Twins?! Oscar & Lewis
July 31st, 201460 years and 6 weeks
July 31st, 2014Victory: format shifting and parody clear last hurdle →
July 30th, 2014Hooray! It’s finally legal to rip your own CDs and listen to them on your computer/iPod/whatever. Still not legal to rip DVDs or Blurays though.
Archival copies of your Comixology comics →
July 25th, 2014This is good news! Comics you’ve bought on Comixology may now be available to download in a format you’ll be able to read forever, with no DRM.
It’s opt-in by the publishers, so not all comics are available DRM-free, but I’m so happy Comixology are putting in the effort to make this happen. I hope more publishers get on board.
Right now, all the issues of Saga that I’ve bought are downloadable. Woop!
We're not sure what this impression is. Bane?
July 20th, 2014Joshua's been a bit poorly. So we've put him in quarantine.
July 20th, 2014Having breakfast after camping in the garden
July 20th, 2014Joshua and Caleb. Best friends in The Bible.
July 17th, 2014"I'm Batman"
July 14th, 2014Computer case that can hold lots of hard drives
July 13th, 2014I’ve been looking for a while for a not-silly-expensive, normal-ish computer case that can hold lots of hard drives.
I’m building a home NAS, and want the flexibility to fill it with lots of hard disk drives. Normal decent home computer cases can hold about 5 hard drives (3.5″ bays), plus 3-4 CD drives (5.25″ bays). I just want lots of room for HDD, so looking for a case with lots of 3.5″ bays.
Here’s a write-up of my findings, in case it’s of use to anyone else…
You can also get HDD enclosures that fit in the 5.25″ bays, but hold HDD instead:
- 4-in-3 adapter for about £30 puts 4 HDD in 3 5.25″ bays (4-in-3), with a big 120mm fan cooling them. (It’s a faff to change the drives around with these, but the cooling is good)
- 5-in-3 adapter for about £28 puts 5 HDD in 3 5.25″ bays (5-in-3), also with a big 120mm fan cooling them.
- Fancier ones (costing ~£120+) are hot swappable, and provide better cable management etc.
It was surprisingly hard to find many cheap options, but my hunt has lead me to the following.
- Antec 1900 (about £170) has 12 3.5″ bays, plus 3 5.25″ bays, so could hold up to 17 HDD, with a 5-in-3 enclosure. It’s a huge case – 700mm tall
- Antec 1200 (about £120) has 12 5.25″ bays and zero 3.5″, but comes with 3 3-in-3 5.25″ to 3.5″ adapters. This one is great if you want to start with decent capacity (9 HDD), but also the option to scale up to 20 in the future (for about £120). Still big – 650mm tall
- Antec Nine Hundred Two (about £75) is similar to the 1200, but has 9 5.25″ bays, and adapters for 6 bays come in the box. Could hold up to 15 drives (with 3 5-in-3 adapters, totalling about £85 extra) – normal sized at <500mm tall
- Fractal Design ARC XL and Fractal Design Define XL (£100 or £85) are similar to each other. Both have 8 3.5″ bays, plus 4 5.25″ bays, so could hold up to 13 HDD. Not too big – 570/560mm tall