2003 was the last time I’d ever used a floppy drive to boot up and fix a PC. I always had this bootable CD I used since then. Even most of the servers and systems with RAID drivers had some sort of virtual drive for installing drivers during Windows installations.
Recently, I had to install and fix the harware RAID configuration on a small HP ML110 G4 and was surprised to find out that the server didn’t have the proper drivers for the RAID. Even the default factory setting were wrong and you’d have to update the BIOS to enable the RAID controller to work.
The installation discs were all also missing as the owner either misplaced the HP discs or the previous I.T. guy took them. Anyway, I got online and found drivers for the HP Embedded RAID and that’s when I realized that I don’t have any floppy drives or disks to get the driver running.
It was frustrating for a while as there are not much of these available on the market. There were still vendors who sold these but they were like a two-hour drive in heavy traffic from where I was at the moment.
When I got to the store that had the particular items on stock, I immediately bought one external and an internal drive and a box of diskettes, got back to the client and then job done.
Now I will make sure I have some old hardware on stock as I think I am about to encounter more of these old server hardware which will need some servicing. My next step is to look for a SCSI hard drive compatible with an old IBM Xseries.
We keep all the social network badges nicely tucked here. It's a clever way of keeping footers nice and clean.
Lenovo IdeaPad S12 Netbook with NVIDIA ION GPU
Now available, the Lenovo IdeaPad S12, the company’s first 12-inch netbook and the first, to use NVIDIA ION™ graphics cards. The IdeaPad S12 brings the best in connectivity, style and entertainment along with the superb features already found in Lenovo’s other netbooks and promises to brings users to the next level in netbook computing with improved usability and performance.
Read More »
continue...