DaBeach

Ensure you have an uncorrupted ISO and correct VS. 32/64bit & CPU Intel/AMD (As Infiltrator stated). I had recently tried most if not all router packages and had troubles initially which I later discovered was a bad HDD. I ended up choosing pFSense and have had no issues since final install and running beta4. Your issue sounds like those I had on install related to the HDD error.

I think I will give it a whirl perhaps this week.

Seems like with Compact Flash and/or USB Drives the potential downfall might be exceeding the write cycle life of the media.

I am really just playing around with my systems and would like to add the removable drive tray to allow for a quick image restore vs. having to boot off a USB stick. Currently I am only using 5% of a 10GB IDE HDD. I have no experience using Compact Flash cards. Would a pfSense install be just like installing to an HDD when using a Compact Flash card? Can pfSense be installed on a USB stick? And if so how would the access speed compare to a Compact Flash or HDD?

I am considering updated my pfSense box with a removable trayless drive unit and I am wondering if there would be any benefit or loss using a laptop hard drive vs. the desktop drive I am using now. I would imagine that the laptop drive would use less power (not sure if it would be enough to care) and maybe a little less generated heat internally however, I am wondering if I would see a loss of speed due to the lower RPM on the laptop drive? Anyone have any suggestions and/or opinions about this?

I believe the NetGear FVS338 will allow for remote management via the Internet and HTTPS. I ran this router for years without issue just prior to upgrading to pfSense.

FireFox only with: BetterPrivacy (For Flash Cookie Removal) NoScript

Seems in order for Hot Swap SATA to work the MB or add on card would have to have "Advanced Host Controller Interface AHCI" ability. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host...oller_Interface And I am wondering if by adding a card like this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...ASUS-_-13131610 If it would allow me to hot swap drives with WIN7 64bit. After checking my BIOS as the MB I am using is from 2007 it does not appear I can turn on/off this feature for SATA and there are no firmware updates for the MB.

I will do this now, good idea. I would guess it might not as my MB is around 2 years old, not sure.

I had purchased 2 1.5TB WD SATA HDD's for data use only with 2 Icy Dock MB672SKGF SATA tray less docks for my system. My goals were 2 fold. #1 OS - In bay 1 In the event of an OS crash or issue I would be able to power down and swap out my 2 cloned OS drives and be back up and running in seconds vs. 10-15 minutes performing a restore by image. #2 DATA - I wanted to be able to swap out data only drives in bay 2 for access to data archive or to backup date with redundant drives individually. Unfortunately I discovered that Windows would not see the drive that was inserted into bay 2 at all. It seems that the BIOS does not see drives that are inserted after the OS is active. I searched a little and discovered that the BIOS had to be of a certain type (forgot name) in order to perform hot swapping of SATA drives. I plan on completing my build later this year with a new MB and other parts and was wondering if a SATA card installed in my current MB would be able to allow windows to see the hot swapping of the data drives because if it would I would be able to achieve my goal prior to the new MB install.

Yikes! $300-$800 for the card. I think I will wait until I upgrade my MB as I was expecting around $200-$300 for the MB.

I recently upgraded my system with 2 internal trays that allow for SATA drives to be installed/removed from the front of the system. After reading up on removable SATA drives I have discovered that the motherboard needs to have BIOS that are aware of removable SATA drives so I can hot swap in windows. The temp motherboard I am using does not appear to have this feature and I am wondering if I would be able to add a SATA card to the motherboard that would allow me to hot swap the drives. Can this be done and what would be recommended prior to my new MB install?

I had a similar thing happen in my XP days when I believe I was using the latest version of IE and by visiting a site without my knowledge or actions my notepad.exe was replaced with a Trojan/virus which then attempted to go out to the net. The firewall stopped it and alerted me and that's how I learned of the problem. Since this time I have the software firewall on each system blocking everything except my exceptions followed by the router/firewall setup in the same fashion. While I am still not impressed enough to jump back into virus and/or spyware/malware scanners I would like to think that my practice of restoring the system via full image restore of a fresh install followed by the router/firewall procedures help me. And in the future after my new build I am going to play around with going virtual and a regular practice of deleting used OS images after use.

How would a Trojan be able to gain admin rights? If BIOS or Firmware are susceptible to attack and a Trojan could rewrite or add an executable that would infect even a new install after a partition wipe and format how would anti virus help and how would one even know this was happening? I don't recall in the case of the Sony DRM root kit situation a while back if the user would have had to facilitate the install of the root kit or not.

That optical tube is pretty much what I would like as the thickness looks to be similar to the size of the plastic lens that was over the LED of the modem.

I took a look at the LED's on board and they are kinda small. Not comfortable attempting to remove these.

Perhaps I will make my own cable

For a modem/router project I am working on I may need to tap the LED's on my modem board and bring the light to another location. Does anyone know where I could get some optical cable to reroute this light. I guess I could get one of those funky lights at walmart and clip a few of the optical strands. Similar to this: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...4=263602_263622

Ok. I have a few smaller drives all are formatted NTFS and have never had to worry about other formats, and I could always extract a file to another drive if it became an issue. As you mentioned, I think the folders would be easier as who knows I may have more videos and may be in a situation of having to resize and this may be a problem at a later date. I think I will go with folders.

Ok, I past that test, I own the modem. I popped the modem case and see that the board is smaller that a front drive bay. The LED's are facing sideways on the board but the lights were redirected with a plastic optic which brings them forward and this will allow me to drill a few holes in a front plate on the PC for the lights. Now to mount the COAX and RJ45's I may be able to use some Keystone jacks for this.

I know that the Acronis I used WD edition does infact allow for imaging of just the blocks that have data and can also image the used/unused blocks as well. DriveSnapShot I am not sure, I know in my use that it will image only used blocks not sure if there is an option for unused.

In my boredom I was looking over my network setup and came up with an idea. I recently built a ATX PC Router and would like to crack open my Motorola Surfboard cable modem and install it into the router. It seems that the modem requires 12v which could be taken off the PC power supply and I may be able to install it into a front drive bay so that the modem lights would be up front. I would also have to jump the RJ45 and feed in the COAX. Does anyone have any warnings, opinions or other information I may not be aware of for this project?

I will be purchasing a new 2TB internal SATA HDD for data use and I am wondering if there is any advantage in partitioning the drive vs. just dumping everything on it in separate directories. DATA SOFTWARE AUDIO VIDEO

Have you used Acronis at all? And if so what is your experience with this in comparison to CloneZilla? I have been using DriveSnapSHot for years with no issues other than having to create a WIN boot CD in order to run it from a USB stick, which was not impossible it just turned out to be a pain as the boot system I was using (I believe BART) placed the files in a RAM drive and the drive was different every time so I had to go digging to find it. I have started testing Acronis and it will create a boot USB or ISO of itself, and it boots fast compared to my other CD. Acronis offers the ability to clone a drive to another or image/restore a partition and allows the ability to pull a single file out of the archive. I am hoping that Acronis allows for some scripting or command lines so I can create a boot USB that will load and restore a particular image to a particular drive and then power down or reboot the system so I can perform a restore without having to touch a key. In case anyone is unaware of this: It seems that Western Digital and Seagate drives include or have available a free version of Acronis that when operated from a USB show as full versions.

What imaging software do you use and why do you like it vs. another brand. EXA: DriveSnapShot, Acronis etc...