• Dead Hard Drive

    Disk Warrior

    Remember that fast, new 2.5″ 7200RPM Seagate 500GB hard drive that I installed in Mac Mini No. 3?  Don’t bother, it is dead.  It gave no warning (sounds, clicks, errors, etc.), but it died none the less.  Just to make sure, I let Disk Warrior run for about five hours, and it too confirmed that the drive was dead.  Do you like my “screen shot”?

    In a non-scientific study conducted on my twenty or so hard drives currently and recently in use, 100% of the failures have been Seagate drives.  The only other failure being a member disk in my RAID.  Aside from that, I have had some DOA Seagate drives.  I don’t dislike Seagate drives (yet), but I do still prefer Hitachi over most others.

    WD Scorpio Blue 500GB SATA

    That said, I replaced this Seagate with *gasp* a Western Digital.  I don’t and haven’t liked Western Digital drives since sometime in the early 1990s.  In fact, it has been so long that I don’t remember why I disliked them.  So, with no Hitachi drives immediately available, I got a WD Scorpio Blue 5400RPM 500GB drive.  Based on my experience with OE Western Digital drives in Dells, this drive will either be fine, or grind itself into a noisy and expensive powder.  We will just have to wait and see.

    Time Machine Restore

    What about the data?  Well, as with the RAID failure, I didn’t lose any data.  I use a combination of RAID, scheduled automated backups, and periodic off-site archiving to protect my data.  In this case, I used the scheduled automated backups, aka Time Machine, to recover my data.  The disk failure occurred sometime on the morning of 14 November.  I used a Time Machine backup from the evening of 13 November to restore the system.  The recovery process took three to four hours to restore approximately 300GB of data from an external FireWire 400 drive.  Additionally, Apple Mail required around a half hour to rebuild my inboxes, iPhoto performed some sort of maintenance, and for some reason the time zone had to be reset.

    Overall, I didn’t lose any data and the dead drive was only a minor inconvenience.  In fact, the biggest problem I had was locating a SATA 500GB 2.5″ drive locally that was actually in stock.  I have some more details on the backup and archiving systems I use; perhaps they will show up in a future post…

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  • Crosshairs: Trail to Road

    Gunnar Crosshairs

    Since moving to South Australia, the Gunnar has been used exclusively on the road.  However, the Gunnar has always been set up primarily for trail use.  The small frame and low handlebars are great on the trail, but can be quite tiring and painful on longer road rides, especially on the descents.

    Prior to Amy’s Ride I made some changes to better suit the Gunnar to road use.  Having read many, many opinions on road frame sizing and having gone over the geometry and dimensions of my 52cm Gunnar numerous times, I was almost ready to replace the frame.  However, after looking at more appropriately-sized frames, it was clear that a slightly longer and taller stem with my existing frame might be an option.

    The new stem is a 120mm 17° Cinelli Via with a 26mm clamp.  It is forged aluminum, cheap, functional and the right size.  It isn’t as nice looking as the Salsa Cromoto, but unlike the Salsa, it was available and not part of a recall.  The new stem moved the bars slightly forward and significantly higher, achieving an effect similar to a larger frame with a taller head tube.  The only drawback taking this route is slightly goofy look that results from the combination of a 25mm spacer and a 17° stem.

    SRAM Superlight

    Along with the new stem came new bar tape as the brake cables were too short to accommodate the new stem, and the old tape was too worn to reuse.  I would have preferred to replace the old Salsa Goma tape with the same, but, like the Cromoto stem, it was no longer available.  The thinnest most Goma-like tape I found was SRAM Superlight.  The SRAM tape seems slightly thicker than the Salsa tape, but it is less dense.  The texture is not as nice as the Salsa tape either, but it is better than cork.  Wrapping the bars is a little tricky as the Superlight tape does not stretch, but the kinks worked themselves out after one ride.

    Vittoria Rubino Pro Slick 25mm on Salsa Delgado Cross

    Finally, I have new tires.  The 28mm Hutchinson Top Speed tires were worn, but in decent shape except for some rips and cuts from road debris.  They were replaced with a pair of Vittoria Rubino Pro Slick 25mm tires.  I was a little apprehensive about going to a narrower, lower volume tire, but so far I’ve been happy with them.  The 25mm wide Vittorias fit on the 22.5mm wide Salsa Delgado Cross rims without a problem, and have a nice cross section when mounted.

    The combination of stem and bar tape worked well on the 100km Amy’s Ride.  The taller bars were easier on my neck, descending was much less painful, and I actually looked forward to the next downhill.  The SRAM bar tape was okay, but I preferred the Goma tape.  While I do like the thin, “non-bulky” feel of the Superlight tape, I would prefer something with a similar thickness, but a little more solid/dense.  On the other hand, the new tires worked very well.  They were comfortable, cornered well, and were surprisingly quiet.  The combination of these tires and an almost silent XT rear hub is a nice combination, though it is easy to startle slower riders when overtaking.

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  • Amy’s Ride 2009

    Amy's Ride 2009, Southern Expressway

    Photo Credit: Adelaide Now

    Yesterday I rode in the BikeSA 2009 South Australia Amy’s Ride tour from Adelaide to McLaren Vale.  From the Amy Gillette Foundation:

    Amy’s Ride provides the Amy Gillett Foundation with an opportunity to proliferate key messages of safe and responsible road use, increase awareness to the need for more shared respect, raise much needed funds and honor the memory of Amy.

    The above photo is from the Adelaide Now story and photo gallery covering the ride.  As mentioned in the article, the weather was hot and sunny, and over 3,000 riders took part in the event.

    Amy's Ride 100km Route

    I rode the 100km route that began at Flinders University, went down the Southern Expressway, then along the coast to Willunga, then up into the hills and finally back down to McLaren Vale.  The Southern Expressway, Willunga Hill and some other sections of the route were closed to car traffic.

    Amy's Ride 100km Elevation

    The Expressway starts out with a steady 4km climb and ends with a fast downhill.  The next notable hill is 3km long Willunga Hill.  This one starts on the east side of Willunga and climbs at and average gradient of 7.5% for a total of 227m of elevation gain.  After Willunga Hill, the ride is mostly downhill with some very fast descents.

    Not including my 10-15km commute to the start of the ride, my total time for the remaining 100km was 4:15 with approximately 40 minutes at rest stops/lunch.  I can’t give my usual data because even though my cyclo-computer  was working the night before the ride, it was not on the morning of the ride.  Oh well.  However, based on these estimates, my average speed was similar to that of my last tour, the 2006 MS 150.  Overall, this was a lot of fun, and contrary to what you may think, climbing Willunga Hill was definitely the highlight of the ride.

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