Hardware

What happens when you write a petabyte of data to an SSD

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , ,

If you’re concerned about SSD reliability, Tech Report has good news for you: They attempted to write a petabyte of data to six SSDs, and three of them survived. Considering the drives were rated for a 200 TB life expectancy, that’s impressive. In fact, even the worst drives outlived their 200 TB life expectancy. And all started behaving oddly long before their demise, giving you ample warning to do something in advance–something you can’t say about evil nasty platters of spinning rust–perhaps better known as traditional hard drives.

The first drive to fail, if you’re wondering, was the Samsung 840, which uses cheaper TLC memory. But even the Samsung 840 outlived its projected life expectancy. Since other companies are undercutting the 840’s price even with MLC memory these days, I’m not sure what Samsung’s plans for the 840 are. For the time being, I doubt you’ll be buying one. One of the drives that’s still going after a petabyte of writes is a costlier Samsung MLC drive.

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SSDs for the masses, 2014 edition

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , ,

If you’re looking for alternatives to nasty platters of spinning rust for storing your data, I have good news for you: SSDs are getting cheaper, and fast. They aren’t as cheap as rust, but there’s probably a good reason for that if you think about it for a minute.

PNY has been tempting me all year with the PNY XLR8, a 240 GB drive that typically sells for $80-$90 after a rebate. It uses an inexpensive controller to deliver middling performance, but compared to the speed that spinning rust can deliver, it’s still going to be pretty good. Then Micron came along with its Crucial MX100, which delivers 240 GB for $110, or 480 GB for $225, along with enthusiast-grade performance. Read more

Improving Garmin GPS units

Dave Farquhar Hardware

We’ve had a pair of Magellan 1420 GPSs for several years, but they’ve grown very unreliable. I suspect they have some bad capacitors in them, but I hear a lot of complaints about Magellan hardware quality even today. Recently I was able to buy a couple of 3.5-inch Garmin units for less than $20 apiece. I prefer the Magellan user interface–I think it’s easier to learn and easier to use–but for that kind of money, we’ll learn to use the Garmins. And I’ll note these Garmins are every bit as old as our Magellans, but have held up fine. Read more

What I did for Mother’s Day

Dave Farquhar Hardware, security, Windows , , , , , , , ,

Last month, Rapid7’s Trey Ford appealed to security professionals:

You have an opportunity to be an ambassador. When you see XP out there, have an adult conversation, educate in terms that others will appreciate. Your actions and words reflect on the entire community.

As the family CIO/CSO – look for the smart investment. There are options that will make your life easier. A small investment is a lot easier to stomach than compromised shopping/banking/credit card credentials (or identity theft.)

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Why AMD’s turnaround is working when so many turnarounds fail

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

As this editorial notes, a year ago chipmaker AMD was on the ropes. Today AMD still won’t be unseating Intel any time soon, but they’re profitable again.

The problem, it argues, is that changing CEOs isn’t enough. A CEO has to have lieutenants that tell the CEO what the CEO needs to hear. Steve Ballmer failed, the author argues, because he inherited Bill Gates’ team, and Gates’ team wouldn’t tell Ballmer what he needed to hear.

It’s a very interesting perspective, and timely, as AMD released a compelling product line today.

Happy late 50th birthday, z/OS!

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Retro Computing , , , , ,

It was 50 years ago this month that IBM released the first modern mainframe, the System/360. The System/360 was notable for being the first series of systems built with interchangeable parts, rather than being custom-built. It’s also notable because its direct descendants are still in production: In the 1970s, it became the System/370, the System/390 in the 90s, and the z series today. The systems originally ranged from 1 MHz to 50 MHz in speed, and came with anywhere from 8 KB to 8 MB of RAM. To put that in perspective, the low-end model was comparable in power to an early Apple II desktop computer from 1977, and the high-end model was comparable in power to the 486 PCs we ran Windows 3.1 on in the 1993-94 timeframe. Or you could compare it to one of my souped-up Amigas, if you prefer (I do). But the same software that ran on the low-end model would run on the high-end model, and there’s a pretty good chance that software from the 1960s will run on a modern Z series mainframe today, with little to no modification.

Twenty years ago this architecture was supposed to be on its way out, but it never really went away. IBM keeps modernizing it, so I expect z/OS has a long life ahead of it. It’s entrenched, and when technology gets entrenched, there’s no getting rid of it.

There isn’t much new, young mainframe expertise in training these days, and it turns out there are certain jobs that mainframes do better than smaller PCs do. Most large companies have at least one mainframe, and it’s not going anywhere, but the people who can care for it and feed it are retiring fast. If you want some job security, you can do a lot worse than learning everything you can about IBM Z series mainframes in addition to the other things you know.

SSDs in business: The time is right

Dave Farquhar Hardware , ,
SSDs in business: The time is right

My employer is experimenting with a few desktop PCs with SSDs. And they are amazing. These machines have an Intel Core i5 CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and a 120 GB SSD. They log on and off in seconds. Word and Excel 2010, which are absolute slugs on HDDs, load in one second. The time is right for SSDs in business.

This is what modern computing is supposed to be.

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The time bomb in your older computer

Dave Farquhar Hardware, security , ,

I was listening to an interview between Paul Asadorian (of Pauldotcom fame) and Cigital CTO and software security expert Gary McGraw. They discussed how the target of attacks moved from Microsoft to Adobe and now that Adobe is showing signs of getting its act together, it’s going somewhere else.

“If I were Nvidia,” McGraw said, “I’d be thinking a lot about software security. Fortunately they are.”

Nvidia does sound like a juicy target. Read more

How to get 1440×900 resolution out of an Nvidia video card

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Windows ,

I have a Gateway FPD1975W LCD monitor with an unusual 1440×900 resolution. Intel video cards have no issues with this resolution, but Nvidia cards don’t support it by default when running under Windows.

Hack the drivers a bit and you can get this monitor to work just fine with an Nvidia adapter, though. Believe it or not, the only hacking tool you need to accomplish the deed is notepad.exe.  Read more

The curse of the computer builder

Dave Farquhar Hardware

I’ve been getting to work later than usual lately. So much later that the self-proclaimed late guy, who seems to think I normally get to work at 4am, beat me to work two days in a row.

“I’m building computers again,” I told him as we both got coffee. He nodded knowingly.

“Building for yourself? As a side business?” he asked.

“My wife asked for a computer, and that means I can’t just buy her a computer. That means tearing apart every computer in the house, mixing parts up to get the best combination of stuff running everywhere, and then she’ll have a nice computer.”

He nodded knowingly. Read more