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    2 HDDs drop out of Intel RAID every shutdown, but not on restart or sleep

    I have a 4-drive RAID 0 for working data on my main home computer. Occasionally in the past, if the power went out or for no reason at all that I could tell, 2 of the disks would drop out and show up as "non-RAID" on the boot screen. Deleting the array, putting it back together with identical...
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    One computer can't ping another, but the problem is one-way

    I've got an odd networking problem that's driving me batty this Sunday afternoon. I tried to RDP into one of my home computers from another one this afternoon and RDP failed to connect. So pinged the computer, and 100% timeouts. I walked over to the computer and verified it was on. Checked the...
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    File synchronization options for large amounts of files

    Hey guys, I've spent the last 3 months trying to get two computers to sync a large directory of photos (about 1.8 TB). I just can't make it work. There have been BSOD errors and mysterious reboots, and it seems like Live Mesh just can't handle comparing that amount of data. I can never get...
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    File syncing services that allow unlimited data like Windows Live Mesh

    Are there any other file syncing services that allow unlimited sync for data that is only stored on your computers (i.e. not uploaded to the cloud)? Windows Live Mesh allows this but it's buggy as hell for me. Fills up my computer with massive temp files while syncing and basically doesn't...
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    Drives without sector size emulation

    I was wondering if anyone knew whether the Hitachi 7K3000 drives are emulating 512 byte sectors (and are native 4K), or are actually 512 byte sectors. I've seen conflicting reports in my research. The website says 512 bytes, but that could easily be through emulation. On the other hand, over...
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    Email issues, might be MX records or something more subtle

    Hey guys, I moved a domain's email servers over to Google Apps today, and I have an odd issue. Users on 1 domain of our company, can't send email to those on the other. Everything is hosted on Google Apps for your Domain. The transition of both domains DNS happened about 6 hours ago today...
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    Will Dynamic Disks survive a Vista to Win 7 upgrade?

    I want to upgrade my desktop to Windows 7. It has a set of 4 HDDs in a Dynamic Disk stripe for Photoshop files. Will this data survive the upgrade? My OS disk is separate drive. The dynamic disks won't be touched, but I will format the OS disk.
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    Such thing as 4x SATA to SFF-8087 cable?

    I know the opposite exists: you can buy a cable to take you from SFF-8087 to 4x SATA connectors. I want to go the other direction. Do such cables exist? Can I just use the above cable backwards (I've never seen one. Are the connections unidirectional? I think SATA is the same at both...
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    Are the high-capacity Seagate drives still having issues?

    I remember reading about several reliabiliity issues with the large capacity Seagate drives. Are those resolved now? A retailer near me has excellent pricing on some disks, and I was considering buying some.
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    Hard Freezes (No BSOD) - Not RAM, how to diagnose?

    My main desktop has recently become unstable. It hard freezes randomly (apparently). This isn't a BSOD, but a hard freeze. The music keeps sounding, frozen at the moment the freeze happens. The computer doesn't crash or reboot, the screen continues to refresh (doesn't go black), but...
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    Fastest way to share files between VM & Host?

    I'm trying to rework my storage situation at the moment. My main home desktop has to be a Windows PC because I need Photoshop & Lightroom on it. Unfortunately, the storage management options in Windows have left me a bit disappointed. What I'm thinking at the moment is that I'd like to have...
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    Can't add Domain Users to Remote Desktop Access of a machine

    For some reason I can't add any domain users as Remote Desktop users to an XP Pro machine. I've tried from both the Domain Administrator, and the Local Administrator accounts. In both cases the only "Location" available is the Local Machine. Domain Users can't be added! I've Googled to no...
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    Getting all email out of an Exchange Server

    Hey guys, I'm trying to get all the email out of an old exchange server. Two questions: 1) I can't connect via IMAP. I get "Cannot connect to host." I'm on the same network, including the same subnet. I'm using the IP address for the server. IMAP is enabled when I check in Active Directory...
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    I want to be able to use ExpressCards in my Desktop

    Options? I've been googling away, but have found nothing. Back with PCMCIA cards you used to be able to do this. If anyone is wondering why, it's because the latest generation of CompactFlash card readers run noticeably faster in ExpressCards than off Firewire, and USB has long been...
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    How to tell 7K1000's from 7K1000.B's

    Does anyone know how I can figure out whether a store is stocking the new, 3-platter 7K1000.B or the older 7K1000? Also, I'm in Canada, which might change the model numbers (not sure there), and Canadian retailers definitely don't seem to be noting the 7K1000.B revision by including the B...
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    Odd directories on my HP Laptop

    I have two directories that are basically just random hex strings in my C:\ drive's root. I don't know what they're for, but I need to free up some space (1.8" HDD) and I can't friggin' delete them. I can't even change the ownership to myself in an Administrator account. Any recommendations?
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    Printing to PDF

    What do you guys use to enable printing to PDF for a computer. I'd like a free solution. CutePDF has been recommended.
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    Network Printing Problems with my Laptop

    Hey guys, I'm having really annoying printing problems in Vista x64 Business. Essentially, I work in 3 different places, a main office, a construction site, and from home. At each of those locations I have printers I've configured on my laptop. They're all networked and are never directly...
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    Linux shutdown command

    I know I can reboot a computer at a specific time by typing: shutdown -r 17:30 The thing I'm curious about is that the command doesn't return me to the console, so I want to hit CTRL+C and exit. This seems to me to not be the "proper' way, since it aborts the shutdown. Is there a better way...
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    rsync issue: directing rsync to non-standard ssh port

    I have port forwarding enabled on the router on the other end. Port 22022 is forwarded to port 22 on the relevant machine on the other end. I thought using the port parameter would make it connect (like with ssh), but it's timing out :(. I'm clearly just doing this wrong; does anyone have any...
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    Best remote connection software for a Windows Host?

    I've got to do a remote connection to a Windows Vista box. Normally I'm just working between Linux boxes and I use FreeNX if I need a GUI. Now I have to connect to a Windows Vista Box from both Linux & Windows clients. Since NX can't create servers on Windows machines I have to use RDP or...
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    Mysterious Samba user appearing in Fedora Graphical Dialog

    I've got an odd thing going on in one of my servers. A user named "WARNING" has become available in the Samba Users dialog of the graphical interface for Samba. "WARNING" does not exist in /etc/samba/smbusers. The Unix name is apparently also "WARNING", but the user does not have a home...
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    Moving Exchange Emails to Google Apps

    Alright, I think this a complicated one; I've been doing a lot of googling and am looking for some recommendations. I want to migrate the existing email of several users to Google Apps for your domain. I can't do IMAP migration because we have Exchange 2000 on a Windows 2000 server. Exchange...
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    I'm performing an online resize of my / filesystem

    ... for the 1st time ever. Wish me luck! Intense... (Clearly, I am a geek. I'm excited and nervous at the same time...)
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    Shrinking & Expanding Linux Filesystems

    I've been doing some research on shrinking & expanding filesystems, because I'm going to have to do this in the near future when I swap out disks in a JBOD storage situation (JBOD done using LVM2). This article is the most succint and up-to-date description of the process I've found in my...
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    Local storage in a VM outside it's disk image?

    Is it possible to add physically local storage to a VM that is seen by the virtualized OS as local, but isn't included in its disk image and is a separate filesystem? I know you can access physically local storage that isn't in the disk image using SMB or NFS, but is it possible in Xen...
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    Motherboards with lots of SATA ports.

    Hey guys. I'm going to be building a new file server soon. I'd like to just use onboard SATA ports and not have to buy a separate RAID card just to get some extra ports. Ideally, I'd like 12 SATA ports onboard, but I think that's impossible. The Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 has 10 ports, but is...
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    Lightweight Anti-virus for Windows on Business Network

    Symantec Antivirus' Realtime Virus Scan is making two PCs in my office unusably slow. Both PCs run Windows XP and have 256MB of RAM. Does anyone have any recommendations for a lightweight alternative that will run well on these computers? Email scanning is obviously a must in this type of...
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    Yuck. Windows computer. Is SpamBayes still the best anti-spam Outlook plugin?

    I have to deal with a couple Windows computers for the future year or so. Is SpamBayes still the way to go with Outlook for spam filtering? These guys are getting so much Spam it's disgusting. Any other recommendations?
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    What was the name of that Firefox Plugin that synchronizes bookmarks & plugins?

    I vaguely remember someone bringing up a a Firefox plugin that could synchronize not just bookmarks, but also plugins between Firefox installs. Anyone remember what it was called or where we talked about it. I tried to find it here but couldn't.
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    Way off-topic. I need a drill. Anyone know anything about drills?

    1. I'm willing to spend money to get a good one. 2. I've heard Makita is excellent, but that's the limit of my knowledge. 3. I realize this is kind of a random but what the hell.
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    Anyway to flash a BIOS from a CD if it's a floppy BIOS?

    I'd like to flash the BIOSes in a couple motherboards. All the systems lack floppy drves. There's a Winflash utility for flashing systems without floppies, but it only works in Windows. These systems are all Linux boxes. Is it possible to shoehorn these BIOS updaters onto CDs? If not, does...
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    RAID Superblock disappeared from one of my disks after crash. Fix?

    My fileserver crashed a couple times lately, and I just noticed that the RAID array didn't come back up the last time. I stored the configuration in /etc/mdadm.conf: # cat /etc/mdadm.conf DEVICE /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/hda1 ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid5 num-devices=5...
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    Good, inexpensive place to by Network Cable & Plugs?

    I'm going to have to make a lot of ethernet cables for the house soon, and I'd prefer to buy a bunch of cable and the plugs in bulk. I checked out Home Depot. It was $75 for 500ft of Cat5e. But the plugs were nearly a dollar each. What I'd really like to do is find a good online distributor...
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    Free Dynamic DNS? Preferably for my own domain name?

    I checked out the big ones: DynDNS No IP Zone Edit I was wondering if it was possible to get free dynamic DNS service for your own domain name instead of one of their subdomains. Does anyone have an advice on this? I suppose I could run my own DNS server at one of those subdomains and use...
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    Do nVidia cards still have crappy analog 2D quality?

    I'm looking for a new video card to drive my CRTs. I run them at 1920x1440, so the card needs to have good analog output. I've always used Matrox in the past, but with 2D in most OSes being rendered using the 3D pipelines nowadays, I've realized I'm going to need a decent 3D card one day. I'm...
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    3 of 4 new disk bad? Scsi parity errors on 3 SATA disks.

    I was installing a new software RAID 5 (linux) in a fileserver of mine. I've done this twice before. I managed to partition the disks just fine. I successfully built the array once using mdadm --create --force (my third attempt), but every other time it gets built, 3 out of the five disks are...
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    Victoria, I want to c u so bad...

    Berkeley pulled out all the stops to beat USC apparently. This is one of the most hilarious things I've ever heard. You gotta feel sorry for the guy though. Details. :oops:
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    Intel's new microarchitecture: Merom, Conroe, Woodcrest

    There are details about it from IDF all over the net. Blah, blah, blah. This, on the other hand, is rather interesting --to say the least (41% in F.E.A.R. :o). I have no doubt that AMD's dual-core prices are going to be significantly lower in several months.
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    Have you heard of SiteAdvisor --looks interesting.

    I'm a very, very, veeeerrrrry skeptical web browser. Even when I was using Windows I didn't acquire much malware. OTOH, I have to admit that SiteAdvisor looks to have the potential to be a very powerful service. The Register covers the details. It looks dangerously like a PR piece, but that...
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    Learning the commandline in Linux is making my life better.

    Confessions of a CLI neophyte: A couple weeks ago I finally got around to looking up how to do for loops in Bash. It's actually made my life noticeably better, saving me at least several minutes of monotous work nearly everyday. It allows me to quickly perform tasks that a GUI is ridiculously...
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    I'm learning Vim...

    I'm installing it now. I need a basic text editor for programming, which I've just started learning. I decided to go with Vim over emacs. Mostly because of Mercutio honestly. I have no experience with either. I'm starting with Java. As far as I understand it, Vim is modified with scripts...
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    PSWD clear = CMOS reset in Dell? Power outage fried dell.

    My girlfriend's PC was in standy during a power outage that hit Halifax today because it was mildly windy and Nova Scotia power sucks. My power has gone off in light drizzles before. I live a 5 minute walk from downtown! Unfortunately the power didn't just go out, it flashed on and off for...
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    Social bookmarking sites and your favourite RSS feeds.

    Does anyone use anything like de.liriou.us or Reader2? Do you have any comments you'd like to share regarding their usefulness? Recently I've been trying to expand my internet horizons a little and find better sources of tech news in a variety of specific areas as well as satisfy some other...
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    I made an order from a possibly sketchy online store.

    Nothing really disturbed me at first. There were a couple 'advisory' boxes that popped up during the ordering process, which is rather bad form --I alt-F4ed them without touching them, mostly out of habit, not because I was suspicious. However, I got this: A photocopy of my driver's license...
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    No Connection to the Internet Is Currently Available --Win98

    I'm trying to get internet access up and running on a Windows 98 laptop that belongs to a friend. Networking works. The computer can ping the LAN's router, but it can't see the internet. Stupid Windows :x. I found this Microsoft support article and I did everything suggested and edited the...
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    OLN killed cycling Sunday in Canada. Bloody bastards...

    <rant> I am unable to watch the end of the Giro D'Italia, and damn cranky about it. 'Top Dogs' is on. What kind of idiotic trash is this? Oh, Police Dogs biting people... If that gets better ratings than the Giro D'Italia, one of the greatest road races in the world with many of the most...
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    Open RAW format advocacy.

    I know that there a couple of us here that have an interest in photography. I don't know how many of you shoot RAW, but many of us need an open and ideally universal RAW format. There are a variety of reasons why this would be A Good Thing. Nikon's encryption of its white balance information...
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    It's sunny in Halifax! Spring! Spring!

    I'd forgotten how beautiful a blue sky is. I can see the sun! :mrgrn: The sun I say! Months of darkness I have endured... :eekers: An eternity of toil underground... But no more I say, no more Could I embody and unbosom now That which is most within me, --could I wreak My thoughts upon...
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    The proper hierarchy of shared directories on Linux?

    I have a rather simple question regarding the standard way to organize shared directories on a Linux fileserver. It's really nothing more than a question of good form. I've got a pair of home fileservers that store my music, DVDs, and my photographs. So far, everything is in subdirectories of...
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