Monthly Archives: July 2009

HPA, Host Protected Area

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I’m a big fan of technology that helps users. HPA could be one of those “helpful” technologies. HPA is a “feature” of some motherboards whereby they steal hard disk space (typically the last few megs of your disk) and use it for backing up the system BIOS, a recovery partition, etc.

I just purchased a GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard, RAM, and CPU to drop into my file server. Today I assembled the trio, stripped my old mobo out and dropped this new one in.

The machine booted up but there was a little problem. Two of my disks (members of a ZFS mirror) were corrupted!?  That effectively destroyed one of my filesystems, which made me very unhappy.

A few Google searches later and I learned all about HPA. This nasty little surprise was tucked away in Advanced BIOS Features -> Dual BIOS Recover Source = HPA (page 49,51 in the manual). My version of BIOS doesn’t have this option, but I found accounts online of older versions that do. It seems that changing that setting didn’t actually work (ie, disable HPA), so Gigabyte removed the feature. They have left me no way of disabling this destructive feature.

After hours of fiddling, I have worked around it by:  a) moving the disks off the first two SATA connectors b) rebooting onto the HDD GURU Magic Boot ISO, c) removing the HPA partition from both disks, d) rebooting into FreeBSD. Finally, my ZFS mirror was back with one disk, because the motherboard had helpfully restored the HPA on the first disk.

If you’re using this mobo and migrating disks to it, I’d suggest installing a sacrificial disk on the first SATA controller. That will appease the HPA demon and let you successfully migrate your RAID volumes to it. I’m stuck moving the data off the disk I recovered. Then I’ll recreate the array on the disks with the HPA partition and all will be well.

Twitt

Thank you Tim

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said it was too soon to decide whether the U.S. economy would need the help of a second round of government stimulus to recover from recession. ”I don’t think that’s a judgment we need to make now, can’t really make it now prudently, responsibly,” Geithner said. –Reuters

Translation: The stimulus is doing what we expected. We did not expect it to halt rising unemployment, the decline in home values, the economic effects of the recession, or end world hunger. What it did accomplish is halting the freefall of our stock markets (the heart of our economic engine). That, has stabilized the financial markets enough that we expect them to recover on their own.

According to a transcript provided by CNN, Geithner said the “biggest thrust” of the $787 billion package of spending and tax cuts signed into law earlier this year would take effect in the second half of the year.

Translation: It’s a recession, jobs will be lost. We didn’t know how severe it would be, but we knew it would happen. There’s nothing we could have done to prevent it. The American’s hit hardest by this recession are middle aged males in the construction and manufacturing industries. But it doesn’t make sense to pay GM or building contractors to keep these workers producing products nobody will pay for.

Since we couldn’t prevent job losses, we created a plan to create new ones. Rebuilding America’s infrastructure (high speed rail, more efficient buildings, highways, etc) will provide millions of jobs, reduce our ever increasing demands for energy, and provide an environment in which our economy can once again thrive.

But it takes time to evaluate the projects each Congressman, Governor, and Mayor has been asking for us to fund. Once approved, it takes time to ramp those projects up. We knew this, which is why we allocated $37 billion dollars in direct aid to American’s hit hardest by the recession. Unemployment extension programs aren’t free, and most states didn’t have the cash to pay for them. We’ve only spent 14% of the stimulus, and much of that is in the pockets of those who need it.

He also said a program that is setting up public-private partnerships to buy up toxic assets held by banks would likely see less use than had been expected a few months ago because the financial system had begun to stabilize.

Translation: We framed our bank bailout package perfectly. The banks that are in trouble get the cash they need, but we are going to make a tidy profit on the deal. Rather than let Uncle Sam share their profits, the bankers got their porky little hineys into gear and started finding ways to get their cash from  other sources.

Twitt

Strawberry Ice Cream

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It all begins with fresh local strawberries. Add in some fresh cream, a mother’s love, a churn it in the Cuisinart Ice Cream Machine. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Twitt

Is it worth upgrading to the iPhone 3GS?

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Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: Absolutely!

Hillbilly answer: You betcha!

Beancounter answer: I purchased my first iPhone 4GB (2G) in Oct 2007 for $300, direct from Apple. Today, I sold it on Craigslist for $225. I purchased my 16GB iPhone 3G for $300 in July 2008. That phone is about to get sold on Craigslist as well, for about $375. My cost to own for both iPhones is $0. I expect to sell my 32GB iPhone 3GS next year, for more than I paid. It’s an unbeatable deal.

Geek answer: The combination of a faster processor and more RAM makes a huge difference. I would bet the RAM is contributing more than the faster CPU. A good analogy would be using OS X with 1GB of RAM and then upgrading to 2GB (just enough). With the memory pressure relieved, nearly everything is more responsive.

The previous iPhones lagged when switching apps, [re]loading web pages, and especially when taking and saving photos. All those little pauses are gone. Switching back and forth between apps is nearly instantaneous. That alone is worth upgrading for. Seriously.

But I upgraded for the better camera. The previous iPhone camera was quite poor. The 3GS camera is not yet good, but certainly better.

Twitt