New Computer

I like my new computer. It is pretty fast. And great for picture processing and video editing. The only drawback is that it generates a lot of heat. My house air conditioner is not well suited for keeping my office cold while keeping the rest of my house warm (79). Maybe I should buy a window AC?

It’s always a little scary putting a bunch of components together. You never know if the computer will work correctly when you turn it on for the first time.

Here is what I purchased:

Antec Nine Hundred Two Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

GIGABYTE GA-890FXA-UD5 AM3 AMD 890FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2GHz 6 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor

SAPPHIRE 100297L Radeon HD 5830 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card w/ ATI Eyefinity Technology


SapphireRadeonHD5830

Thermaltake Black Widow W0319RU 850W ATX 12V v2.3, EPS 12V v2.91 CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

Kingston 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model

Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2MH160G2R5 2.5" 160GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive

OCZ RevoDrive X2 OCZSSDPX-1RVDX0240 PCI-E 240GB PCI-Express x4 MLC Internal Solid State Drive

Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5"

Pioneer Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 5X DVD-RAM 8X BD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA Internal Blu-ray Burner Blu-ray Disc/DVD/CD Writer

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders – OEM

Synology DS411J 4100 4TB (4x1TB) DiskStation 4-bay NAS Server for Small Office and Home Use

Synology DS411+ Diskless System DiskStation 4-bay All-in-1 NAS Server for SMB Users

While I technically did not buy them when I bought my computer, I did buy some more toys for speed and reliability recently. They were the RevoDrive and the two Synology RAID NAS drives.

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the reliability of my data storage. I used to have Buffalo Terrastation NAS drive. This used RAID5. Now RAID5 is good for reliability. But if a second drive fails during a rebuild of the first failed drive, then you can lose your data.

While doing research, I came across Synology. They supported RAID6 (among all of the others) and they supported a bunch of other features. They are actually small computers running Linux. I liked the fact that I would not need another computer to synchronize my data between the two NAS storage units. I could ssh directly into the NAS box and perform my rsync there.

So I bought a Synology DS411J with 1.78 Terrabytes of storage. I definitely made a mistake here and under-bought for my future needs. Because when I was satisfied with the Synology architecture, I bought a Synology DS411+ with 5.6 terrabytes. They are both 4 drive bay systems. But the 411+ has a faster CPU which will help in computing checksums during rsyncs.

Another thing that worried me is what would happen if my house burned down or some thief stole my computer equipment? There were no backups. So I decided to have two NAS drives. One would be in my house and the second would be at work. I could easily keep them synced up. And I would have backups in those two scenarios. Of course, if Austin got nuked and I survived, I would still lose my data. A slightly better scenario would be to keep the second NAS in some other state (like Florida).