I just received an email from ElephantDrive informing me that my legacy unlimited storage account will be terminated in 30 days, and that I must select a new plan. In July 2009 ElephantDrive announced that they are no longer offering their $100 per year unlimited storage plan. ElephantDrive is now offering a $200 per year for 500GB plan. In February 2011 Mozy announced that they are no longer offering their $55 per year unlimited storage plan. Mozy is now offering a $120 per year for 125GB plan. In February 2011 Trend Micro SafeSync announced that they are bandwidth throttling large accounts. In March 2011 they announced that they are no longer offering their $35 per year unlimited storage plan. SafeSync is now offering a $150 per year for 150GB plan. Carbonite offers a $55 per year for unlimited storage plan, but they are bandwidth throttling accounts over 35GB to 512Kbps and accounts over 200GB to 100Kbps access speeds. AVG LiveKive offers an $80 per year for unlimited storage plan, but the terms of service defines unlimited as 500GB. BackBlaze offers a $60 per year for unlimited storage plan. CrashPlan offers a $50 per year for unlimited storage plan. Neither BackBlazenor CrashPlan supports their unlimited plan on server class machines. ...

I just had one of those moments where the blood drains from your head as you contemplate what you did. I was in Disk Management Console, messing around with new drives I was testing, and I wanted to delete the volumes. Right Click, Delete, Are you sure, your data will be lost, and without thinking twice, I clicked yes. Then the blood drained from my head as I realized what I just did; instead of deleting the test volume, I just deleted my main 5TB data volume! ...

I wanted to write about Trend Micro SafeSync, but it reminded me of my Streamload experience, and I ended up writing this instead. This time I am really going to write about SafeSync. SafeSync is another online backup and sync and share application. Actually, they offer both online storage through a mapped drive, and syncing folders online, this makes it unique compared to many existing offerings. I have used almost all online backup and sync and share type applications out there, my favorite remains DropBox. SafeSync used to be Humyo, before being acquired by Trend. I used Humyo when they were in Beta, it was just ok, but between then and now their product seems to have come a long way. ...

I have been using online backup for many years. I won’t call myself an expert, experienced maybe, but I have tried almost all online backup and sync and share services. My biggest concern is still the longevity and trustworthiness of the provider. My biggest disappointment is definitely Streamload. Streamload was a great service, they provided unlimited storage, had a client up-loader, supported FTP access, and had a great web frontend. And this was in 2005, long before many other online storage providers existed, and nobody else offered unlimited storage. The concept was great, take any of your online files, and present them in a web friendly way, e.g. play your backed up music collection from your browser, watch your backed up movies from your browser. ...

I got so frustrated with the NCP VPN client software, specifically a recent update, that I decided to let my frustration out by writing about it. For a long time I used the, IT approved, Cisco VPN client to access our corporate network. And as the OS technology moved along, so did my systems, meaning Vista, Windows 7, and 64-bit. While, for the most part, our IT approved systems remained to be only 32-bit XP. Cisco, for some reason, maybe they are representative of IT organizations as a whole, was late to support Vista, was late to support Windows 7, and for the longest time never supported x64. ...

When I started writing about the ID11, my intent was to document video playback and use as an HTPC, several posts later, and I am finally getting to MKV H.264 playback configuration and performance. This is the sixth post in a series of posts related to the Zotac ZBOX ZBOXHD-ID11. Summary: The CPU is not powerful enough to render / decode H.264 video, and GPU acceleration via DXVA is required, as well as a DXVA capable player. The Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder, included as part of Windows 7 x64, worked perfectly for H.264 playback, and compared to other H.264 decoders had the lowest CPU usage. As a standalone player, Media Player Classic Home Cinema, is a perfect choice, it supports MKV, H.264, DXVA, and subtitles without the need of any other software. Playback of MKV H.264 in Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, MediaPortal, or XBMC requires the installation of Haali Media Splitter, and ffdshow audio and video decoders. For AC-3 / DTS pass-through playback via S/PDIF / HDMI, the ffdshow audio decoder is required. I am not an expert in how these things work, but I have a basic understanding of video playback on Windows platforms, so let’s start with the file format; an MKV file is a Matroska Media Container file. An MKV file can contain multiple audio-, video-, subtitle-, and other, streams. An MKV file is not a video or audio compression format, it is just a container. ...

As I was testing the ID11, I noticed differences in the thermal behavior based on how the case was positioned. I tested three positions; case open, case vertical, and case horizontal. This is the fifth post in a series of posts related to the Zotac ZBOX ZBOXHD-ID11. Summary: Place the case in a vertical position for best cooling. I used the Beta BIOS for testing. I let the system sit idle, placed it under load, then back to idle, while I recorded the fan speed and temperatures. The ambient temperature was 21C / 70F. ...

In a previous post I measured the fan speed and noise under load, and I found it to be unacceptably high. Zotac support notified me that a new Beta BIOS is available that addresses the issue. In this post I measure the difference between the release BIOS and the Beta BIOS. This is the fourth post in a series of posts related to the Zotac ZBOX ZBOXHD-ID11. Summary: The Beta BIOS reduces the fan speed and noise significantly. The default BIOS values need some adjustment to get acceptable results. Similar results may be possible with the current BIOS by setting the target temperature to 65C. The Beta BIOS was first announced on the global Zotac site, it only later appeared on the US site. I would recommend that ID11 owners look for updates on the global site instead of the US site. The Beta BIOS is available for download from here. ...

I created this page as an index to all my posts about the Zotac ZBOX Mini-PC ZBOXHD-ID11. First impressions Fan speed and noise 4GB RAM support Beta BIOS reduces fan speed and noise Case positioning impact on fan noise MKV H.264 video playback performance This is my first post created using Windows Live Writer. I used to create my posts using Google Docs, but a recent upgrade to Google Docs removed the ability to publish docs to Blogger. Ironic that I am now using a Microsoft product to post to Google ;)

In this post I describe my experience while upgrading the BIOS, in order to support 4GB of memory. This is the third post in a series of posts related to the Zotac ZBOX ZBOXHD-ID11. Summary: - 4GB is supported after upgrading the BIOS. - BIOS has to be updated using less than 4GB, else ID11 fails to post. [Update: 20 May 2010] After writing this post, the machine started bluescreen / BSOD crashing. Mostly MEMORY_MANAGEMENT / 0x0000001A errors, with occasional 0x000000BE and 0x0000003B crashes. When I initially installed the 4GB RAM, I ran memtest for one cycle, and the RAM tested fine. I just reran memtest, and it is reporting the memory as bad. I replaced the memory with a new stick, I ran memtest overnight, and everything seems back to normal. I hope it was just a bad stick, and not the ID11 that killed the memory. ...