Slashdot Mirror

Ripping a movie DVD is, but setting up MythTV isn't, and products like this (which my wife+kids think is better than sliced bread) media player isn't advertised as much as it should be.

Ah, ok - well then I stand by my point ;)

http://iomega.com/iomegatv-media-center/
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/WDTV/
http://usa.asus.com/Multimedia/Digital_Media_Player/OPlay_HD2/
http://delive.netgear.com/
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=318 ...and I could probably add about 10 more links to similar products. I suppose a few of these aren't shipping yet, but many of these feature premium streaming services on their own or through a partnership with Boxee, so Roku will be joining them in the commodity streaming player wars in a matter of months...

Let's not forget the Iomega TV with Boxee coming up.

#1 - The Time Capsule. Haven't we had wireless NAS's since 802.11 became a standard? I've got a USB-2 external drive that does my backups now. This announcement does absolutely nothing for me.

Iomega vs. Time Capsule
See any differences? Price, size? Not revolutionary, but a fine product.
I have an AE with a USB harddrive, it does almost nothing for me either.
So what?
Wow, that is really interesting, thanks mods.

#2 - The iPhone/iPod touch updates. I was really hoping to hear an announcement regarding the hardware. More memory. Smaller form factor. Lower price. Open network. Instead we see a few lousy software upgrades (woo, quasi-GPS that's been in the system for a week now). And, a nice F-U to the early adopters in a 20$ upgrade for the Touch. Glad noone bought me one of those for xmas. Anyone who did get one in the last 30 days should immediately return it and get one of the "new" ones with the additional features for free. And take a crap in the box, before they do.

Why the F-U? You knew the touch didn't have those functions originally, now it's a measly $20 add-on. So?
Sure, free is better, but it's not like you got a raw deal. Care to explain?
Thanks again mods.

#3 - The AppleTV/Movie Rental Service. Exciting, if the XBox360 hasn't been serving this capacity for over TWO YEARS. Wow, all the major labels, eh? Are they suddenly going to cut ties with all their other distribution partners? I didn't think so. And the price cut on the AppleTV was okay, but they *really* couldn't go just a bit further to put it below the $200 mark? Really, they must want this device to fail.

Apple is poised to leapfrog Microsoft's rental attempts in the blink of an eye. It's not INSIGNIFICANT that they've managed to get every major studio on board! Does Microsoft?
The Apple TV is now cheaper than the cheapest XBox 360. It also looks, sounds, and fits good next to a TV. There's also the additional incentives to rent videos through iTunes due to the transferability to iPod/iPhone/computer. There will still be an appeal for 360's, but that doesn't mean this device will fail.
Interesting? Please mods...

#4 - The MacBook Air. It's really just a masturbation toy for the rich gadget hound -- it does nothing new besides be smaller, and it does it slower and more expensively to boot. Wow, it fits in an envelope. Unless you're mailing me one, I'm not interested. Multitouch pad? Give it a month, they'll be on all the MacBooks. The size factor will very quickly be copied by Sony/Dell/et al, so Windows fanbois can rest easy. What would have made it revolutionary? If it were JUST a screen, no Keyboard, no fancy touchpad. Or, if it were under a thousand dollars. THAT would have been impressive. Made of Aluminum? And you thought the last generation MacBooks broke easily! Remote Disk? I've been sharing my CD-ROM drive via windows networking since 1996. It even works over wireless!

We get it, you're not in the market for a sub-notebook, and/or poor. Waaaaaaah! Move on, others are in the market.
"The size factor will very quickly be copied by" Well, which is it? It's a flying piece of shit on one hand, but Sony and Dell will attempt to quickly copy it on the other. Well? You sound more like the "Windows fanboi that wants to rest easy" yourself.
Poop on multitouch, poop on form factor, poop on Apple, poop on price, poop on aluminum (seriously?), poop on MacBooks, poop on EFI-level wireless Remote Disc (excellent display of ignorance). Poop on us all because you wont buy one.
Very interesting indeed mods.

Since you were so kind, I'm going to poop AL

I very much prefer having all my mail on an IMAP server (accessed over SSL only). As you mention, this is problematic when you don't want to run your desktop machine at home 24/7.

Until recently, I had a Linux server for this specific purpose. However, after years of relatively trouble-free service, the hardware was getting old to the point where keeping it running was becoming more troublesome than buying something else.

So I bought a Mac Mini for several reasons:

1. It is very silent
2. It uses only 20-25W (!), even much less (3-5W) when in sleep mode - though you'll have to disable that when you use it as a server, obviously. This is quite important to me for devices that are running 24/7. I'm not just pulling these numbers out of my ass, check for yourself, e.g. here or here
3. It runs UNIX. Installing Courier IMAP and some other basic services (apache, already installed by default; PHP, installed a more recent version) took me just a few hours.
4. The builtin harddisk is not very big and quite slow. Also it's hard (though not impossible) to replace when it breaks. So I bought a 250 GB external drive to go with it. If you buy the right one (e.g. the MiniMax), it even looks nice together with the Mac Mini.
5. It's small, just put it on your desk somewhere.

Air is drawn through the holes when the disc spins causing the flexible disc to be drawn against the rigid piece of glass to make it flat

The bernoulli disk lives again!

Not quite as small, but the REV disk is pretty close.

But anyway I'd actually try to apply my 1-person-shop strategy if I would be maintaining that much.
It may sound crazy for most people but it goes like this:

1) All critical data on central servers. No critical data on workstations, ever.

2) Critical Stuff for MS stored on Unix via Samba (Asuming your using Ethernet and not some Turbo Protokoll I don't know of)

3) A guy responsible for backup including taking this weeks backup home + a standin for him. Both have necessary root access and have specific payd time devoted to maintaining a working backup policy.

4) Automated regular overturning backups (custom shell script) using an PHATT external USB 2/Firewire HDD or, in your case, a few of these (or something simular).

5) A custom polstered Zarges Box or suitcase large enough to carry a backups worth of those around (home/offsite).

Downside: Doesn't use expensive unreliable ancient-technology tape, which, for some bizar and strange reason I really can't fathom, somehow still is the ultimate way to do backups for most people. Ergo: It will be hard to convince management *and* your IT co-workers that this is actually a very good solution.

Upside: Faster, Cheaper, more reliable, easier to recover from, easier to replace/find spare parts and easier to handle than any other solution I know of - or my IT-expert geek friends use for that matter. I have actually managed to recover from backups done that way. And since I've been hearing the some horror stories about tape for almost two decades now - no matter what type of tape - I consider my observation confirmed.

Footnote: I strongly suggest using ext3 as backup filesystem. It's a slowpoke, adding maybe a few hours to your backup, but it's insanely easy to recover from any Unix without having to do panik purchases of strange GUI FS recovery software that require some strange configuration of Win XP + Service Pack 2 and the additional sacrifice of your firstborn child.

Look at your network, do the math and have some shelves built for a few of those external driveboxes. Your critcal stuff can't be more than a 1-digit sum of TBs.

My 2 cents.

Why not use a removable hard disk cartridge. The Iomega Rev Drives have autoloading capablity, 35 GB (I know this is a little low) capacity, and the major advantages as tape. The disk and spindle motor are stored in the cartridge. For more info go to http://www.iomega.com/direct/products/family.jsp?F OLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=26891275&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_ id=63191&bmUID=1143400161901

I think the answer is 'ordinary' people don't make backups. The make occasional copys of their data and hope for the best.

and I don't blame them... its very very easy to run up 20Gb of archives and there are few consumer devices that make backing it up easy (ie easy as in you stick a cartridge last thing at night and its finished by morning)

Personally I have an archive server and external hard disk, the server uses rsync to mirror copys of the archive tree on two internal and one extrenal hard disk and uses the --backup option to keep a version history of altered files. here is a rather good page on the subject. I also do regular full and incremental DVD backups

I rather liked the look of the new iomega rev drive a 35Gb removable disk system. However I understand that the cassette are basically little hard disk drives complete with motor and read heads this is great in that it keeps the dust out but I may as well use a USB hard disk as the cassette has all the same weaknesses. I'm currently pinning my hopes on blueray. The burned disks may only be stable for a few years but I'll be doing a full backup every month or so anyway and the backups only exist to recover from total disk failure

Better link for MicroMini. $40/256MB - $110/1GB.

You could just get REV by Iomega

http://www.iomega.com/na/products/family-save.jsp? FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=16006169&PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id =19092785&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=63191&bmUID=11158 55092218

Speak for yourself. Belkin's building adware into their routers' firmware is far worse than the technical shortcomings Iomega has had in the past.

I have a 1GB Iomega flash drive (not the micro) and am pretty satisfied with it. It's got a lifetime warranty and any data that exists on it also exists on my laptop, so hardware failure isn't that big a problem for me. It's pretty unlikely anyway, as these things don't have any moving parts, so there's no chance of "click of death"-type problems.

I wonder why the Iomega Micro Mini drives were not included in the review. If you include the PQI's somewhat necessary enclosure, the Iomega model is smaller than the PQI and a better form factor (can't lose the Iomega's swivel cover). As far as I know this is the smallest drive on the market right now, and they're priced to move. Still I'm looking forward to more models that use the low profile USB jack like the PQI.

For anyone interested here are the links to Iomega, to QEMU, and to Damn Small Linux. I got the Iomega used so all of this did wind up costing around $50.

The hockey player?
The perl guy?
The dead guy?
The author?
The VP of Iomega?
The musician?

I love my Iomega Rev! [insert clicking sound here :P ] No seriusly I havnt had a single problem with it. and the filesystem is the open starndard and avalible to windows mac and linux alike UDF filesystem.

You could always email it to your 1Gb google mail account. Or here http://www.iomega.com/istorage/ or here http://www.xdrive.com/ Sure there are some free versions available too, try here http://www.google.com/. Or sign up for a free trial, and hope it's all over in a couple of weeks ;)

I just got an Iomega Rev Drive and I like, though I don't use it for portable storage quite the way you do. Here's a review. It'll be expensive to add a drive in each location, about $300 each, but once you do, its cheap to add unlimited capacity. The cartridges are about the size of a Post-It note pad and hold 35 GB, or up to 90GB when the data is compressed. They cost about $50 each. Overall its probably too expensive for what you need, but my experience with the quality is pretty good. Data is safe for 30 years, so the company says. See also the product page.

check out iomega's micro mini line (64mb up to 512mb). they're wonderfully tiny - about the size of a usb plug.

I have THIS IOMEGA unit deployed, and have not had ONE problem with it. I know you were not looking for a commercial product, but with servers I don't dice it.

_dan

.:UNEASYsilence:.

Have you tried the Iomega Rev?

35GB Native capacity
Up to 90GB with compression
Hard disk speeds
ATAPI and USB interfaces
Good stuff

What about the Iomega micro-mini?
The Iomega web site says that it is USB 2, and it is really small, which I like. The rotating cap is cool too. Needs a write-protect switch, though...

The Technical Spec Sheet says Height: 1.0 cm, Width: 7.7 cm, Length: 7.5 cm. Which when rounded out is 1x8x8 cm.

I remember all the technologies out there like Imation SuperDisk or Castlewood Orb. I used to be rooting for the Orb drive to win the market and become the standard. At the time (1999) I think it could have been a killer product. It used hard-drive-type platters in a reasonably sized cartridge, with a 2.2 GB disk going for about $20. Also, reviews said that the drives were a lot faster than Zip disk.

But now, like you said, with CD burners and their media being so cheap and decently quick, plus the addition of Mt. Rainier to the RW drives, Zip clones have no more reasons to hang around. And from what I've heard, Iomega can't even get CD drives right.

The article is mistaken. According to Iomega, each REV cartridge contains only the disk and the motor, while the read/write heads are located on the actual REV drive.

The Register claims:

Each disk contains its own read/write head assembly and drive motor, allowing the unit to be sealed as tightly as a regular hard drive.

Iomega claims:

The disk and motor are housed in a rugged, removable hard plastic cartridge, leaving the disk heads and electronics - the most expensive and delicate components - in the drive section.

As always Wikipedia comes to the rescue (and since it's released under the GNU Free Documentation License I can legally present the whole article to you nice people of Slashdot) :).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death

Click of death

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

[edit]

The click of death is a failure mode typical of Iomega Zip drives. The term is also used more broadly to refer to failures of several other kinds of disk storage systems. In all cases, the click of death is characterized by a noticeable clicking or buzzing sound and is usually caused by a head crash.

The term became common in the late 1990s, describing a problem particular to Iomega's Zip drives. Zip disks, although popular, were not particularly sturdy (being exposed to the dust and grime of an unfiltered environment), and the drives were prone to developing misaligned heads. These damaged and dirty heads would try to read a disk, only get a marginal signal, then the controller would quickly snap the head arm back into the drive and out again, producing the click and (in many cases) tearing up the edge of the disk and even the heads themselves. Compounding the problem, the damaged disks would often go on to damage the heads of any other drive they were used in.

Iomega received thousands of complaints about the click of death, but denied all responsibility: often, to the fury of Zip drive owners, claiming that the problems were caused by the use of (functionally identical) third-party media. A class action suit was filed against them in September 1998. The case was settled in March 2001 and Zip drive owners were given a rebate, but Iomega's reputation has yet to fully recover.

On non-Zip systems (usually a hard disk), the click of death refers to a similar phenomenon; when a hard disk has a hard error or servo failure, the head actuator will buzz and click as the drive tries to recover from the error. Since the media is not removable on these drives, the defect is almost always due to physical abuse or a manufacturing error. IBM's storage division had their own click of death problems in 2001 with the mass failure of their popular Deskstar 75GXP hard disks.

External links

• Comprehensive account of the click of death at grc.com
• News article on the Zip click of death, from 1998
• Information on the Iomega class action and settlement
• 75GXP FAQ at anandtech.com

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for

Iomega's REV FAQ says the cartridges are 77m x 75mm x 10mm (i.e. 7.7cm x 7.5 cm x 1 cm), at a weight of 73g.

FAQ is available here.

There's no Mac or Linux support.

The 35GB drives hold 90GB compressed (according to Iomega).

Can you attach it and mount it.

--The best real-world solution that I've been able to work out so far, is to just buy another HD of the same size or larger, and store it in a safe place after backup.

o I've dealt with tapes, they're not a good solution for the average desktop consumer.

o DVD is falling in price and will store 4GB+, but standards have yet to be sorted out (however you can get drives that do both + and -) and the media life is still questionable.

o I wouldn't recommend CDR for long term because the media is easily scratched and a pain to back up to.

--BTW, Iomega is making 750MB Zip disks now, and COD hasn't been a problem for years. I have four Zip drives, (2) parallel, (1) internal IDE, (1) USB, and all work perfectly.

clicky

So why should a floppy controller be on the motherboard in 21st century, when you can easily buy USB floppy just for a case when you cannot live without floppy?

Yup... I almost trust Iomega, too!

Nope, there's an IOMEGA burner that does all known DVD formats, including RAM.

Link to info

Here's a website that describes the differences between USB 1.1, USB 2.0 and also Firewire.

I went though the iomega class action law suit way back when, and came out ahead. The rebate was something like $40, but when it was all said and done, I ended up with &70 worth of disks, and other stuff plus the check for $40.

The chaces of being part of the class action is worth the trouble, in my opinion.

My question is WRT to many of the Network Accessible/Attached Storage devices like some the Iomega NASes which are essentially windows 2000 server machines what would need to be patched against some of these issues.

In some cases it is not possible to simply do a windows update since the devices are "uber-tweaked" as you say.....

My biggest fear is the more data we keep putting on these drives the more we stand to lose when they crash. If only MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) ratings doubled every year. If you had your whole life's video diary on a huge petabyte drive and it crashed, it would be devestating. For that reason I think consumer grade data backup technologies are very underrated. My personal favorite right now is my Iomega Peerless Drive . 20 gigs of data on one cartridge!

What I really meant to say was hot spare - that is to say it kicks in automatically if one drive fails. They all have hot swap drives (phew!), check it out here.

You're right -- GigE would be a natural option for this device.

That's probably why they included it.

http://www.iomega.com/nas/p410_sys.html

They fired some token IT people but they weren't the ones responsible for the server as they did not have keys to the room where the backups would/should of been made and had dutifully been buying zip disks for them that sat unused in stacks on top of the server. Iomega sucks the donkey wang big time when it comes to reliability.
Righttttttttttttttt, Iomega sucks for reliability because the company bought zip disks and sat them on top of the server. Last time I checked this wasn't the preferred method for backing up to zip disks..
Sounds like the company is the one that sucked for reliability...

You might want to look into an Iomega Peerless. The disks are pretty small (maybe about 5"x3"x.5") and the disks are 20 or 40 gb a piece. I'm running one a Windows 98 machine, I couldn't tell you about Linux compatability. It connects to a USB hub and has sustained data transfer of 12 mg a second, I think.

It turns out that most real time systems cannot afford the overhead of a OS. Sure we need something to deal with hardware, and schedualing, and if you have networking it is nice to have sockets are similear. In the end though, a OS gets in the way more then helps

I've just started to poke my head into it, but eCos (an embedded linux based OS) is a nice place to start when designing your in house OS.

From the linked page:

eCos provides engineers with maximum control, flexibility and understanding over all aspects of their embedded solution. eCos is highly customizable and adaptable, and can be easily configured using the eCos graphical configuration tool to meet application-specific requirements

It's used as the base for dadio OS (on my hipzip MP3 player) and it looks like a nice little package with lots of tools for developers.

Proprietary does seem like the way to go, (After all, keeping things small is important, and it is likely that there will not be a general solution that meets your specific needs exactly) but it is also nice to work from a proven base OS instead of starting from scratch.

Anyway, the main reason I moved to this device instead of my Rio500 (which I'm now looking to sell, along with the 64MB SmartMedia card I bought for it) is because it's going to play Ogg Vorbis as soon as the format reaches 1.0. Jack Moffit actually sent me a ROM which is supposed to play them now, but it won't play rc2 encoded tracks, so I don't know if I'll bother installing it.

Anyway, especially with the latest firmware, the HipZip is a solidly put together device for a good price. I strongly recommend it.

The Firewire version transfers data at 15MB/Sec according to the Iomega site (a USB version is available as well.) Here is the link

The other option is the new back-up drive from Iomega they've released something called the "Peerless" - a 20GB back-up disk, like the great-grandchild of Zip disks...

The other option is the new back-up drive from Iomega they've released something called the "Peerless" - a 20GB back-up disk, like the great-grandchild of Zip disks...