Weird IDE hard drive behavior

Last June I wrote about some puzzling experiences with some IDE drives. It was just plain weird. Every drive I tried worked fine when hooked up directly to the motheboard or PCI card IDE slots -- but behavior inside a Vantec enclosure or a Firewire enclosure was much less predictable. I ended up leaving the 200GB Maxtor Diamondmax in my IDE tower and putting the Seagate Barracuda (the best of the drives) in the firewire case.

Yesterday was phase II. I'd outgrown the Vantec removeable enclosures I used for backup and I'd bought two of the lovely Venus USB enclosures I so like. Imagine my surprise when the Maxtor failed during backup, making the same clunky sounds as it had in the Vantec! It then failed during a repartitioning and reformatting (NTFS).

I moved it to a Mac in the same enclosure and ran some intensive workouts there. It never had a problem, swallowing GBs of data. Then I moved it back to XP but plugged it into an old and reliable Orange Micro USB/Firewire card. It reformatted, did a backup, absorbed 100s of GB of data -- no problems.

Weird. I have to guess there's some stable defect in this drive that makes it very sensitive to timing issues of some sort. I'm using it for backup for now, but I'll probably replace it with something I trust more. (I'll update this post with the make of the drive I use at the office -- that one has performed flawlessly in the Venus enclosure.)

IDE drives can be weird when you put them in enclosures. Seagate's done better than Maxtor or WD in my limited trials.

Update 4/17: The Maxtor is definitely flaky. Retrospect Pro, an evil product, breaks it. It goes into some eternal seek mode where it's very busy, but accomplishing nothing. A good lesson in the costs and complexities of flaky hardware. Consumer drives are dirt cheap, but their odd failure modes may be very expensive. Unfortunately I don't think there's a "quality option" available for a consumer buyer at any reasonable price. Nonetheless, I've had better luck lately with Seagate and I'll try them again.

Update 4/17: Ouch. NewEgg's reviewers had very poor ratings for Seagate, and WD isn't so sweet either. I guess there really aren't any good options. I may go for a larger capacity drive on the theory that they might still be competing a bit on quality. Or just give up and figure it's just another example of living in the age where everything is disposable -- except time. (My theory is that we're actually experiencing a LOT of inflation in our economy, but it's hidden by shifting costs to consumers and buy shedding quality. In terms of value delivered per dollar spent, however, I think we're in 1970s style inflation -- only now it's occult.)

Update 5/27: I ended up going through Amazon's reviews. They gave the best sample of feedback, including longer use feedback. Based on that, and a guess that a newer drive would be quieter, cooler and more reliable, I opted for the Western Digital 320GB ATA IDE drive for about $150. So far, so good -- after one week of heavy use. The Seagate drives had awful rating, even though only Seagate seems to "sleep" properly in on of my external enclosures. Maxtor was pretty good, but of course I didn't want another Maxtor. The WD 320 did relatively well with a good number of comments. None did terrific. I notice Apple used Matsushita in my iMac.

Google Notebook: firefox and IE only

Google Notebook is up. Firefox and IE only. I haven't figured out a use for it yet. It looks like much of what it would do I do with Blogger.

What I want is shared workspace, not a notebook that's mine alone. I've installed it, but I'll wait and see if I can figure out a use.

MacBook Pro: An Aperture decider?

The MacBook sounds great, but will it run Aperture?

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh:

Apple today announced its iBook replacement, the plain (non-'Pro') MacBook in both black and white case designs, starting at $1099.

The MacBook is built around a glossy, 13.3-inch, 1280x800 screen, driven by Intel GMA 950 graphics (64MB of shared video memory). A mini-DVI port drives external DVI monitors, VGA, S-video and composite video via optional adapters, offering extended desktop, mirroring or lid-closed modes.

Like its pricier 'Pro' siblings, the MacBook uses Core Duo processors with 2MB Level 2 cache and a 667MHz system bus. Standard memory is 512MB of DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-5300) on two SO-DIMMs (with support for 2GB of memory total).

The new MacBooks also build in a video camera, and other features include FireWire 400, dual USB 2.0 ports, combined optical/analog digital line in/out, 10/100/1000BASE-T (Gigabit) Ethernet, 54 Mbps AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi (802.11g), and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR (Enhanced Data Rate), plus an Apple Remote and a 60-Watt MagSafe power adapter...

The Intel GMA 950 is not on the list of Aperture supported cards. It makes sense to have my laptop run my image management software, but I can't justify spending $2800 for a device that can be dropped or stolen (MacBook Pro). Interesting that Apple kept the Firewire support, esp. since iPods won't sync with Firewire any more.

With extended desktop support, if this device will run XP via Boot Camp or virtualization, then it moves way up on my buy list. In that case, paradoxically, Aperture moves way down.

Update: 5/16. The senior product manager for Aperture responded to my inquiry:

Aperture does run on the new MacBooks, but it is NOT officially supported, due to limitations with the graphics card. This means if you call AppleCare, you'll simply be told that you're running Aperture on an unsupported configuration. It's an "at-your-own-risk" experience.

That being said, Aperture will install and run on a MacBook...at least you're not disallowed from using it. No hacks needed!

And of course, Aperture is fully supported on all MacBook PRO models.

Joe Schorr
Sr. Product Manager, Aperture

An interesting twilight zone! I hope this gets clarified soon. "No Hacks" but "Not supported" suggests to me that a future version of Aperture may bring official support. Clearly Apple recognizes that the MacBook vs. MacBook Pro price gap creates an opening for an Aperture competitor.

Palm software: Handmark

Handmark feels like a relic of a bygone era -- they market PalmOS software. It's well done and easy to use. Worth keeping track of. I use my old CLIE as a kid's toy; they've gone some good games here.

Advanced and secret iPhoto 6 tools

Very weird. I wonder how these obscure capabilities were discovered. Pretty much an easter egg.

Macworld: Mac OS X Hints: Use advanced iPhoto 6 edit tools

iPhoto 6 has some nice built-in editing tools, including red-eye correction and retouch. But you can make these tools even more useful by activating a super-secret advanced editing mode. In advanced mode, you’ll be able to control the size and intensity of the retouch brush, as well as the size and ‘brightness’ of the red-eye correction tool.

Loose coupling and services oriented architecture

About 8 years ago I tried to sell the development organization I worked for on the term "loose coupling" as a way to build systems. I wasn't the only one back then, the term was floating around. The concept is as old as time, certainly older than software. I wasn't aware it was being used as long ago as 2003 to describe services oriented software design, until an Aufflick pos sent me to an older O'Reily article:

webservices.xml.com: What Is Service-Oriented Architecture

... Now we are able to define a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA is an architectural style whose goal is to achieve loose coupling among interacting software agents. A service is a unit of work done by a service provider to achieve desired end results for a service consumer. Both provider and consumer are roles played by software agents on behalf of their owners...

... How does SOA achieve loose coupling among interacting software agents? It does so by employing two architectural constraints:

1. A small set of simple and ubiquitous interfaces to all participating software agents. Only generic semantics are encoded at the interfaces. The interfaces should be universally available for all providers and consumers.

2. Descriptive messages constrained by an extensible schema delivered through the interfaces. No, or only minimal, system behavior is prescribed by messages. A schema limits the vocabulary and structure of messages. An extensible schema allows new versions of services to be introduced without breaking existing services...

Those of us from the medical ontology (SNOMED) and messaging (HL-7 RIM) know deeply what this means. Saying "schema limits the vocabulary and structure of messages" is a bit akin to the famous processing step of "... and then a miracle occurs". Said schema, if implemented, will end up setting in stone the fundamental data model buried within the service. That lesson still lies ahead ...

XP on Mac: how do you backup?

The Apple (OS X) Boot Camp FAQ advises backing up prior to installing Boot Camp. Ok, but what about afterwords? How do I backup both my OS X work and my PC work? I don't have an Intel Mac yet, so the question is somewhat academic for me, but it bothers me that this FAQ doesn't mention it. If the XP partition is visible to OS X, and if it's FAT-32 formatted, then I'd guess that Mac backup software might work ...

The problem may be even greater for virtualization solutions. If XP is a disk image to the Mac, then a single changed byte in the XP world might mean doing a 200GB (for example) backup ...