I had to do some maintenance on my server over the weekend as one of the hard drives in the RAID array failed. It should have been a simple and straightforward task however it turned out to be the complete opposite.
Although only one of the drives had failed, I replaced both of them with newer, faster and larger capacity drives. I replaced them one at a time and synchronised the array in between each swap out.

Within 6 hours, the two drives were replaced and the server was technically ready to go, but the virtual disk was still the size of the older, smaller drives. No problem, I’ll just select the option to grow its capacity…. hmm, no option for that. No worries, I’ll add a second virtual disk which will use up the space capacity, hmm, nothing there either.

It turns out, as far as I (and google) could work out, there is no way to increase the capacity of the virtual disk.

I proceeded to spend the next 7-8 hours (until 5am Sunday) deleting the virtual disk, creating a new one and cloning the data across. First attempt at cloning the entire disk ended in failure as it must have deleted identification information telling the RAID controller that the disk was part of a RAID array. I decided the best option was to clone the individual partitions across. This also didn’t work.

I ended up spending the rest of Sunday morning reinstalling the operating system from scratch, just in the name of doing things properly and doubling the total storage capacity of the server.

I’m hoping these drives will continue running for another 3-4 years.

In the meantime, if you encounter any issues accessing this website, please contact me as I may have missed a setting somewhere.

I had to do some maintenance on my server over the weekend as one of the hard drives in the RAID array failed. It should have been a simple and straightforward task however it turned out to be the complete opposite. Although only one of the drives had failed, I replaced both of them ...

I was recently using stackoverflow.com to solve a technical problem. On the site, if you make too many edits or changes in a set amount of time, the site decides you could be a robot. If this happens, you’re asked to complete a CAPTCHA (typing out the text from an image) to confirm that yes, you are human.

Here’s a screengrab of the page:

If you’re not sure why this was worth posting. Perhaps you should check out these links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bgY8lQMFy4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_of_the_Conchords_(TV_series)

I was recently using stackoverflow.com to solve a technical problem. On the site, if you make too many edits or changes in a set amount of time, the site decides you could be a robot. If this happens, you're asked to complete a CAPTCHA (typing out the text from an image) to ...

If you are perfoming regular automated backups (like you should), You’ll soon find you are running out of space and need to start deleting old backups.

Here is a really simple way to delete files that are more than x days old.

It can easily be worked into a batch file to be run at the same time as an automated backup.


Forfiles -p c:\path -s -m *.* -d -14 -c "cmd /c del /q @path"


Change the *.* to a more specific file mask (eg: backup*.zip). The 14 specifies files older than 14 days, so change this to suit your purposes.

If you want to check what files will be deleted, this will display them:

Forfiles -p c:\path -s -m *.* -d -14 -c "Cmd /C Echo 0x22@Path\@File0x22"


If you are perfoming regular automated backups (like you should), You'll soon find you are running out of space and need to start deleting old backups. Here is a really simple way to delete files that are more than x days old. It can easily be worked into a batch file to be run at the ...

Like a lot of other computer users, I seem to have a lot of data which is irreplaceable. Not including music and video (since I have the originals on disk anyway) I’m still pushing almost 1TB (1000GB). This data is made up of 13 years of email history, 10 years worth of digital photos, source code and incremental server backups.

At the end of the day, this data is priceless. I can’t go back and take all my photos, it’d be near impossible to rewrite source code from scratch and a loss server backups would result in a loss of income.

I’ve tended to keep important copies of data at home and on servers but even this isn’t ideal.
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Like a lot of other computer users, I seem to have a lot of data which is irreplaceable. Not including music and video (since I have the originals on disk anyway) I'm still pushing almost 1TB (1000GB). This data is made up of 13 years of email history, 10 years worth of ...

A friend of mine has been looking for a cheap counter to use in his factory for counting production from machines. He currently uses some of the mechanical counters but these are starting to fail.

Electronic counters cost around £100+ once the price of a suitable power supply is factored in.

I decided a simple electronic tally counter should be relatively easy to modify for automated use and so I started looking for alternatives…
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A friend of mine has been looking for a cheap counter to use in his factory for counting production from machines. He currently uses some of the mechanical counters but these are starting to fail. Electronic counters cost around £100+ once the price of a suitable power supply is factored in. I decided a simple ...

I’ve been getting around 200 spam comments a day on this site and had to manually sort through them to find the non spam comments. This morning I was finally fed up with comment spam on this site and decided to do something about it.
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I've been getting around 200 spam comments a day on this site and had to manually sort through them to find the non spam comments. This morning I was finally fed up with comment spam on this site and decided to do something about it. I've now implemented reCAPTCHAs for all comments. This ...

While the shuttle is on it’s way to the station, more debris is inbound.

NASA are deciding what to do. They may boost the station up a bit which will mean that the shuttle will get there a day later.

This piece of debris is to pass far closer than last week. Only half a mile this time.

I’m trying to find out exactly which piece is involved and will update this once more information is available.

While the shuttle is on it's way to the station, more debris is inbound. NASA are deciding what to do. They may boost the station up a bit which will mean that the shuttle will get there a day later. This piece of debris is to pass far closer than last week. Only half ...

Yes, I still have New Zealand scanner frequencies on my website.
Look down the right hand side, they’re still there.

The link is http://www.john.geek.nz/scannerfreq/.

Yes, I still have New Zealand scanner frequencies on my website. Look down the right hand side, they're still there. The link is http://www.john.geek.nz/scannerfreq/.

Following on from my earlier post.

The Mars rover Opportunity has now been successfully on the martian surface for 5 years.

I have information on the Spirit rover on my earlier post (link at top of this one).

Information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MER-B

Following on from my earlier post. The Mars rover Opportunity has now been successfully on the martian surface for 5 years. I have information on the Spirit rover on my earlier post (link at top of this one). Information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MER-B

The Apple Macintosh was introduced on the 24th January 1984.

Image source: Wikipedia.

Happy 25th birthday, you’ve come a long way.

The Apple Macintosh was introduced on the 24th January 1984. Image source: Wikipedia. Happy 25th birthday, you've come a long way.