad thing is it is out of stock
* but if you don't need the laptop right away, and if they give out rain checks, I'd buy this one. It's way below your budget, and it looks like it would be a pretty good laptop!
* good bang for your buck!

*2. Toshiba 15.6" Laptop, 2.2GHz 2nd Generation Intel Core i3-2328M, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD $449.98 (on sale $50 off until 7/23/2013)
http://www.staples.ca/en/Toshiba-156-Laptop-22GHz-2nd-Generation-Intel-Core-i3-2328M-8GB-RAM/product_100171_2-CA_1_20001

Notes
* This one's in stock according to the website (as of 7/19/2013 @ 8:33 pm est)
* everything else checks out
* and it's under your budget

3. Toshiba 15.6" Laptop, 2.40GHz Intel Core i3-3110M, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD $549
http://www.staples.ca/en/Toshiba-156-Laptop-240GHz-Intel-Core-i3-3110M-8GB-RAM-500GB-HDD/product_75524_2-CA_1_20001
* this one's comparable to the ones at the same price at futureshop, except this one has 8 GB RAM (more), but less Hard Drive space 500 HDD

TigerDirect Offerings

**!BEST Match!**
1. Acer TravelMate TMP243-M-6456 Notebook PC - 3rd generation Intel Core i5-3210M 2.5GHz, 4GB DDR3, 500GB HDD, DVDRW, 14 in. Display, Windows 8 64-bit $549 - $20 coupon XND95647 (7/21/2013) = $529.99
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7980799&CatId=4935
* best match for my friend
* small at 14"
* fast 2.5 GHz, 2 core
* enough ram
* 500 GB HDD - 7200 rpm - faster than the usual

!Fastest Processor of the Bunch of 15"!
2. Lenovo IdeaPad Z500 Notebook PC - 3rd generation Intel Core i5-3230M 2.6GHz, 6GB DDR3, 1TB HDD, DVDRW, 15.6" Display, Windows 8 (59361311) $549
* fastest processor of the bunch!!
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7787088&CatId=4935
* fastest processor in all the 15" laptops I looked at

3. Acer TravelMate TMP453-M-6863 Notebook PC - 3rd generation Intel Core i5-3210M 2.5GHz, 4GB DDR3, 500GB HDD, DVDRW, 15.6 in. Display, Windows 8 $549
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7980800&CatId=4935
* comparable to the other 15" laptops at the other stores

Summary

From TigerDirect

Limited time offer!! only until 7/21/2013

* 1. Acer TravelMate TMP243-M-6456 Notebook PC - 3rd generation Intel Core i5-3210M 2.5GHz, 4GB DDR3, 500GB HDD, DVDRW, 14 in. Display, Windows 8 64-bit $529.99 [$20 coupon XND95647 (7/21/2013)]
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7980799&CatId=4935

* I think this one meets what you were looking for, small laptop 14", good processor, fast HDD, enough memory!

!Fastest Processor of the Bunch!
2. Lenovo IdeaPad Z500 Notebook PC - 3rd generation Intel Core i5-3230M 2.6GHz, 6GB DDR3, 1TB HDD, DVDRW, 15.6" Display, Windows 8 (59361311) $549 (fastest processor of the bunch)
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7787088&CatId=4935

OR

From Staples
* If you want to stay on budget, and can wait for stock, I'd recommend buying from Staples if they offer a rain check

*1. Acer Aspire 15.6" Laptop 2.5 GHz Intel Core i3-3120M, 4GB Ram, 500 GB HDD, $399.93 (on sale until 7/23/2013 - that price is discounted $100) - Out of stock
http://www.staples.ca/en/Acer-Aspire-156-Laptop-25GHz-Intel-Core-i3-3120M-4GB-RAM-500GB/product_169408_2-CA_1_20001

Or if you want to get one under budget, and don't mind it being slightly slower:
*2. Toshiba 15.6" Laptop, 2.2GHz 2nd Generation Intel Core i3-2328M, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD $449.98 (on sale $50 off until 7/23/2013)http://www.staples.ca/en/Toshiba-156-Laptop-22GHz-2nd-Generation-Intel-Core-i3-2328M-8GB-RAM/product_100171_2-CA_1_20001

From Futureshop

* 3. HP Pavilion 15.6" Laptop 2.4 GHz $549.99 (If you prefer not to buy refurbished)

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/hewlett-packard-hp-pavilion-15-6-laptop-silver-intel-core-i3-3110m-750gb-hdd-8gb-ram-windows-8-g6-2235ca

If Refurbished is okay, any of the 15.4" or the 17.3" above would be good choices listed above.

If you want the smaller laptop 14", the one I mentioned above would be a great choice from TigerDirect, the one from staples is more expensive. Many of the others that are 14" have really slow processors in them, which is why their costs is lower, and why they last longer on battery. If you have patience for a slower machine, then consider it, but I honestly think it would be a waste of money.

* I recommend getting the one from TigerDirect for 14" before the deal ends on Sunday (only 2 days from now - today being 7/19/2013)
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7980799&CatId=4935

I hope this helps! Those are the 3 major competitor stores. If you are willing to buy online, DELL usually has good deals, and they sometimes have more bang for your buck.

Free Image Resizer for Window 7

2012-12-16T10:58:00.002-08:00

Situation
We bought my mom a new 32GB Asus Transformer tf300t tablet recently for Christmas, and I wanted to pre-copy all the photos from the past year onto it. I found a solution for shrinking my videos down in size to enable me to fit 1+ years worth of videos onto the tablet (see my previous blog posting), but the problem wasn't only with the video sizes, it was with the photo sizes too. That's when I knew I needed a fast and easy way to re-size my collection of photos, one that can convert batches. As you can imagine, we took hundreds of photos in the past year.

Search Criteria
There were a number of free Image Re-sizers, but this time I was looking for one similar to the one I used in Windows XP. Windows XP had one from Microsoft that you can download separately from the initial installment of Windows, that plugged into Windows Explorer, and worked with the right-click menu.

Solution
I did some searching around on Google, and to my surprise, I found a third party application/plug-in that worked the same as the one for Windows XP. It's located on Codeplex's website named...

"Image Resizer for Windows"
Link: http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/

Conclusion
The application works well, and I was able to quickly shrink all my photos from the past year so that they would all fit into the tablet. File sizes went from 1.5 MB-3.5MB to 100KB-250KB, which was awesome, and the pictures remained clear.

Note
If you convert large batches of photos, it will appear as though Windows Explorer has timed-out, but allow it to finish, and Windows Explorer will start responding again. I have a fast computer, and so the time-outs weren't so bad.

Try it out, and see if you like it.

Free Batch Video Resizer and Converter

2012-12-16T09:35:00.000-08:00

I was looking for a batch video converter recently because I had a need to re-size a lot of my home videos that I had recorded with my digital camera at 1080p. In short, the files were very large. For Christmas we got my mom an 32GB Asus Transformer tf300t tablet, and I wanted to precopy the pictures, and videos I recorded throughout the year onto the tablet for her, since she likes looking at them.

Problem 1
My camera records in MOV format. The Asus Transformer was only able to fit about a weeks worth of videos onto it, which I didn't think was good enough. So, I needed something to shrink them (i.e. resize them), because I had planned to copy a whole years worth of videos, and pictures.

Problem 2
The other problem I found was that the Asus Transformer tablet's built in 'Gallery' application wasn't able to fully decode the sound in the MOV formatted videos, which means, they will need to be converted to a compatible format. By trial and error, I found that .wmv files work within the 'Gallery'.

Problem 3
The pictures took up a lot of space too, each being anywhere from 1.5 MB to 3 MB in size. (I'll write another story later to tell you about what I found to solve this problem) It's a nice free third party library.

Software Search Criteria
1. Convert a batch of videos at a time (lots of videos to convert, and one at a time doesn't cut it)
2. Convert to a format that the 'Gallery' software can decode
* I know I could install Dice, or VLC, but I wanted to keep things simple for my non-tech savvy mom
3. Allow me to set the output settings

Google Search
* I found a number of applications that you can pay for, some not so bad in pricing
* Wonderware: it worked well, but only converted one video at a time, and it was more for creating a long movie from several clips which wasn't what I needed (not a good fit, but the software seemed pretty nice)
** watch out, Wonderware installs a number items that don't seem to all be related to the program. I was not happy with that, so I uninstalled the application shortly after testing it
* ACDSEE was one that liked, and it had everything I was looking for, except I still didn't want to pay for it. Link: http://www.acdsee.com/en/products/acdsee-video-converter
* I was just about to buy the ACDSEE application, when I decided to look some more, and luckily I did, because I came across something quite similar, and was everything I was looking for. It was...

"PRISM"
Link: http://www.nchsoftware.com/prism/index.html

It's easy to use, and free. You don't have to install any of the adware that it comes with, so that's pretty great, and so far it hasn't bothered me with any popup ads, so I'm happy.

Note
You can upgrade the application to allow you to do some additional things like burning the videos to disc, among other features. They also have a Pro Version. Since the free basic version did everything I needed it to, I didn't bother to upgrade, and used the free version only.

Conclusion
Prism was the answer to my problems. I ended up converting all my 1080p videos to 480p, which made my whole years worth of videos (a few from the year before) fit nicely on the tablet. The size of all videos went from 100GB to 20GB or so.

PRISM Application Settings - Issues and Solutions
* Issue: there was one option I had to enable, otherwise the software didn't fully convert my videos correctly. If you don't check the option, it will only convert the first 10 sec (approx), and last 10 sec (approx), and the middle part will only have sound, displaying only a frozen picture.
* Solution: In the options check the option that specifies that you should check it if you have playback problems

Drobo Pro Issues: Connection Interfaces are NOT Hot-Swappable

2012-05-27T08:51:00.003-07:00

Story Leading into the Problem
Shortly after un-packaging my Drobo and hooking it up to my computer, I ran into this problem. I'm so use to using USB devices that are hot-swappable, and so I just made the assumption that my Drobo Pro's 3 connection interfaces were hot-swappable too.

Not knowing that it was not hotswappable, I would switch the connection with Drobo powered on, from USB, to iSCSI, and even to Firewire 400. At the time I didn't have my Firewire 800 card yet.

Anyways, at first, it appeared to be hot-swappable. I was able to switch from USB to iSCSI, and to Firewire 400, but after a while of switching the connections back and forth, what started happening scared me a bit. My Drobo stopped responding to any connections. It just wouldn't mount the drives in Windows anymore, even when connected on USB.

What made it worst was that this happened after I had transferred all my data from my internal computer drives into Drobo. I have no backups of the data anywhere else, and I had removed those drives from my computer, and inserted them into my Drobo. Which means Drobo had formatted them, and added the additional space to the total usable space available via Drobo. All of that went smoothly, but when Drobo stopped responding, I assumed the worst had happened, that it lost all my data!

Debugging
1. I tried connecting, and disconnecting the cable. It didn't work.
2. I tried changing the interface, without turning Drobo off first. That didn't work.
3. I searched the user manual for a solution, and searched online to see if anyone else had encountered this problem. From the manual, and a few online postings in the Drobo Knowledgebase, I found out that what I had to do every time I wanted to switch the connection cable on Drobo Pro was to first shut it down using the Drobo Dashboard (safest way to shut it down), then switch the connection, then turn it back on.

Conclusion
1. Drobo Pro is not hot-swappable. To change connections from USB, to iSCSI, to Firewire 800, you must first shut down Drobo. (See how to do it safely below)
2. Switch the connection cable
3. Power Drobo back on.

To Safely Shutdown Drobo
1. You should always use Drobo Dashboard to shutdown Drobo. You can access the software shutdown command by clicking on the Tools > Shutdown.
2. You can use the switch at the back of your Drobo Pro alone, but you have to make sure that Drobo is not busy by waiting until the busy light no longer flashes, and is off. The software shutdown is safest. Doing this prevents data corruption. Corruption happens when you shutdown Drobo while it is in the middle of writing data.
3. Power down your personal computer, which Gurantees that their won't be any data being written to your Drobo Pro from your computer. Wait until your Drobo Pro goes into standby, and then switch it off using the power switch.

Notes
Obviously, don't power off your Drobo if any of the lights on Drobo indicate that it's working on something, like those tasks listed on the inner side of the front panel. Use common sense.

Drobo Pro Issues: Not Detected/Not Mounted with Firewire 800

2012-05-27T07:46:00.003-07:00

Story
When I first got my Drobo Pro the only Firewire connection I had on my computer to connect it to was a Firewire 400 interface. The Drobo works fine on this interface, but this interface transfers slower than using USB 2.0, so what's the point. I decided to invest some money in a good Firewire 800 PCIe card.

Problem
When I connect my Drobo to the Firewire 800 ports my PCIe card, Windows 7 makes 2 sounds, the connection sound, you know, the sound it makes whenever you connect new devices. The problem comes shortly after when Windows makes the disconnection sound. So, after that, it makes sense that the device is not mounted, and that nothing happens. What doesn't make sense is why it is disconnecting after connecting.

Debugging
1. I've tested the Firewire 800 ports with a different external hard drive that I have that runs on Firewire 800, and it works great. The drive gets mounted immediately after connecting it, and copying speeds are amazing for large files; not so amazing for lots of small files, but that's normal.

Debugging Status
So, that's where I am with this problem. I've done a number of searches on Google with no success. I keep getting unrelated results on Google and in the Drobo knowledge base.

Suspicions
I haven't put much more time into figuring this one out, but I suspect it must have something to do with my Firewire 800 card not working so well with my computer, or maybe not working so well with Drobo, since Drobo does work with my Firewire 400 connection interface. hmmm... I'll provide an update once I have more time to investigate.

The reason why I want to get Firewire 800 working is so that my network doesn't get bogged down when I do large file transfers. I've had times when I was copying a large number of files to my Drobo, and my internet nearly stopped responding, or started to time out. So, even though Firewire 800 might not be as fast as Gigabit Lan, it would allow the Drobo to operate on an isolated channel, so to speak. It won't be interfering with other things, and other things won't interfere with it, which is what I want.

Drobo Pro Issues: Drobo Dashboard Service Issue

2012-05-26T21:12:00.003-07:00

Problem
I've encountered a new issue today. I booted up my computer as normal, and the Drobo Dashboard appeared to have loaded as normal, but when I went to switch my Drobo from USB 2.0 to iSCSI, nothing happened. I immediately double-clicked the Drobo icon in the taskbar/system tray, and that's when I got the following message:

Title of Messagebox: Drobo Dashboard Service
Error Message: A required portion of Drobo Dashboard is no longer running. Please relaunch Drobo Dashboard to correct the issue. If this problem persists, then re-install Drobo Dashboard. You can get the latest Drobo Dashboard at drobo.com/support

(See image below)

Debugging
1. First I tried to close the Dashboard, and then reopen it. Result, I got the same error message.

2. I shut Drobo down, and rebooted my personal computer, and then tried again. Same error message.

3. I went to http://drobo.com/support as instructed by the error message, and went to the download page.
i. I downloaded the latest copy of the dashboard.
ii. I ran the .exe file, and attempted to re-install it, but the only options were to repair or remove. So, I chose to repair it. It started progressing in repairing the software, but then it ran into a problem with the Drobo Dashboard Service, it was unable to start it back up after it stopped the service.
iii. I had to cancel the 'Repair', and from there the installer rolled back the changes.
iv. Now what?

4. Checked to see the status of the Drobo Dashboard Service via the Services windows module (which you can access via Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services).
i. I found the service under the same name "Drobo Dashboard Service".
ii. I right-clicked it and viewed it's properties, and saw that it's start up type was 'Disabled', which is weird. It should be set to automatic.
iii. I attempted to start it up by setting the 'Startup type' to 'Automatic', after which I was going to click 'Apply', and then click the 'Start' button, but when I went to click 'Apply' button after setting it to 'Automatic' there was a warning box which said that the Windows Service was marked for deletion. This prevented me from making any changes whatsoever.
iv. Now what?

5. I decided that I would try uninstalling the 'Drobo Dashboard', and then reinstall it. So,
i. I rebooted my computer to clear out anything left from my previous attempt to repair the software.
ii. When my computer finished booting, I uninstalled the 'Drobo Dashboard' by going into 'Start > Control Panel > Features and Programs > Click 'Drobo Dashboard'' and then clicking 'Uninstall'. I allowed it to finish.
iii. Then rebooted my computer again before reinstalling the 'Dashboard' from the setup .exe file that I downloaded. (i.e. it was saved to my downloads folder with the name: drobodashboardinstaller_2.1.2.exe). I allowed the computer to complete the installation
iv. Then I opened 'Drobo Dashboard'. Since my device was on iSCSI, I had to reset the 'Discover Settings' so that it would look at a manual IP address which I specified, and not use 'Automatic Discovery'.
v. After setting this up, I waited, and waited, and waited for Drobo to be discovered for about 3-5 minutes, but it never was discovered.
vi. Okay, now what's wrong?

6. I tried to shutdown Drobo, and reboot my computer. It didn't work, Drobo was not being initiated, it kept going into 'Standby' after I powered it up, and it completed it's boot process.

Solution Found
7. I decided to check the 'iSCSI Initiator' module, and saw in the main tab (Targets tab) that it was showing the status of Disconnected. I thought, that's weird, and so I clicked 'Connect'. It worked! Right away, my computer mounted the drives, and I saw my Drobo appear in the 'Drobo Dashboard'.

It's odd to me that 'Drobo Dashboard' wasn't able to initiate the 'Connect' command when it was opened after the installation.

How to Open iSCSI Initiator
Again, to get to the iSCSI Initiator go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > iSCSI Initiator.

~~Conclusion~~
When you see this error message, it's best to uninstall 'Drobo Dashboard', and 'Reinstall' it. If you are using iSCSI like I am, and your Drobo does not mount, make sure to open the 'iSCSI Initiator', select Drobo from the targets listing, and click the 'Connect' button to connect your computer to Drobo.

Revised Conclusion
When you see this error message, it's best to
1. Stop 'Drobo Dashboard' Service
2. Quit out of the 'Drobo Dashboard' application running in your task bar (system tray)
3. Open 'iSCSI Initiator Properties', check to see if it has disconnected, if not disconnect
Then
4. Start 'Drobo Dashboard' Service
5. Start 'Drobo Dashboard' application
6. In 'iSCSI Initiator Properties', make sure the entry for Drobo under the 'Targets' tab shows a 'Status' of 'Connected', if not, click the 'Connected' button
* the entry for mine says:
"iqn.####-##.com.datarobotics:drobopro.############.node#
- I'm not sure if that is private info, so I've typed in # signs where the numbers are

Drobo Pro Issues: Not Detected on iSCSI

2012-05-24T17:56:00.002-07:00

Story Leading Up to the Problem
I encountered this very early on. It was during my setup of the device. I had connected the device via USB 2.0, and was inserting the new hard drives into the bays. Everything was going really well, the Drobo was acting as described. It detected that I inserted new drives, and it automatically formatted them.

I installed the Dashboard software as the quick start up guide instructed, and then updated the Firmware and Dashboard itself using the 'Check Updates' button. Everything was so easy at this point.

I decided to try setup iSCSI while I was connect via USB, since I read the manual, and it said I would have to setup a static IP for the Drobo on the network. I did that, it was pretty easy using Drobo Dashboard. I setup 'Drobo Discovery Settings' to disable the 'auto-discovery' feature, and to enter a direct 'Manual Device Discovery' IP address, thinking that this would be a lot faster, since the software wouldn't have to scan the IP Address to find Drobo, it can go directly to the IP Address I entered.

I shutdown Drobo, and changed the connection to iSCSI, and it detected Drobo.

Wonderful, I thought, but then, I decided I didn't like the IP address I assigned Drobo to, so I reconnected via USB, and change it. I ended up changing it another 3-4 times before settling on an IP address. At the same time, I had setup 'Manual Device Discovery' IP Addresses, and removed them for each of the 3-4 IP Addresses. (i.e. 192.168.10.48, 192.168.10.47, 192.168.10.2, 192.168.10.3, I settled on 192.168.10.48)

Something happened, because when I reconnected Drobo via iSCSI it wasn't detected by the Dashboard, and it didn't mount. Uh, oh, I thought. I broke my Drobo, what's wrong now? I tried a reboot of Drobo, and it still didn't connect. I connected it back on USB to make sure it wasn't broken, and it connected, and mounted the volumes. Oh good.

Debugging
1. Okay, now I decided to change the IP, maybe something is wrong with that one, so I tried that. Nope, it didn't work.
2. I remember there was a delay in Drobo being detected on iSCSI after it is turned on, so I rebooted it, and waited, and waited patiently for 5 minutes, and nothing.
* At this point, I thought I broke the iSCSI interface, but thought, it can't be that fragile.

3. Not knowing much about the iSCSI initiator, I decided to search my computer to see if I can locate it, or if it was built into the Dashboard. I searched the Dashboard, and wasn't able to do anything, I changed settings, and nothing helped. I then searched my control panel, but wasn't able to locate it. I then did a general search from the 'Start' button (Search Programs and Files box), and typed in 'iSCSI', and there it was in the search results. I pinned it to the task bar so I can more easily access it.

To Access iSCSI Initiator
Later on I did find it in the 'Control Panel' > Administrative Tools > iSCSI Initiator.

Debugging Cont'd
4. Okay, so now I browsed the iSCSI Initiator window, and tabs, and found something to be strange. Under the 'Discovery' tab, it had all 3 of the IPs I entered, maybe more (ones I forgot to mention), but I thought I had deleted all but one of them from the Drobo Dashboard. So, why are they still in the iSCSI initiator? hmmm...

5. I noticed the iSCSI initiator was running heavily, it was even causing my computer to slow down, which is weird, because my computer is so fast, and with so many cores. So, I read the text in the window and thought, if there are less addresses in there, my computer wouldn't have to initiate so many devices. So, I started selecting each one that I knew was not in use, and clicked the 'Remove' button. I removed all but 1 from the list box labeled "The system will look for Targets on following portals:". I left the IP 192.168.10.48, which was what I set my Drobo IP address to.

6. I then disconnected my Drobo, shutdown, and connected the iSCSI cable back on. When I turned my Drobo back on, Guess what?! That fixed the problem! My Drobo was discovered almost instantly. Okay, it wasn't instant, but it was discovered, and the drives mounted.

Conclusion
So, lesson here is to check the 'iSCSI Initiator' > Discovery Tab, and make sure that it only has the IP Address you set your Drobo to have for iSCSI operation. If you have more than one iSCSI device, that requires the iSCSI initiator, then you will see more addresses, but you should make sure that this tab contains only the addresses that are in use. You should remove addresses that are not in use. It would seem 'Drobo Dashboard' doesn't cleanup after itself! Drobo, Drobo, when will you learn?!

Drobo Pro Issues: Additional Volumes Not Detected (Not Mounted) on iSCSI

2012-05-24T17:11:00.005-07:00

Problem
After I was able to figure out how to add additional volumes using the USB 2.0 connection, instead of iSCSI, I ran into another problem when I decided to change the connection back to iSCSI to take advantage of the higher transfer speeds, the new volume didn't mount. I did see the new volume mount when I was connected via USB, but when I changed the connection to iSCSI, it wasn't there. Only the first volume mounted.

Debugging
1. I didn't know why, and so I thought the first volume was dead. I switched the connection back to USB to check to see if the new volume I added was still there or not. I shutdown Drobo, made the connection switch, and powered it back on. Via USB, my computer detected both volumes, and mounted them both. I was quite puzzled at this point. Some thoughts came to mind, which needed answering:
i. What's wrong with iSCSI?
ii. Can iSCSI handle more than 1 volume?
iii. What's wrong with the initiator? Why is it not initiating the 2nd volume?

2. At this point, I was thinking, I need to learn more about iSCSI initiator in order to narrow down the problem. I did a Google Search using various keywords, and found a bunch of iSCSI articles, none of which were related to Drobo, but I skimmed through them anyways to learn more about iSCSI and the iSCSI initiator. I learned about iSCSI and a bit about the initiator, and from what I learned, I was able to start looking around for the problem on my computer.

Aside
iSCSI initiator is included in Windows 7, I believe, but when I installed the Dashboard on my Windows XP machine, it had to install the initiator as a part of installing the Dashboard.
To access the iSCSI initiator, Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > iSCSI Initiator

Debugging Cont'd
3. So, I started fiddling around with the iSCSI initiator, and seeing what the problem was. I was able to identify from looking at the iSCSI initiator main screen that it was only initiating Node 0, which according to the Drobo Dashboard was volume 1. I attempted to add another line to the initiator using a similar address as the first one, except changing Node 0 to Node 1. It didn't work. The iSCSI initiator didn't accept the new address. I tried a few other things, but none of it was working.

4. I continued my Google Search, and came across a very long article on how to setup iSCSI drives, or something like that. I was skimming the screen captures, when I came across a screen capture of the 'Computer Management' tool, which I have used before. I skimmed the description, and it said that it was possible for the computer drives to have volumes that were not online.

To Access 'Computer Management'
* Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management
* > Storage > Disk Management

I opened the tool, and Bingo! I saw the problem. The 2nd volume was offline. Though the messaging said it was due to a Group Policy on the computer. I know of group policies, but I don't know what I would do to fix the problem.

5. So, next, I searched Google for group policies, specifically for Windows 7. I also had installed a network monitoring program recently, where I remember the program installed some Group Policies for my computer, and so I opened that program, and deleted the group policies. I tried a reboot of Drobo, and my computer, and it didn't work! Google wasn't much help either. Now what?

Discovery of Solution
6. Just out of curiosity, I right clicked the part where it said 'Offline' in the 'Computer Management' tool beside the drive volume that was showing 'Offline' to see if I could get more information, or options, and Guess What?!! In the right-click menu that popped-up, it had an 'Online' option. That's all I had to do. I click 'Online', and voila, the volume mounted!

Conclusion/Solution
So, the lesson here is to go into 'Computer Management', and right click on the grey section beside the volume that is showing up as 'Offline', and bring it online by selecting 'Online' from the right-click menu.

(Sorry, I don't have any screen captures, I didn't take any when I had the problem, but I'll try to add some later when I have some time just to show you the general windows I'm talking about in my blog. I really wanted to share this because it was yet, another headache which I hope I can help others avoid.)

Drobo Pro Issues: Setting Up Additional Volumes

2012-05-24T16:26:00.001-07:00

Problem
The first time I added an additional volume, I had a lot of problems! Though it's quite possible that it's because I didn't read the manual.

Aside
Due to my Drobo Pro not mounting the drive when I connect it on Firewire 800, I use iSCSI on gigabit Ethernet. (Windows 7 Ultimate)

Problem Cont'd
With that being said, on my Ethernet connection, I attempted to add a new Volume using the DroboPro dashboard. Everything appeared to be running fine, I filled in the forms to set the volume format, and size of drive I wanted to setup. I setup the new volume for 16TB, which is possible due to Drobo supporting thin provisioning. I don't actually have that space, but since it allows for such volume settings, I decided to set it. Note, this was not the problem.

After I finished filling in the forms, and confirmed that I wanted the process to proceed, the problem came when the dashboard reported that it could not format the drive because it was in use. It instructed me to close down any programs that may be using it, and then said it would reboot Drobo and resume with formatting. It seemed to be going well, but then the dashboard just hung... it later timed out, and reported that it needed to cancel the operation because Drobo was being accessed by a program.

Debugging
1. I attempted a full reboot of my computer, and a reboot of Drobo. It didn't fix the issue.
2. I attempted to shutdown any process from Task Manager that didn't appear to need to be running. It still didn't work.

Suspicions of the Problem and Possible Solution
I started to suspect that the iSCSI initiator was the program that the Dashboard was talking about. I didn't have much knowledge of the iSCSI initiator, except that it is a program that runs on the computer that talks to Drobo. So, after 2 hours of failed attempts on iSCSI, I shut down Drobo, disconnected the iSCSI interface, and then connected Drobo to my computer via USB 2.0.

Solution Found
Guess what?! on USB 2.0, it worked!! I don't know if this was in the manual, and I still don't, but I'm really glad I found out what the heck was going on. They should have programmed a smarter Dashboard, that is, it should be able to detect what interface Drobo is connect by, and message to the user that they should be using USB in order to add new volumes. You would think this would be by default, seeing how Drobo is quite advance, but you'd be wrong. It sure would have saved me a lot time iand from getting a headache if they did.

Conclusion
So, lesson learned, when administrating volumes in Drobo Dashboard, one should be using the USB connection cable. :0)

Drobo Pro

2012-05-19T08:18:00.001-07:00

I was looking for an external hard drive unit for the longest time, comparing them, and trying to find out what's currently available in the market, what each one offers, how hard it is to set each one up, what's affordable, which unit is the best bang for the buck, and also to figure out what I wanted in one of these units. I'm the kind of person who wants all the features, but I also like convenience.

The other units that I was considering include:
* D-Link
* IOMega
* Netgear
* QNAP
and a few others. Pretty much searched Google search engine, BestBuy.ca, FutureShop.ca, TigerDirect.ca, Amazon.ca, Staples.ca...

I was able filter most of the units out, because one of the criteria I had was to have a unit that was not fully enclosed. That is, one that you can install your own hard drives, and replace failed hard drives without needing to send it to the manufacturer. I think units that require that are crazy!

What I was looking for
* convenience
* easy of use
* as many bays as possible
* $1500 at most
* hard drives can be removed and installed by the user
* to be able to share files over the network by connecting to the device only, not requiring other computers to be on to do the sharing

After a couple years of looking I finally decided to buy one. It took so long because I didn't really need one, and well, even though I could make due without one now, I decided to buy one anyways. So, I bought a Drobo Pro! It turned out to be a very expensive unit, but for the features it offers, I'm hoping it was worth it. I actually got it on sale at TigerDirect.ca for about $1500 or so.

Pros
The features that I just liked so much about the Drobo is:
1. It's ability to handle the configuration of the hard drives in it for data redundancy, automatically.
2. I like how I don't have to have all the hard drives from the get-go for setting up RAID 5/6 with this unit, that I can add them as I need to.
3. It has a great feature that allows one to switch out smaller hard drives for larger ones as space runs out.
4. I also like that it works with any brand of internal hard drives, and any speed, and sizes.
5. I also like how the drives are hot-swappable (I know, this feature is common on most)
6. That there is no hard drive 'seat' that you have to screw the hard drive into before inserting it into the enclosure.
7. 8 drive bays for expansion

I'm a man of convenience, so I like things that are easy, and convenient to use, and that's pretty much why I got this unit, even though I know it is lacking in other areas, and is expensive compared to other units. It's price is anywhere from 2X to 4X the price of other units that offer the same number of bays, and possibly more features in other areas. Though, from what I've read, there may be a lot of units available out there, but many don't offer the unique features that this unit offers.

The Drobo Pro has 8 drive bays, which is just awesome for expansion. It has 3 hardware interfaces, which is nice, because it gives you more options on how you can connect it to your computer depending on what your computer offers. It has Firewire 800, USB 2.0, and iSCSI.

Drawbacks
1. What I didn't know when I bought the unit is that it is not easily shared on the network. I didn't know much about iSCSI, other than that I can connect it to a router on my network. I didn't know that I couldn't have more than 1 device accessing the files on the storage unit at one time via iSCSI. I think the only way to share your files is if you have a single computer connected to the Drobo, which in turn shares the Drobo as a resource on your network. I think this is a big drawback, because something I wanted to have was a Network-Attached-Storage device (NAS) that can run alone, and share files on the network without requiring another computer to be on. I wanted to be able to connect to the stored file from anywhere in the house, and backup to it from any computer on the network. This is not the case with the DroboPro, though I believe there are other Models that you can buy that have a gigabit Ethernet interface, and are built for sharing files over the network.
2. Even though it does offer the 3 interfaces, I've found file transfer to be really slow! To move 1 TB of data from my internal computer hard drive via Gigabit Ethernet took a full day. A little more because Windows Explorer kept stopping to confirm what to do with certain files, and if I wasn't at my computer than it would halt the whole copy process. The transfer speed was slow due to a large number of small files, it was transferring from 15 MB/s to 30 MB/s (Megabytes). It never got to 125 MB/s which is what I was hoping for.

Issues
I did run into some issues which I will go into more detail about in another posting, and how I resolved them. In short they were:
1. iSCSI Configuration Issues
- it worked the very first time I added a new IP address, but after changing the IP address a few times, my computer stopped picking up the Drobo Pro for some reason. I had to switch back to using USB 2.0.
2. Over iSCSI - my computer didn't mount the 2nd volume I created in Drobo, for some reason it only mounted when I counted via USB 2.0
3. Connection interfaces are not hot-swappable
- if you try to swap from iSCSI to USB to Firewire, the manual instructs you to power down the unit each time. Being someone who doesn't read the manual until I have to, I didn't know this, and so I ran into many issues when I was hot-swapping the interface
4. Currently my Drobo Pro doesn't mount when connected via Firewire 800.
- I haven't figured this one out yet

[I did resolve #1 to #3, I'll be adding additonal posting to explain each issue in more detail.]

Conclusion
Anyways, I've been using it for a couple of weeks now, and though I've had ups and downs with this unit. Now that I have gotten use to some of it's quirks, I understand how it works better, and I have found that I do like the unit! I recently got additional hard drives to add to it, and I was able to add them in without any effort, and the unit took care of the rest; formatting, and making the space available. All I had to do was open the hard drive packaging, and push them into the empty slots.

For more information on Drobo, and units available, visit their website at: drobo.com
Note: I'm not a reseller or anything like that.

My New Blog

2012-05-19T06:53:00.002-07:00

I've been wanting to create a Blog for a while now, but I'm only getting to actually create one for myself today. I heard about them, but this would be my first time using it. I decided to go with a Google Blog because I already have an account with them, and also because others I know are using them.

What I plan on using this blog for is to share anything I find interesting in my life, mostly revolving around solutions to problems I've run into at work, and home. Though, I may end up sharing other interesting things as well, such as sharing my experience with some of the gadgets I've purchased. Who knows, the possibilities are endless!

Dieu's Stuff

DieusPrograms.com

Entering the Game Programming World

Car Won't Start hearing clicking sounds only

Great Refurbished Wireless Router!

D-Link Wireless AC Router (DIR-810L/RE) - Refurbished - Online Only $24.99 + tax

D-Link Wireless AC Router (DIR-810L/RE) New $59.95http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/d-link-d-link-dual-band-wireless-ac750-router-dir-810l-dir-810l/10257102.aspx?path=52167797ffe0d43cae39ae405300b88fen02

Recent Laptop Comparison - Great Value - The Low-End and the High-End

AppleSyncNotifier.exe - Entry Point Not Found

Drobo Pro - Can't Access Files After it is detected by Windows 7 and not detected by Drobo Dashboard - What a Nightmare!!

Setting up my 2nd Drobo 5N

Drobo 5N - Initial Setup Issues - It doesn't recognize my Computer Hard Drives!!

Alienware - Door Controller has stopped working

Looking for a taskbar for Multiple Monitors?

Shopping for a Streaming Media Box Player

Research Results for Helping my Friend Find a Good Laptop around $530 CA in London, Ontario, Canada

Free Image Resizer for Window 7

Free Batch Video Resizer and Converter

Drobo Pro Issues: Connection Interfaces are NOT Hot-Swappable

Drobo Pro Issues: Not Detected/Not Mounted with Firewire 800

Drobo Pro Issues: Drobo Dashboard Service Issue

Drobo Pro Issues: Not Detected on iSCSI

Drobo Pro Issues: Additional Volumes Not Detected (Not Mounted) on iSCSI

Drobo Pro Issues: Setting Up Additional Volumes

Drobo Pro

My New Blog

D-Link Wireless AC Router (DIR-810L/RE) New $59.95
http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/d-link-d-link-dual-band-wireless-ac750-router-dir-810l-dir-810l/10257102.aspx?path=52167797ffe0d43cae39ae405300b88fen02