roncli.com blog

Computer hardware can be strange sometimes.

I went into a CD bootable program to do some diagnostics on my hard drive. Since those took a while, I went to sleep for some six hours or so. When I woke up and rebooted, the hard drive was back into UDMA mode.

WTF?

Labels: Hard Drives, Servers

Monday, August 22, 2005

End of Hard Disk Worries
Posted: 6:58:00 PM 0 comments

Took the time and money and got myself an external 250 GB hard drive today... Now I can clean up all the MAME crap I have accumulated on my main hard drive. 40 GB for that stuff if you can believe it. In any case, I'm glad to finally have free storage space again.

No doubt I'll fill it all up in 3 months.

Labels: Gaming, Hard Drives, MAME

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

New Linux box
Posted: 8:58:00 PM 0 comments

I finally got my 250GB hard drive running. As a result, I put together a machine based on one of my old motherboards to get a new FreeBSD box running. I'm starting to get comfortable in Linux, it's scary.

The process was a pain, though. First, I had to upgrade the firmware on the ATA card. Then I had to move the CD-ROM off the ATA card cause it wasn't bootable. Then I downloaded and burnt the latest FreeBSD. Then I had to figure out the geometry for the hard drive so it could install.

Once that was done, though, it was pretty smooth sailing. It even got me to playing around a bit on the ModPlug box without worrying about breaking anything.

Labels: FreeBSD, Hard Drives, Servers

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Clearing Up Space
Posted: 10:17:00 AM 0 comments

Well, after about a week or so of struggling with my quickly evaporating hard drive space, I decided to do something about it. I went through all my Program Files and uninstalled everything I didn't use anymore, and deleted all of the shell folders that were left behind from previous installations. Everything went crisp and clean, and to my knowledge I didn't delete anything I needed.

The problem started when I compared the output from Disk Size Manager to my actual free space. Approximately 76,000 MB of hard drive space, approximately 6,000 MB free. DSM reported I had used 62,700 MB of disk space.

76,000 - 6,000 > 62,700. Where were the other 7 or so GB?

My first instinct was permissions. I quickly logged out and logged on as Administrator. Of course, my user account has Administrator access, so the 62,700 persisted.

Now, 6 GB is a lot of space to be honest. The problem is with NASCAR SimRacing wanting 4 GB for some ridiculous reason, and I still have about 5 GB left of CHDs to download for my full MAME collection. So I probably wouldn't have even dealt with it if I didn't have a need for the space.

Anyway, I did some searching around on Google and found a couple of possibilities. The one that worked for me was the System Restore option. Sure enough, I go in, and there it is taking up 10% - A full seven and a half gigs - of disk space. I move that down to 1%, reboot, and for the first time in months, I have double digit free space!

What annoys me the most about is is that, although Windows is reporting free space correctly, it's not reporting used space correctly. Where does Windows put the System Restore data if not on the C: drive? It's stupid.

Oh well, that's one problem licked. That's what matters.

Labels: Gaming, Hard Drives, MAME, NASCAR SimRacing, Servers

Monday, February 28, 2005

No Racing!
Posted: 5:05:00 PM 0 comments

Now playing: RedHeat Sonic Soundscapes - Outer Circle (Vocal, Dance) (4:50)

Did I mention that after all this downloading and installing, my hard drive space has dropped under 2 GB, which means no racing until I clean up my hard drive? ARRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!

Labels: Gaming, Hard Drives

Monday, February 21, 2005

Hard Drives
Posted: 6:25:00 PM 0 comments

Once upon a time, when I was a Mac person, I had a computer that had a 40 MB hard drive. Surely, I would never be able to fill that up!

From the 40 MB hard drive, to the 2 GB, to the 6 GB, to the 8 GB, to the 20 GB, to the 40 GB... Each step of the way, there was absolutely no way that hard drive was going to be filled up.

So here I am, staring down 5.7 GB free on my 80 GB hard drive, and yet I have 6 GB to download to complete my MAME 0.92 CHD collection. I should just get a terrabyte drive and be done with this mess! The time it takes to go through and clean up the hard drive is painfully long, and it's time I could be spending doing other important things.

Like gaming.

Labels: Gaming, Hard Drives, Life, MAME