Thick 'n' thin drive-bay-adaptors

1039

I should have paid more attention when ordering those other two optical drive bay adaptors: turns out they're 12.7mm deep as opposed to the 9.5mm adaptors I've had before. I imagine they're cheap because this thick size is less easy to sell… Anyway, such an amateur mistake…

I tried to fit one into the müllered T410 (reasoning that a HDD would be more useful than an optical drive, and I have an external optical drive anyway) but it was too chonky. Can I fit one in PavNAS and put the slim adaptor in the T410? Nope; still too phat.

I had a brainwave and remembered all the many, many other places where I've used these adaptors; one of these is in the ancient Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO. Took it apart and found there was plenty of room to fit a deeper adaptor in (bonus: it works!), so that's one slim adaptor recovered.

One of the old desktops (former "NAS", former LRPC (Living Room PC)) is also fitted with an adaptor (one of the reasons I managed to squeeze four hard-drives into that slim case…). This too looks to be able to fit a phat adaptor, so that's two slim adaptors recovered. I like to have spare of these handy as they are hyper-useful.

This is like a puzzle adventure game!

I don't understand Amazon's business-model

2029

Went with a 500GB in PavNAS’s CD bay adaptor and put the 1TB connected via USB.

The dodgy CD bay adaptor makes me question its future. I decided to put in for a refund with Amazon… and they just accepted it as faulty and said I didn't need to send it back! I guess they don't bother for low-value stuff. Turns out the same product is also available for £4 on there, so I ordered a couple more, just in case the faulty one decides to completely fail.

Drive-bay-adaptor shenanigans; buy cheap: cry

1223

Not having Amazon Prime is no hardship: I ordered my umpteenth HDD optical bay adaptor on Saturday with a given delivery day of Tuesday; arrived yesterday.

The plan is to fit it to PavNAS with a 1TB drive in for extra storage (as well as faster-than-current-USB storage).

• Fitted; computer is weird: starts up, and Explorer won't start…

• Shut down: hangs while shutting down.

• Hard power-off.

• Start up: hangs at HP logo screen with ever-spinning circle.

• Hard off and on: same.

• Repeat: “Preparing automatic repair” for ages then hangs at blank screen.

• Removed adaptor: normal behaviour.

Now I'm wondering: is the adaptor shit… or is the HDD not blank, and perhaps even contains an OS…? Amateur not to check before fitting.

One more test of it fitted before I head up three flights of stairs to plug it and check: hangs at start.

Time to check the contents of disk AND try the adaptor with another HDD.

• Adaptor with same HDD in decrepit T410: works ok…

• Adaptor with same HDD plugged in via USB optical drive adaptor (are you counting the adaptions there?): nowt.

• 1TB HDD connected via USB SATA adaptor to other PC: ok.

Back at PavNAS, same setup: hangs at startup.

Adaptor + randomly-selected 320GB HDD (after off-on cycle to cancel Automatic Repair): starts, but disk doesn't show in explorer or disk (though I can feel it spinning).

So, it worked in another laptop; time to try the adaptor in another laptop, and try another adaptor in PavNAS.

• T410 + new adaptor + 1TB drive = works, but needed reformatting, weirdly

• Old adaptor with 240GB drive in PavNAS = works

So, logically, next try the 1TB drive in the old adaptor in the PavNAS, right?

… hangs on startup.

I wonder if this laptop just doesn't deliver enough power to the CD bay to run this, quite big, drive. Looking at first at HDD specs, this almost made sense: the 1TB drive needs 800mA of current, whereas smaller drives need less than 500mA

…but the optical drive I took out of PavNAS needs 1.5A. What is going on?

Next, I'll put in one of the 500GB drives that was connected via USB to PavNAS, and see if that works. Then perhaps the 1TB drive can be swapped to the USB method.

• Old adaptor + 500GB drive works in PavNAS 

• New adaptor + 250GB drive in T410 does the same thing that happened to the 1TB drive: needs formatting…

Installing a defunct OS (Windows 7) on a defunct machine (T410). Also: swearing at Driverpack "Solutions".

1308

• Ordered drive bay adaptor for PavNAS 

• Tried installing Win7 on HP Stream as MM backup machine

• No dice - seems there's no Win7 drivers for eMMC, and drivers missing during install anyway.

• Burnt a DVD! (It has been a while.) Before I found out about the eMMC issue, thought I would try installing from optical drive rather than USB.

• T410 RESURRECTION! One of the three(!) T410s only exists as a parts-donor for the others; every one of the four(!) I’ve bought has had some little issue (cover or screws missing, cracked fascias, etc.) and one of them as ended up as the one with all the broken & missing bits. Then I thought: why not try installing something on it, like Windows 7 (as a back-up for the T60)? Utterly pointless, as I could have just put a different harddrive in one of the working T410s, but it’s a laugh innit.

2215

T410 log(ish)

• Win7 failed to install using all-in-one (i.e. "choose Windows" version) microSD installer.

• Even burnt a DVD and tried it, but same.

• Downloaded a Win7 Ultimate SP1 ISO and Rufused it to a USB: success.

• Running Windows 7! Keyboard & mouse functionality on this wonky old T410 is slowing things….

• … and, madly, I'm trying DriverPack “Solutions” for drivers first (because I am lazy)

2248

Well, Driverpack did a few drivers and then I tried to activate windows using a couple of techniques. The first one seems to be corrupted and failed; the second one looked like it worked, but then the computer won't get back to windows on restart: A disk read error occurred. Apparently.

Don't know if this is activator related as I installed a lot of things since last restart, but it seems I'm reïnstalling Windows again…

It's possible (but I'm not sure) that this all occurred because I installed windows on an already-existant harddrive partition (i.e. one previously created in windows as a basic storage partition). This time I've deleted that partition and gone for the normal practice of installing upon unallocated space.

A potential new 'NAS'...?

1030

Change of plan - again.

I compared the comic reading experience of the new HP to the old T60 and it was better on the T60! Viewing more of the comic vertically is a better experience. Anyway, they share the disadvantage of not having batteries so both need to be plugged in at all times, so the newer laptop didn't win on that front.

What this means, however, is that the HP (let's call it “Pav”) is now free for another use, and that use could be as the NAS PC. It's faster and more useable than the little Stream, plus has more ports and storage. I tried connecting it up in place of the Stream and it didn't seem to use much more power. Maybe PavNAS is the way! I might even fit an optical drive bay adaptor to get a HDD onboard for even faster access.

Wider screen & higher resolution: not always better...

1308

This new HP has seemed promising this far, but I may have hit a snag: the screen resolution. It is wider screen than the T60, but has the same vertical resolution. This means that when reading a comic book and I set the zoom to ‘fit width’, the lower resolution screen of the T60 actually displays more vertically.

New (to me) HP Pavilion; installing Windows for the umpteenth time

1534

Win11 IoT seems to be running ok on T410; just fine-tuning to do before installing it in the kitchen.

The Gods of Acquisition have smiled upon me once again, and only the day after offering them a prayer: an old HP Pavilion 255 G5 with a pretty basic set of ingredients. Honestly, it is a cheap POS, being entirely made of not just plastic, but cheap plastic. It feels like a fake. Very strange.

On the plus side, it's very lightweight, especially after removing the (utterly dead) battery and pointless optical drive. Could be a very good comic book reader, as I'm sure it uses less power than the T60. On that, additionally, as it'll be Win11 IoT very soon, it'll be secure to use online, unlike the Win7 T60.

Furthermore, for the first time upon being bestowed an old laptop, it already has an SSD installed; sure, it's only 128GB, but it is M.2 so pretty modern by my standards!

With IoT on there, it should be fairly responsive, even with only 4GB of RAM. It'll also be quite a useful exercise in becoming used to Win11 and doing the tweaks ‘needed’ to make it better.

I'm slightly ashamed that I was baffled when I couldn't boot from USB, especially as the procedure (enable USB boot; disable secure boot; put in HP’s special code after making these changes) is exactly the same as that I've literally just done on that HP Stream…

Interestingly, the install isn't going that well so far: after the initial percentage-done count, it restarted and then got stuck at the point where one could press a key to boot from USB. I removed the USB, then it claims no boot devices. Tried reënabling Secure Boot, but still no boot devices. Trying to install from USB. Again.

Failed again. Very weird. Trying to Install Win10 IoT instead. Went better (and made me nostalgic for Win10 which I didn't think I'd ever feel; maybe I'll feel that way about Win11 one day too…)

In Windows, the USB drive kept popping in & out of existence: possibly dodgy port causing install fail? Shall I try AGAIN?

(I wonder how many times I've installed Windows in my life…)

Currently making a new boot USB in Rufus for Win11. I've previously been using a microSD card in a USB adaptor and it hasn't always been great, so let's see if this helps.

Tried the SD card in another USB adaptor and in another USB port: same result.

Trying the newly-created Win11 USB install disk; this time I've got Rufus to make it UEFI so Secure Boot is ON in BIOS. Will this make a difference…?

Ooh, progress! It's survived a restart and the installation is continuing. Seems to be working, but the lack of RAM is hurting. Oh well, it should be fine when all the setup is done.

I think the problem was the microSD card adaptor; it had previously been a bit dodgy, but had now completely fallen apart.

Unholy Spaghetti NAS

1300

StreamNAS was still up and running this morning and I could access the drives from another PC! It's already doing better than BushNAS. 

Just need to move loads of files around.

A few weeks ago I installed Win10 IoT on the backup T410 and it all went very well; the laptop has been working great as the main Kitchen machine since then.

Today, I'm doing the same on the other T410, but I'm going straight to Win11 IoT. The installations went well on three laptops I sold recently (and noöne’s complained so far!) so let's give it a go on a lovely ol’ T410. Here we go…!

StreamNAS Power Consumption

1229

Setting up the Stream as STREAMNAS!

First of all, I should probably list the (both self- and externally-imposed) criteria for my ‘NAS’:

1. Always-on, and thus low-power.
   

2. Non-fixed: needs to be person-portable.
   

3. Cheap! I was determined to see what I could do with what I have rather than simply 'buy my way out' of the problem.
   

4. Beginner-level... I'm not quite an experimenter yet, but I have ambitions.
   

Basically, I wanted an always-on, networked, backup system; it’s just a glorified (but somehow unholy) NAS. It consists of an old fanless netbook that was gathering dust and three old hard-drives (in various external cases).

My use-case is a central repository for the home which can be written-to and read-from with any device on the network, including mobiles, as a basic back-up. It means I can access data, & especially media, where I would previously need to copy over piles of media whenever I set up a new PC.

Every couple of weeks, I plug in an external HDD and copy over new data for off-site storage.

Using between 26W and 32W of power, which is more than BushNAS, but probably the lowest I'll manage with what I have. (Again, I'm trying to avoid buying my way out of problems.)

24.08pkWh–¹/1000/100*24h*365.25*28W = about £59 per year.

(£/Wh x hours in a year x ~average power draw)

Shares are (so far) appearing ok on another PC.

Seems to go down to around 15W when screen is closed: even better!

Driver Drivel

2027

Driverpack can piss off; dunno why I bother.

Internet was being shit, so I moved the laptop to basically next to the router cos the signal was nearly nothing. Luckily, Windows update had enough signal to update the driver and sort it out.

It's all updated now, just waiting for me to set up the “NAS”.

Lost a bit of motivation, after the whole sharing debacle the other day.

Also been distracted by LEGO, which is probably healthy.

Had a go at using the T60 for comics: it's great apart from somewhere between the loft and living room, the screen sustained some damage on one edge. Maybe I should have been gentler with such an old machine… Anyway, it's actually quite easy to forget it's there when reading.

HP Stream 11 NAS

1010 (=10!)

So, back to the low-power always-on NAS!

The BushNAS is apparently useless as it doesn't remain on and\or it forgets the WiFi network.

Now that I have a comic book reader in the form of the T60, the HP Stream 11 can have a go at being the NAS.

An interesting quirk of the HP is when changes are made in the BIOS: I turned off secure boot to enable legacy boot from a usb, but when I went to boot menu after a restart, the usb still didn't show up. I presumed it meant I needed a UEFI boot disc, so reflashed the USB stick. However…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h0dTdlfZ9vI

A very useful person made this video which demonstrates this quirk which I've never seen before: after making the change I did in the BIOS, the computer paused at next boot and asks you to input a four-digit code from the screen, presumably to prevent automated changes made by malware. Very interesting! I kinda saw the screen flash up when I first made the changes, but didn't pay any attention and escaped past it, and was then slightly confused when the changes I’d made in BIOS had reverted, but needing the code inputted explains that.

Anyway, I'm currently doing the Win10 IoT install.

That done, Windows 10 IoT starts ok! 

Tried activation, but internet keeps dropping in & out, so time to install drivers. Trying Driverpack Solutions.

Sharing difficulties between Windows PCs

1641

Zarking hell, so much is going wrong.

I'll start with the positives: I've repurposed the Lenovo “IBM” ThinkPad T60 as a comic book reader. It was previously used exclusively for MemoryMap, but a second offline use for it seems sensible, mainly because I want to (attempt to…)  repurpose the HP Stream as a file server being as how the Bush tablet refuses to stay connected to the network. The HP is currently running Windows 8(!) so I'll try installing Windows 10 IoT.

The old desktop is up & running but being weird about network sharing. It seemed to work (I think) but then I changed the computer name to something that wasn’t immemorable gobbledygook and another computer on the network can't see shares from it. Name-change-related? Who knows.

Then I tried sharing from the HP to the desktop: nothing.

From desktop to Dell laptop: nothing.

From Dell laptop to desktop and HP: nothing.

Either the computers don't appear, or Windows claims usernames or passwords are incorrect, when I know they're not.

I think I'm a little tired of it all; it's especially draining because when I tried it on the Bush tablet, all the sharing worked straight away (I could even access the shares on my phone) so for it not to work on all these very capable computers is quite disheartening.

Turned them all off for today; maybe I'll look at it again when I have more energy.

Only have ONE HDD plugged in when installing Windows!!!1!

0021

Gah! Windows needs to be installed on Disk 0 (i.e. the SSD should be in sata position 0) or else the Windows install puts a random tiny partition on the disk in position 0.

Swap motherboards? Check number of SATA ports.

1355

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-installed-recovery-partition-on-second/01dde377-a8bb-4b3f-8aeb-8d37bff5898e

A quote from this page seems pertinent:

“It is never a good idea to have more than one drive attached when installing Windows.”

Wise words.

1454

First tried diskpart cleaning the disk with the extra boot segment on; wouldn't let me.

Then plugged boot SSD into Disk 0 (IMPORTANT: marked SATA6G_1 on motherboard). This wouldn't allow booting as it must have confused the whole system.

Looks like we're reïnstalling Windows. Again.

Unplugged the three storage drives and made sure boot SSD was plugged into the ‘first’ SATA position.

1948

Windows 10 IoT installed with all partitions on the boot drive. Now copying backup stuff onto the three storage drives.

RAID operations...

1948

There's a certain order of operations needed to get a drive unraided, and it's all a bit weird, but basically I need the SATA ports to be AHCI rather than RAID.

I half-did the job using the F11 EZ config tool in the Asus BIOS, but that was a mistake! It half-made a RAID using two of the three drives, but then no drives would show up in boot. Turns out I should just use the ‘proper’ (i.e. not EZ) Intel RAID tool.

I've just used it to make a whole new RAID of all three drives (because two drives were ‘trapped’ in that old weird RAID) and will now delete that RAID which should hopefully ‘free’ all the drives…

…and it didn't work: two drives are still trapped, weirldy still with the old name I gave the three-drive RAID (RotLA, obvs). More research needed.

AND I can't install windows on the SSD; probably still something to do with SATA being RAID configured…

Ok, changing back to AHCI allowed Windows to say it can be installed, but that two-drive RAID is still there…

Trying another three-drive RAID, but making it RAID1 (mirror) instead of the RAID0 (stripe; basically just butted up to each other). This might help by giving the drives a proper ‘nudge’ into a totally different mode…

Correction: trying RAID5. RAID1 is only to mirror two drives max.

Back in the Windows installation, it won't let me install on any drive because RAID not AHCI.

TIP: in Asus BIOS, turning Intel Rapid Storage Technology RST on & off is done in EZ Mode (note: this not the same EZ as mentioned earlier!) but actually configuring anything is done in “Advanced” mode.

Weird: simply turning off RST gives the same old drive config showing up at install.

(Zarking hell, this is a lot of pissing about. If this gets sorted, I don't think I'll bother with RAID ever again; just make more back-up.)

Yikes, still not showing three separate drives. Time to start physically unplugging them…

(Yikes, case has evidence of previous spider nesting inside: lots of tiny moulted exoskeletons.)

Just leaving the SSD in didn't help: Windows still refuses to install on it.

Next plan (after a looooong diversion to fix a power button issue) is to plug the drives into a another computer one by one via USB thingie and see what we can do.

Interesting! One of the drives from the old RAID plugged in on its own is recognised by Windows as belonging to a pool and even shows that there were originally three in the pool and the old RotLA name. It even gives me the option to “Delete pool”. Ha ha, guess I'll deffo be trying that, having run out of other options!

https://aidanfinn.com/?p=16571

…But the FriendlyName is NOT RotLA for some reason!

Used Get-StoragePool to list pools and find the name is actually just “Storage pool” (roll eyes emoji…)

Failed on the first go, but seemed to work on the second try…

(NB: Letter Case Matters For PowerShell Commands!)

2319

All done! By plugging all four drives (three storage + SSD system disk that EZ RST nonsense wiped) in individually via USB to another computer and using PowerShell & CaFHDP to wipe and format, they're all rescued and Windows 10 IoT is installing.

Old desktop renew

1530

Project Old Desktop Renew begins!

Power usage numbers:

Seems to be using about 32W at idle.

Seen a peak of 59W.

Copying data from ext HDD onto PC: 37W.

Concurrently copying from USB to SSD: 42W.

Wireless keyboard & mouse is NOT playing nicely with this computer: cursor jerks around and keyboard inputs lag. Weird. Wired mouse works fine.

Wait… problem is with REAR USB ports; wired mouse only works in front ports, and wireless set is fine in front. Even weirder.

Then it started working. No idea what's going on.

Then it stopped working, even in the front ports. Fuck’s’ake.

Anyway, moving on…

First step is check downloads on this old desktop box to see if I need to back stuff up (yup!)

(Just dumped it all to ext HDD for now; I will probably regret not sorting it…)

Win10 IoT installed!

All updates & programmes installed.

Unraiding: the intel option doesn't appear at boot… It used to pop up “press ctrl + I to RAID” (or similar).

Did some googling and F11 in BIOS seems to access similar functionality. I removed the current raid, made another raid, removed that… I think. Anyway, eventually I was just left with the computer only being able to network boot… very weird. My fiddling didn't touch the boot SSD, and the computer won't boot from USB. More investigation needed.