Both the packages I was expecting were delivered within five minutes of each other. So the one from RACS full of anime (and a statuette of Hakufu) is going to have to wait while I open the one from Newegg with the two new HD's for Deneb.

UPDATE: Installing the new drives was really easy and fast. I don't see how it could have been more convenient, frankly. More, including pictures and frame grabs, below the fold.

"Connector" is the name of the program I run on Procyon and Arcturus in order to control Deneb. Its window is hardwired to 998*698; it can't be resized when you're using it. And frame grabs from connector look like shit if they're resized retroactively with something like PSP8. So I could put them inline and have the right 200 pixels get cut off by the site formatting, or I can link to them and that's what I'm going to be doing.

So here's what Deneb thought about its storage before I began. Getting mighty cramped.

That's the new drives and the caddies that Deneb needs them mounted in.

That's what they look like after they're mounted. When I installed the second drive, I had a dickens of a time with the caddy, but this time I seem to have lucked into the proper procedure. The first time I think it took me ten minutes to get the drive into the caddy, but this time it was only about 30 seconds each.

There are the drives in their slots but not yet plugged in. I'm told you can hot-plug drives but I'm a chicken so I powered Deneb down before putting them in. (It's not mission critical that it stay up continuously.)

And now they're plugged in.

Deneb powers up, and it marks the two new slots with purple lights instead of the normal blue. That means it knows there are drives there but currently isn't using them. (If it thinks a slot is empty, that LED is turned off.) For that we have to get into the software and mount them.

Connector shows the drives as unmounted. To change that you click on one of the new drives and then click the "Add" button in the upper left corner. Which pops up a wizard, and you go through one two three four pages to get the process started.

I figured that formatting the drive would take forever, but it seems to have used a quick format. It was only a couple of minutes. (I actually would have preferred a full format if I'd had a choice.)

Anyway, once it was done, hey, lookie there! We got a whole lot more free storage now! And after I did the other one, it was even bigger.

Haruhi seems happy about it. And note that the indicator LEDs for the new drives are now blue.

This entire process only took about 20 minutes, and it would have been faster if I wasn't taking pictures and frame grabs. And WHS and this hardware obviously have no trouble at all with 2TB drives. (I'm going to post about that at NewEgg.)

About Haruhi, I've been having a strange problem with her. She's been turning clockwise very very slowly. It's because the case is vibrating underneath her. So I stuck her down with some silicone gel under her hands, and now she's secure and doesn't move any longer.

An obvious question is, now that all four drive bays are occupied, how warm will it get under Haruhi's attractive fanny? Well, the drives have been running for 40 minutes now and the top of the case is only just slightly warmer than ambient. It certainly doesn't feel remotely warm enough to represent a physical danger to Haruhi, and I'm sure it'll be fine.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 11:55 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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