My workhorse home office printer/scanner/copier/fax is an HP Photosmart C6180 All-In-One. It’s really quite good - an excellent printer, especially for photos, with solid scanning and fax capability. But HP’s software leaves something to be desired. In both Vista, it would “forget” how to find the scanner after a few months, forcing me to reinstall. Once I switched to the Mac, I was amazed that the printer and scanner worked so well out of the box, but was annoyed to see it do exactly the same thing after a month or so. But it turns out that the problem here might not be all HP’s fault!

It turns out that the HP Printer Driver 1.1.1 from OS X Software Update, which is pushed out by Apple, interferes with the scanner communication for this, and lots of similar devices in the C5100, C6100, C6200, C7200 series. Everything works fine until you install this driver update, and then the scanner function ceases to work even though it can still see the device.

So here’s how to fix it:

1. Uninstall the HP software using the HP Uninstaller (inside Applications > Hewlett-Packard)
2. Reinstall the latest version 9.7.1 software from the HP website
3. Run Software Update (under the Apple menu)
4. Highlight HP Printer Drivers Update 1.1.1
5. Go to the top menu and select Update > Ignore Update

This will prevent your Mac from downloading the HP Printer Driver 1.1.1, and thus killing the scanner functionality.

While you’re at it, add a new Quartz filter to reduce the size of the scans!

My secret to long (battery) life and happiness!

Shortly before landing in San Francisco the other day, the MacBook Pro-using guy in the seat next to me leaned over and asked, “how did you manage to use your Mac all the way across the country? Is that some special battery you have?”

For a minute, I was tempted to make something up, as in “yes, it’s an experimental fuel cell that runs on bovine methane!” Or maybe claim that the new $5 Tornado intake in my car gets me 50 mpg, 7 hours of battery life, and makes me more attractive.

But I’m a good guy. So I admitted the truth - that I bought a spare battery for the MacBook Pro, so I never run out of juice. I’ve done this with all of my laptops for years, and I wonder why more people don’t do it. Extra Apple batteries are just $130 (on sale at Amazon for $110 now) and this is a small price to pay for go-anywhere juice! Batteries used to be much more expensive, but prices have fallen. Continue Reading »

Last week, I outlined where the various enterprise storage vendors stood on the key question of whether flash memory is a cache or a disk. In that article, I noted that 3PAR is notably absent in the enterprise flash world. In fact Mark Farley, 3PAR blogger extraordinaire, recently made it sound like 3PAR would sit on the fence for a good while longer, even comparing flash with optical technology (ouch!)

Well 3PAR is on the fence no longer. Marketing VP, Craig Nunes, has informed Chris Mellor of The Register that 3PAR will use flash as “tier-0″ storage in their InServe arrays. It is not clear how the company will integrate flash with their current strategy of wide-striping data across as many spindles as possible, but their post-RAID virtualized architecture ought to be able to make excellent use of the performance that flash drives bring, provided they have automated block-based tiering. And answering my question from the other day, 3PAR is definitely in the “flash is a disk” camp.

This is not an official announcement, and no dates or suppliers are given beyond the promise that the InServe is ready to handle FC SSD drives today. I look forward to Marc’s take on this!

Update: Marc’s response was sort of a non-response. He admits that SSDs are on the radar but insists that they’re not on the release roadmap, denies that there is “some sort of like weird greco wrestling match” between him and Craig Nunes (boy, that’s a relief!), and promotes 3PAR’s Dynamic Optimization technology, which I wasn’t aware of. I’d like to hear more, Marc!

This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I will be posting every Sunday.

Balancing work and life has never been easy, and this is especially true for the knowledge worker. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that we keep our jobs in our heads at all times, and modern electronics like the BlackBerry and laptop tend to keep it at our fingers as well. When our jobs require us to travel, work can effectively separate us entirely from our lives for days or weeks at a time. Road warriors must consciously try to focus on life, even as work pulls their attention away. Continue Reading »

Last week, I lauded Symantec for introducing an API in Storage Foundation which will interact with the thin storage capabilities of supported arrays. Since then, I’ve learned more about this capability, and I am writing this update to share that knowledge. As I noted last week, the press release was a bit hard to follow and comprehend (and not just for me), and one of my initial assumptions about the API turned out to be wrong. I also received a few comments from interested folks pointing out some more pros and cons of this technology.

First, let’s clarify just which products and capabilities Symantec is offering here:

• Veritas Storage Foundation version 5.0MP3 for Unix/Linux includes SmartMove and the Thin Reclamation API
• Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows 5.0 only includes SmartMove at this point, but it will be updated to include Thin Reclamation at some point in the coming year

Although there is no real information on Symantec’s web site about all this yet, Symantec’s director of Storage Management and High Availability, Sean Derrington, assures me that their software is available now. Although no compatible arrays are in end-user hands, 3PAR will update their T-Class firmware to support the API shortly, and HDS and HP are on the way as well. Continue Reading »

One feature of OS X that really surprised me was it’s amazing ability to handle PDF files. Since switching to mac earlier this year, I’ve become a PDF monster - OS X allowed me to go completely paperless for most business functions, including expense reports. I’ve started using the “Save as PDF” function constantly, organizing receipts and online statements for later reference, which Spotlight makes even easier.

But one thing bugged me. I use an HP Photosmart C6180 all-in-one scanner/printer/fax/copier, and while it works well, its scans are huge. I mean massive. A single-page color PDF scan of a recent magazine article I wrote became a 6.1 MB PDF file!

Then I noticed the “Reduce File Size” Quartz filter in the “Save As” dialog box. “Cool” I thought, “OS X will automatically reduce the file size for me!” Not so fast, though - although this filter did reduce the file size to just 36 KB, it also made the text unreadable! I needed a better solution… Continue Reading »

There is a battle shaping up in the enterprise storage industry. On one side are those who see flash storage as an upgrade for the disk drive, and on the other are those who see it as a cache between the CPU and the drive. It’s a fundamental difference of opinion - flash chips can be used either way, and each approach has its unique benefits and drawbacks.

The Register did a nice job of summing up the (late 2008) flash positioning of the various storage companies, and I recently posted a strategic look at this core issue. Note that some, like HP and Sun (and probably IBM), seem to have an end-to-end strategy, while others are firmly in one camp or the other. In the “not yet” column, apparently, are 3PAR, BlueArc (though they offer TMS RAM), Dell/EqualLogic, HP/LeftHand.

Update: 3PAR has joined the “disk” camp. Continue Reading »

I’ve just finished my day in Charlotte on my Storage Virtualization Seminar tour for TechTarget. We had another great crowd - everyone seemed interested even if some were shy about speaking up. I was especially pleased to see the optimism about the city’s post-Wachovia future.

Comments at the event focused on management, with my concerns about ownership and intra-departmental conflict rising from consolidation of server, I/O, and storage really getting attention. Continue Reading »

What is the best way to use email archiving systems for e-discovery? Earlier this year, I co-wrote a whitepaper on the topic (sponsored by LiveOffice), and on Wednesday I will present a companion webinar.

The gist is that email archiving can be an incredibly useful tool to manage legal risks and enable more effective discovery of message content. Electronic discovery is growing at an amazing clip, and most cases now include email messages - in fact, email is estimated to be 60% to 70% of all legal discovery in the United States today!

At the same time, companies are challenged with ineffective or un-enforced retention and litigation hold policies and rampant “underground archiving” of messages in offline PST files. And to make matters worse, the 2006 revisions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure drastically shortened the amount of time companies have to describe and produce electronic records! It’s simply impossible to begin recovering messages from backup tapes in response to legal requests - the only way forward is a proactive strategy based on email archiving.

If this piques your interest, grab a copy of that whitepaper, join me on Wednesday for the webinar, and check out some of my other email-related content. I’ll also be speaking on the topic at Storage Decisions in San Francisco, and would be happy to respond to your emailed questions any time!

This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I will be posting every Sunday as part of an experiment in offering more in-depth content.

There has been a lot of discussion in the storage industry about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), making it the toast of Storage Networking World, but this technology remains relatively unknown to end users. Like so many storage protocols before it, the $10,000 question is whether FCoE will take off like iSCSI or fizzle as a niche product like FCIP, DAFS, and so many others.

If it does succeed, another critical question is what this means for iSCSI, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, and to a lesser extent AoE, expanded SAS, and other options for SAN storage. The enterprise data center is poised for a complete change in server connectivity, with 10 Gb Ethernet converged network adapters (CNAs) and new core switches carrying both network and storage traffic, and this holds promise, especially in virtualized environments. But CNAs do not equal FCoE, and iSCSI, conventional Fibre Channel, and other protocols are roaring ahead. What impact will FCoE really have?

Continue Reading »