Replies

Will Fastie wrote:

But if you buy spares at the time, they will be old by the time they are needed.

Old is relative. Back in the day, first and second generation 5, 10, and 20mb hard drives that sat idle could develop frozen spindles. (Frozen spindles could sometimes be freed up by tapping them with a screwdriver; ahh, the good old days.) I haven’t experienced, not to mention heard of, an idle drive developing a frozen spindle in a long while. Modern spares bought when the system was bought are exactly as old as the drives in the system but they are unused, and in my experience with hundreds of modern drives over the past 20 years, they don’t deteriorate sitting idle. Over those years I’ve used many several-year-old, but otherwise new, drives of different technologies–I’ll wager you have occasionally used several-year-old, but otherwise new drives too–and never had one that didn’t perform as well as a brand new drive for as long as a brand new drive performed well.

GaryK

There is a perverse drawback to increased reliability: Drives and drive arrays now last so long that one often finds that new,  similar replacement drives are no longer available when needed. This is rarely an insurmountable problem, but it does introduce complications that must be considered when replacing a dissimilar drive in an array. It’s much simpler simply to slip in a similar drive; for that reason, I always bought spares when setting up RAID arrays.

GaryK

Thank you for discussing this.

As with all complicated technology, understanding RAID 1’s nuances is key. Within a narrow range of requirements, and used in conjunction with other backup methods, RAID 1 can provide a great advantage to a small business. I had several small business clients for which RAID 1 provided nearly 100% uptime over years of operation during business hours, which is when those businesses needed that uptime. When one mirrored drive failed physically, which happened occasionally (although less and less as time went on) no one at the business ever knew about it. They continued to work as usual. I could then go in after hours, swap the drive, and let the mirror rebuild itself.

Mr. Langa’s two objections–that both drives could both fail simultaneously and that a software glitch or virus are immediately carried over–are true, but

1) as you say, the chances of both drives simultaneously (or near simultaneously) failing physically are tiny, and that very possibility requires an admin to replace a failed drive ASAP. To limit even that limited possibility, I replaced operating RAID 1 drives alternately every couple of years and kept the original drive as spares (that occasionally were useful.) Additionally, Mr. Langa’s catastrophic-failure objections, in this case both members of a RAID 1 configuration failing, is only one possible catastrophic-failure scenario an admin must foresee and guard against.

Which is why 2) a RAID 1 setup should not be the only backup.

GaryK

2 users thanked author for this post.

teuhasn2, Will Fastie

[gkarasik]

Got my Win7 machines updated to ESU v2. Couldn’t have been easier. Thanks Amy and Ted!

GaryK

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by gkarasik.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Amy Babinchak

Case in point: I upgraded to FFox v84, and there’s no longer any sound.

GaryK

Marketing-driven, gee-whiz changes that produce no apparent improvement in use are merely annoying, but beyond that, FFox crashes or often just plain won’t open. I frequently have to shut it down and restart it, so despite that fact that I want to support it and keep using it, I find myself more and more opting for Brave just to get my work done. If I’m not alone, then FFox is in a classic death spiral: fewer users, lower revenue, fewer developers, less quality control, more marketing-driven changes, less quality control, fewer users….

GaryK

Just had a power supply die last week. Where are we now astrologically?

GaryK

1 user thanked author for this post.

Perturbance

Tracey Capen wrote:

LANGALIST By Fred Langa What on earth could cause a Wi-Fi setup to momentarily fail each night at around the same time? Perhaps a rogue scheduled task
[See the full post at: Wi-Fi stutters every evening like clockwork]

Something else to check would be if the router or access point is scheduled to reboot automatically.

GaryK

1 user thanked author for this post.

RTEsysadmin

Douglas–I’ve stubbornly clung to Win7, but am curious about your thinking re Win8.1. Would you mind emailing me  and sharing your thoughts?

Moderator note: Email address removed for security reasons.

GaryK

[gkarasik]

As there’s no new Servicing Stack update for this month, do we have to manually install the one from last month?

GaryK

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by gkarasik.

No problems on multiple Win7/32bit/Ent systems. I have seen problems with updates to 64bit systems that never manifested on 32bit systems.

GaryK

1 user thanked author for this post.

woody

[gkarasik]

Today’s SSU on Win7/32bit/Ent was KB4555449 (not KB4538483), which, at the time I looked for it this morning in the  Update Catalog, came up as “Could not be found.” I assume it will turn up, but it sounds like it’s a different file from last month’s SSU.

GaryK

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by gkarasik.

davinci953 wrote:

I downloaded the SSU update from the Microsoft Catalog and just placed it in the folder with the security updates to install with the ESU script from @abbodi86. All is good.

I did a version of this with a simple bat called from registy Run.

According to various posts here, the SSU sometimes changes, so it must be DLed and copied to a specific folder and then renamed to match the bat instructions. Once installed, I delete the file. If the folder’s empty, then nothing happens.

Since I’m paying for this update service, and since the post-update SSU is so easy to automate, I’m surprised MS hasn’t automated this.

GaryK

PKCano wrote:

The SSU is the update for the Windows Update mechanism itself. There has not always a new SSU released each month in the past, but there has been a new SSU each month issued with the ESU patches since Win7 EOL.

The required SSU is listed on the MS Support Page for each of the Security-only patches. SSUs are not a part of the Group B listing. But when there are new SSUs, the KB numbers have been published each month in the Patch Tuesday blog thread.

SSUs are delivered through Windows Update in the normal manner. There is no need to download them from the Catalog and install them manually.
See #2261235 for information on SSUs.

Now I’m really confused, because we’ve been told that the SSU must be installed separately after an update in order to receive the next update.

GaryK

This suggests that MS is incapable of designing a process that that is safe.

Moderator note: Edited for content

GaryK