Dragon Dictate might be the best dictation option for Mac users, but it's not very good at that

For the last few months, I’ve been experimenting with dictation software on the Mac. Previously, I had used the built-in dictation software in Windows Vista and Windows 7, but it was annoying to launch a virtual machine every time I wanted to dictate something. On the Mac and purchase an (expensive) copy of Dragon Dictate for Mac. So far, my experience has been less than positive.

What I Was Looking For

I use dictation software for dictation, not control my computer. I was looking for a product that would allow me to speak naturally to my computer as a way to accelerate my writing. See, I am a professional writer and regularly churn out thousands of words per week. Although I can type very fast, I find that dictation allows me to sit back and collect my thoughts without being distracted by the keyboard.

It is critical for me that the software I select recognizes my words consistently and does not require a great deal of post-speech editing. In other words, I want to be able to carefully talk through an entire piece without going back and doing word by word checking after the fact.

Since I write on technical topics (I specialize in enterprise data storage), it is critical that the dictation software is flexible in allowing bizarre spelling and capitalization combinations. It seems that every enterprise product and company has some strange combination of capital letters and made-up words!

Dragon Dictates (Sometimes)

Dragon Dictate has proven frustrating in regular use, especially for a software package that cost nearly $200. Although it is quite adept at recognizing flowing speech, it utterly fails to be useful in regular applications and workflows.

Adding new words to the Dragon dictionary is frustratingly complicated, requiring nearly a dozen steps with keyboard, mouse, and the GUI. Why can’t an end-user dictate a new word? Alas, this seems to be impossible. Spelled (or even typed) words don’t appear to be added to the dictionary and will be mis-recognized even in the same document.

Dragon stubbornly refuses to learn certain words, as well. I can’t figure out how to tell it to spell the word “minutes”, for example, rather than the abbreviation “min.” though there is such an option in Dragon’s PC product. It is frustratingly inconsistent at recognizing common punctuation marks and commands, often typing “exhalation point” or “go to and” rather than “!” or moving the cursor to the end of the line. I can’t figure out how to tell it to spell my name without a “V” and it even mis-recognizes its own name as “DragonDictate” (no space).

But by far the most frustrating aspect of Dragon Dictate is its incompatibility with just about every native application I use. The only satisfying dictation experience relies on the ultra basic text editor included with Dictate. Although it is supposed to be compatible with Microsoft Word, actual usage is frustrating. And attempting to use dictate in other applications makes me want to throw my computer out the window, as illustrated in the video below.

Stephen’s Stance

I am utterly frustrated with Dragon Dictate for Mac. It shows sparks of brilliance but is so tarnished by the obnoxious experience of actually using it that I have half a mind to demand my money back. And it certainly did cost quite a bit of money, especially compared to the free and less frustrating speech recognition software bundled with Microsoft Windows!

I’d like to see Dragon improve this product in key areas:

1. Add a simple, streamlined dictated command to add a word to the dictionary – “add that” should allow you to spell and train in one go
2. Fix the obnoxious behavior outside the Dictate “notepad” window – or add an “insert only” setting to not “guess” where you are in a document and overwrite things
3. Fix the weird “add extra characters after the cursor” bug demonstrated in my video
4. Allow me to fix one or two words, not a whole phrase, and allow me to fix it outside the Recognition window’s (limited) choices
5. Add a “no abbreviations” setting to the Mac version so it stops correcting “minutes” to “min.”
6. Allow me to say “always recognize it this way” for words like “Fibre Channel” and “Stephen’s stance” (not “fiber channel” and “Steven’s stance”)
7. Improve recognition of common commands and terms (“explanation point”? Seriously? When has anyone ever dictated that?)

See Nuance Responds to My Dragon Dictate Concerns for detailed information on these concerns

Finally, I suggest that Dragon does something to lower the price. I got mine at a steep discount, but it was still $129, which is pretty stiff for a utility of limited utility. The included headset and USB adapter are of mediocre quality and aren’t worth more than $20. If Dragon brings Dictate to the Mac App Store at $49 and fixes the bugs it might be worthwhile. But for now, it earns a “don’t buy“.

One more thing: 90 days of support? For a product costing over $100? Seriously? I was so frustrated at my initial attempts to use Dictate that I stuck it on the shelf for months before giving it another shot. Now I have to pay for support. Or not.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Dragon Dictate for Mac: Utterly Frustrating
This post was categorized as Apple, Everything, Features, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

But Windows Automatic Update is causing me trouble. It automatically restarts these virtual machines whenever there is an OS update, which seems to be every night lately. This automatic reboot kills whatever programs happen to be running at the time, causing me to lose half-written articles (even though I saved them and Auto Save is on) and almost killing an old BlackBerry I was updating. I had to figure out a way to disable this automatic reboot!

The answer is fairly simple. Just about every part of Windows can be tweaked using the surprisingly-friendly but scarily-named Group Policy Editor. Here’s how:

1. Log in as a user with Administrative access
2. Click the Windows circle thingy in the lower-left of the screen
3. In the “Search Programs and Files” box, type the following:

   gpedit.msc

4. Group Policy Editor is organized into a hierarchy. Open “Computer Configuration” then “Administrative Templates” and finally “Windows Components”
5. Scroll down to “No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations” and double click it.
6. In the window that pops up, select “Enabled” to disable the automatic reboots.
7. Click “OK” and you’re all set. You can quit GPEdit too.

Now, Windows will merely nag you about rebooting rather than dumping everything you’re working on in the middle of the night!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | How To Disable Windows 7 Automatic Reboot After Update
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Hard disk drive makers are adding flash storage to their conventional spinning-platter drives to improve performance and are targeting the performance PC market. Wait a second, haven’t we seen this before? As Rocky eventually said to Bullwinkle, “but that trick never works!”

Flash as a Cache

Using flash memory as a disk cache is a pretty good idea. Flash has awesome random read performance and fairly good write speed (compared to a hard disk drive, at least). That’s why more and more enterprise storage vendors are adding flash as a disk cache, not just a plain tier of storage.

EMC is the latest to make the move, announcing “FAST Cache” for their midrange Clariion and Celerra enterprise storage systems last week. They join NetApp, Sun, and others already offering similar capability. Fusion-IO has been the champion PCIe flash provider, but STEC is expected to join them soon.

See my post, Is Flash A Disk Or A Cache?

Flash-as-a-cache hasn’t been as easy to roll out as flash-as-a-disk, but it promises to be more effective. An array that completely integrates flash can take advantage of its positives (fast random read, fast-ish write, low power) without stumbling over its shortcomings (big write blocks, shorter lifespan).

Flash in a Disk

Although EMC is doing the right thing by adding FAST Cache, their implementation uses disk drive form factor flash rather than the PCI cards selected by others. It may prove more-difficult to optimize the system for the characteristics of flash when one is writing through a conventional disk drive interface like Fibre Channel or SAS. Would-be flash-and-platter drives face the same issue: How do you use flash effectively when it’s abstracted from the server and presented as a conventional disk?

The hybrid hard disk drive (H-HDD) method, rolled out back in 2007, added ATA commands allowing a compatible operating system to specify whether data sent to a hybrid drive should be written to flash or disk. These products were paired with Windows Vista’s ReadyBoost and SuperFetch to produce performance gains that never materialized in practice. The so-called “ReadyDrive” has become a footnote in history, along with Intel’s “Robeson” effort to add a flash cache to the motherboard.

It is unclear what the new generation of hybrid hard drives allegedly on the drawing boards at Toshiba and Seagate would look like. It is unlikely that they would use the H-HDD interface, but they will likely be aimed at the same performance laptop and desktop market. Servers have continued migrating towards advanced enterprise storage systems that pack their own cache, reducing the impact of bare hybrid drives.

Ingredients for Success

Rather than repeat the mistakes of the past, these companies could integrate real smarts into the disk controller, allowing it to autonomously move data to the flash cache to improve everyday performance without any special operating system support. This “tiered storage in a can” approach might deliver the goods that old-fashioned H-HDDs never could.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Hybrid SSD/Hard Disk Drives: This Time For Sure!
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Spot the Problem

Let’s play a little game, shall we? Let’s see if you can spot the problem!

Windows Vista reports robocopy.exe as version 5.1.10.1027, but the exe is just 85.5 KB

Windows 7 also reports robocopy.exe as version 5.1.10.1027, but the exe is 95.0 KB

Now let’s run “robocopy /mt” so see if multi-threading is supported!

The Windows 7 version of Robocopy supports the "/MT" parameter

The Windows Vista version of Robocopy does not support the "/MT" parameter

There you have it. Two executables with the same version number but substantial differences in functionality. Thanks, Microsoft!

It turns out that only the “6.1″ versions of Microsoft Windows (Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2) include multi-threaded robocopy. And my buddies tell me you can’t just move the exe to older versions.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Versioning FAIL: Windows Vista/7 Robocopy
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

It's hard to take a product called "Robocopy" seriously!

Anyone doing much storage work on Microsoft Windows machines is familiar with Robocopy. It’s the best tool to move data between NTFS filesystems, since Robocopy maintains permissions and file attributes. It also tolerates dropped connections, resuming where it left off, and can throttle operations over slow networks.

But Robocopy was never very quick, especially when dealing with large data sets. It was single-threaded, hurting performance on high-latency networks, and startup was painfully slow on deep directory structures.

Robocopy XXVII

Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and later versions include a new version of Robocopy with performance tweaks designed to overcome these limitations. Right-click on the executable in Windows\System32 and make sure you are using version XP027, 5.1.10.1027.

Update: Oops! Only the “6.1″ versions of Microsoft Windows (Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2) include multi-threaded robocopy!

The big deal here is multi-threading:

• The application can now run in multi-threaded mode using the /MT option. This defaults to 8 threads, but users can specify up to 128 if desired. For example, the following command would use 16 threads:

robocopy c:\ d:\ /MT:16

• Initial directory enumeration is also multi-threaded, so deep directory structures are examined much more quickly.
• XP027 also added the /EFSRAW parameter, allowing one to copy files from EFS using RAW mode. However neither this nor /IPG (inter-packet gap) can be combined with the multi-threaded option mentioned above.

Dead or alive, you’re coming with me!

I tried out the new /MT option on a Core 2 Duo laptop and was surprised by the dramatic improvement in copy performance. Copying my entire “Program Files” directory took well over a minute without multi-threading, but simply specifying “/MT” at the end of the command reduced a second copy to a different directory to about 20 seconds. Using “/MT:32″ was blazing fast – easily less than 15 seconds. I repeated the first single-threaded test again and watched it dawdle along, taking over a minute again to finish.

Microsoft suggests that multi-threaded Robocopy helps with network throughput as well. I tried a series of copies between two Windows 7 machines over Wi-Fi, to simulate a slow network. Although single-threaded Robocopy was able to saturate the network with large files, it really slowed down (thanks to latency) once it hits a patch of smaller files. Multi-threaded Robocopy was more capable of maintaining high throughput once smaller files were encountered, with a 32-thread test keeping the link at maximum pretty much the entire time. Again, a noticeable improvement.

Your Move, Creep

If you’re copying lots of Windows data on a machine running Windows 7 Vista or newer, I can confidently say that the /MT switch will speed things up dramatically. Whether you should stick with the default 8 threads or up it to 16 or 32 depends on the capabilities of your CPU, but it’s worth a try. One more tip: Use the /LOG switch or pipe the output to NULL to speed up copying even more. Displaying all that text delays the whole process!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Robocopy: Better, Faster, Stronger
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Western Digital is first to bring "Advanced Format" 4k-sector drives to market, but buyers should beware of installing them in old systems!

Personal computer hard disk drive access methods have repeatedly been forced to adapt to ever-expanding capacity. Physical (CHS) addressing and 28-bit LBA have been abandoned, but the disk drives themselves retain the tiny 512-byte sectors they have had since IBM introduced fixed-block addressing in the 1970′s. But time marches on, and Western Digital is leading the change to larger 4 kilobyte hard disk blocks. Although this new “Advanced Format” includes mechanisms for backwards compatibility, buyers should be wary of these new drives for the time being.

A Little History

A long, long time ago, before there were personal computers, IBM set the standard for data storage with their CKD (“count key device”) format. Variable-sized records were stored on a raw disk with gaps between them. Each included a sequence number (“count”), an optional key, and the data itself.

This flexible format proved impractical as multi-process systems evolved in the 1970′s, so IBM introduced a new format: Fixed-block architecture (FBA). FBA disk drives were divided up into equal-sized blocks and addressed by their physical location on a specific cylinder accessed by a specific head. Each cylinder/head pairing had its own series of sectors, starting at the outer edge of the physical disk platter and moving inward.

This system of addressing hard disk capacity with a triple number identifying the cylinder, head, and sector (“CHS”) continued in the PC space in the 1980′s. Since early hard disk drives were tiny by modern standards, the PC industry chose the smallest sector size specified by IBM, 512 bytes. The earliest MS-DOS/BIOS PCs were limited to just 504 MB, thanks to incompatible defaults for the CHS address space. This forced a transition, initially raising the addressable capacity to 7.8 GB.

But the writing was on the wall: CHS just didn’t make sense. Storage protocols, including ATA, were being pressed into service for devices that didn’t have cylinders or heads, and the 128 GB limit of ATA-1 wouldn’t cut it forever. So the industry transitioned again, abandoning physical references in favor of a simple logical block addressing (LBA) scheme. By the time ATA-6 was introduced in 2002, all systems used LBA, and the new 48-bit address system allowed a maximum of 128 PB of capacity per device.

Though hard disk capacity had ballooned from the megabyte to the terabyte range (a million-times increase in 30 years), the 512-byte disk sector remained, each with its own error-correcting code (ECC) and gap.

Up To Date

Processors and file systems have long since moved on from 512-byte blocks of data, with 4 kilobytes being the most common size used by the x86 CPU and NTFS, ext3/4, and HFS+ filesystems in Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. With just about every storage access triggering the reading or writing of eight disk sectors, an increase in hard disk sector size to 4 KB seems obvious. Stepping up to 4K enables better ECC checksums, making disks more reliable (in theory) and freeing up capacity.

Modern operating systems, including Windows Vista, Windows 2008, Windows 7, Mac OS X 10.4-10.6, VMware ESX 3.x-4.x, and most recent versions of Linux, will have no problem with 4 KB sectors in most cases. Installing a 4K drive, like Western Digital’s new “R” line, and partitioning and formatting it fresh should present no issues for most users. In fact, these operating systems will not even “know” they are talking to any special kind of drive, since Western Digital presents its new 4 KB sectors as plain old 512 byte sectors for compatibility reasons.

What’s Your Alignment?

Other systems present a challenge, however. MS-DOS traditionally started filesystems at sector number 63, and most other PC operating systems (including old versions of Linux and VMware) followed this convention. This presented no issue at all as long as disks used 512-byte sectors: Requesting 8 sectors starting at number 63 was the same as requesting eight starting at sector 64. But things get mucked up when the disk drive uses 4 KB sectors.

See the misalignment here? A starting offset of 63 moves the filesystem cluster across the 4K sector boundary. This misalignment means that every filesystem cluster access results in two disk sector accesses. This is a Very Bad Thing, especially for to write performance. Layers upon layers of convention, standards, and compatibility have left us with a problem.

Western Digital solves this problem in one of two ways:

1. Jumper pins 7 and 8 on the drive and it will internally offset all of its logical 512-byte sectors by one
2. Correctly align all partitions written to these new drives

The jumper method, though simple, is not a great idea. If the drive was ever moved or reformatted to a system that aligns its volumes differently (as do all modern operating systems), it would be puzzlingly slow. Instead, it’s best to simply realign any filesystems written to the drives, and Western Digital is providing a utility do just that.

USB, Drobo, and TiVo, Oh My!

Most external drive enclosures will simply pass read and write requests to these new drives as they get them. This means that an external USB enclosure with an Advanced Format drive will have exactly the same issues as an internal drive if it is partitioned under Windows XP or another old operating system. Not only that, but portable drives often get moved from system to system, so an XP-formatted USB disk will have this misalignment issue even when attached to a Windows 7 machine! As these 4K drives begin hitting the market, users should be careful to note if they are correctly aligned.

But what about other disk-using devices like Drobos and TiVos? The jury is still out here. TiVo appears to use misaligned partitions, so I don’t recommend installing 4K drives in a TiVo at this point. I contacted a number of other manufacturers, most of whom are “looking into” the matter.

Data Robotics did respond, and even posted a tech note about 4K drives on their support site. Their short answer is no, that 4K drives should not be used in Drobo storage devices. However, it is unclear if they are affected or just erring on the side of caution until they can test these new hard disks. They also promise an update allowing the use of 4K drives in the future.

I would be cautious about using 4K drives in anything other than a newish PC or Mac at this point. I will continue following the situation and will post updates on my blog as news comes out.

More Info

The following articles also offer great insight into these new 4K drives:

• Western Digital: Advanced Format Technology White Paper
• StorageMojo: Why we need 4k drives
• AnandTech: Western Digital’s Advanced Format: The 4K Sector Transition Begins

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Drobo, XP Users: Beware of 4K “Advanced Format” Drives!
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Enterprise storage, Everything, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

This last point has always been debatable as well. Apple tends to select higher-end x86 parts for their Macs and has led the way with innovative chassis, screen, and trackpad technology. But PC makers have quickly followed, offering part-for-part Apple clones at 80% of the cost. This week, however, I stumbled onto a concrete difference between Mac and PC hardware that has real-world impact: Across the board, Apple uses exclusive Intel CPUs with enhanced capabilities to support virtualization of 64-bit operating systems, including Windows 7′s special XP compatibility mode.

Virtualization-Ready

Virtualization hypervisors have become very widespread and popular, especially in the Apple world. Mac users regularly list Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion among their favorite applications, since they open up the wide world of Windows applications running in a virtual machine. Although most daily tasks can be performed with native OS X applications, some apps just aren’t available.

Personally, I use Fusion on OS X with Windows Vista to occasionally run Microsoft’s Visio and Outlook, both of which aren’t available as native applications. I also use a 2009 Mac Mini as a server and virtual computer lab, mainly relying on Sun’s lightweight and free VirtualBox hypervisor. Although it isn’t impressive as the physical lab Dennis Martin described to me last week, I am able to run a variety of servers (Linux, Windows, and OS X) and other virtual gear (Windows Storage Server and FreeNAS) to simulate enterprise IT environments.

Windows users have less need to run virtualization applications: When your operating system commands over 90% of the market, a whole world of applications is at your fingertips! But enthusiasts and corporate IT types love virtualization, and VMware Server and Microsoft Hyper-V are commonly found on their Windows machines.

64-Bit Road Block

These popular virtualization packages support a wide range of modern hardware, but not everything works perfectly. Hypervisors had trouble with many tasks, particularly running 64-bit operating systems, until Intel and AMD introduced special hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities in their CPUs. The latest hypervisors and CPUs can now even virtualize 64-bit operating systems on top of 32-bit hosts!

But not all CPUs include this technology. Intel has a long history of artificially segmenting their product line by disabling certain features in low-end parts. For their Core 2 Duo “Merom” and “Penryn” lines, Intel decided that their VT virtualization technology would be the differentiator. Therefore, a lack of VT support is one of the main differences between low-end and high-end Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs.

Many of the latest portable and compact desktop systems use Intel’s Penryn-3M line, including Apple’s MacBook, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini systems. See the issue here? Intel’s lower-end 2.0 GHz and 2.133 GHz CPUs (P7350 and P7450, respectively) don’t support VT, which means that systems using them don’t have the latest VT hardware virtualization capability and thus can’t run 64-bit virtual machines!

This is an issue for users of popular Sony Vaio, Dell Inspiron, and HP Pavilion PCs, and is likely to become much more important soon. See, Windows 7 includes a special XP compatibility mode, which is really just a virtual machine running XP under 7. But XP mode will not work without Intel VT or AMD-V. This means that XP mode in Windows 7 won’t work on the very mass-market machines that would benefit most from it!

Apple’s Different

This sounds terrible: The latest machines won’t run increasingly-popular virtualization software. But there is a very good reason that buyers of the latest Apple machines aren’t up in arms. It seems that Apple made a deal with Intel to get a special version of the Penryn-3M Core 2 Duo CPUs that do support Intel VT!

Apple’s latest Mac Mini, MacBook, and MacBook Pro all sport P7350 and P7450 CPUs, just like competing Dell, Sony, and HP machines. But the Apple CPUs have VT and the PCs lack it. The VT support is gone, and cannot be enabled in the PC BIOS.

So even a PC and Mac sporting the exact same CPU part numbers aren’t equal: Every recent Mac will run 64-bit Windows and XP mode in Windows 7 and many PCs won’t. And I can run anything I want on my Mac Mini virtual lab!

Update - Let me be very, very clear on the facts here:

• Most hypervisors now require Intel VT or AMD-V in order to virtualize 64-bit operating systems
• Microsoft requires this technology to use XP mode in Windows 7
• All current Apple Macs (including those that use P7350 and P7450 CPUs) have Intel VT support in their CPUs regardless of what Intel says on the model spec sheets
• Many PCs use high-end Intel and AMD CPUs that support VT or AMD-V, though some have this turned off in the BIOS
• No PC with an Intel P7350 or P7450 CPU has Intel VT support at all. It cannot be enabled in the BIOS because it does not exist.

I am not an Apple fanboy. I am a virtualization fanboy who is glad I bought a Mac Mini instead of a Dell Studio, HP TouchSmart, or Sony Vaio.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | A Concrete Reason Macs Beat PCs: Intel VT
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Windows 7 RC literally hit home for me today. Seriously! Eight DVD copies of Windows 7 RC (32-bit) arrived in a FedEx from One Microsoft Way!

Microsoft just let loose a Release Candidate for Windows 7, the operating system that will bring peace, love, and joy to PC users everywhere and finally stop folks from switching to Macs instead of using Vista. Maybe.

So today I find myself in possession of eight DVD copies of Windows 7 RC (32-bit – boo!) for some reason. Maybe they sent them to all TechNet subscribers. Maybe all Microsoft MVPs got them. Regardless of the reason, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with them all. I already downloaded the DVD from TechNet after all!

Although perhaps not everything it’s been built up to be, Windows 7 is a seriously worthy upgrade from Vista. I’ve already switched my laptop to Windows 7 RC and am happy to report that it boots much faster, runs solidly, and thrashes less than it used to. It’s especially nice in virtual machines – Windows 7 in VMware Fusion and VirtualBox on my Mac is like night and day compared to Vista. It even runs great with only 512 MB of RAM, something Vista just can not do except in Basic guise.

I’m not using the OS too heavily (all my day-to-day work is done in Mac OS X) but I do want to point out some seriously nice features in Windows 7. These are also present in Windows Server 2008 R2, an operating system I’m much more interested in since I actually use it in production!

• DirectAccess and BranchCache are very cool additions. DA punches through firewalls like a VPN, but there’s no VPN client involved! It’s all based on standard Internet protocols like IPv6 and IPsec, kinda like Back To My Mac. BranchCache is also very nifty, creating a peer-to-peer or server-based distributed cache of a remote SMB file server. I’ve been playing with this and will report more on it eventually!
• BitLocker To Go applies Microsoft’s solid disk encryption technology to USB drives. It works. And Windows 7 now tries to help keep you from losing your keys, something I seriously need help with!
• PowerShell is spreading throughout the Windows and non-Windows world, and I’m loving it!
• VHD files are now first-class storage devices, and can be managed (and even booted from) just like any other drive. Sweet!
• Windows 7 also includes the new iSCSI initiator with QuickConnect. I’ll be covering this more soon!

So Windows 7 ought to keep some of the PC masses away from the Apple store. But I really didn’t need 8 copies of the DVD… What do you all suggest I do with them?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Windows 7 Is Here! In My Hands! But Why 8 DVDs?
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Homes now need data storage as well as closets...

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.

Along with my professional focus on enterprise storage systems, I’m enamored of home networking, and recently passed the three terabyte mark at home! This got me thinking about where home storage is heading.

As you can see in the photo, my office closet is overflowing with computer equipment (and one sweet guitar), but my data storage is much better organized. I have a hacked Linksys NSLU2 with 500 GB as a file server, a 500 GB PC backup disk, a 160 GB Time Machine disk, 1 TB of TiVo storage, and the rest. But wouldn’t it be nice if this could all be combined into some kind of super home server?

Past Failures: Home Servers

Home storage appliances and servers have come and gone over the year, with none seeming to make much of a mark. The market remains littered with UPNP media servers and home NAS boxes dashed on the shoals of an unappreciative public. Nearly every home network device company has produced one or two home storage servers, none of which have succeeded. Although I use a Linksys NSLU2 at home, I had to hack its Linux software and completely replace Linksys’ features to create a useful device! The un-hacked NAS devices of Buffalo, Western Digital, Netgear, and the rest have generally failed to find buyers as well. So far, consumers seem content with simple USB and FireWire external drives.

The most adventurous home storage servers came from Zetera and Ximeta, both of whom relied on proprietary IP SAN protocols. Note that these were SAN products, sharing block storage over Ethernet, rather than conventional NAS solutions. Both required drivers, limiting client support. The one Zetera buyer I know was pleased by the performance but never used the device as anything but a large hard drive for one PC.

Then there is Microsoft. Recall that the latest Windows Home Server is only their latest attempt to enter this market, and yet I know of no one who has adopted the device. The same can be said of the various media center servers from Microsoft and others. At this point, it seems likely that the future of home storage servers will not come from Microsoft, though their two XBox generations have great potential as clients.

Even EMC has entered the market with their nifty (but largely unnoticed) LifeLine product and Iomega acquisition. Supporting file services and backup for computers as well as audio and video for media players, EMC positions LifeLine much like their Retrospect backup product, but goes further in offering a complete software solution for hardware OEMs wanting to offer a non-Windows home server. Although an impressive offering, it is too early to tell if EMC will have much success with this product.

The Sleek, Shiny Elephant in the Living Room

Of course, there is one company that sells media players and servers by the bushel, complete with sleek, shiny interfaces. Apple’s tremendous success with the iPod has led to their iTunes software becoming the dominant media organization platform, complete with its own proprietary discovery and sharing protocol. Now, with the Apple TV and video iPods, the company is broadening into more media categories. Surely their dominance here puts them in a special position when it comes to setting the stage for a home server or storage revolution.

They also have a strong position in the world of dedicated home storage. Their Airport products are among the only routers to be widely implemented with shared storage. Although many other companies offer similar products, low customer understanding means that these functions are not widely used. And the new Time Capsule device is surely already the most widely-used home NAS product.

But Apple has not yet shown any home server strategy. Administering multiple iTunes servers can be frustrating for users, with no inter-iTunes synchronization or centralization capability. Although the Mac Mini, Apple TV, or Time Capsule could certainly be seen as a home server, the company does not position them as such in the market. Indeed, some iTunes users like myself rely on compatible third party media servers like Firefly and TwonkyVision rather than using iTunes itself. Still, rumors of an Apple home server persist.

One issue for Apple is their reliance on proprietary protocols. Although the Bonjour discovery protocol is certainly simpler than UPnP in practice, Apple stands alone in relying on it. They also steadfastly stick to AFP for NAS and DAAP for remote media streaming. This limits the number of third-party clients and servers that can be used with their hardware and software.

The Future is Friendly

Although Apple has not yet tipped a home storage strategy beyond Time Capsule and Airport Extreme, they are best positioned to deliver a real home storage solution. A simple step would be to create an iTunes media server integrated with Time Capsule and add client/server media synchronization. The company already has OS X backup and file services integrated, and this move would further centralize the digital home around Apple products. But the company’s reliance on closed protocols like DAAP is worrisome, since it locks consumers into nearly all-Apple solutions.

Microsoft’s Media Center and Home Server combination, based around UPnP, shows great promise, with many compatible third-party clients and servers already available. But my own experience with the solution has not been at all positive (I still can’t get my Roku SoundBridge, Vista Ultimate laptop, and Media Center PC to see each other!), leading me to question the viability of this option.

Although Apple or Microsoft could come to dominate, I suspect the future of home storage is out of both companies hands. A number of others are working on improved home server experiences, including EMC’s LifeLine and the expanding use of Debian Linux and open source tools. But all could be sidelined by improved Internet-based services. Google, Microsoft, and Apple continue to expand their online consumer suites with greater storage, synchronization, multimedia integration, and all have the potential to reduce or eliminate the need for in-home storage.

Although I cannot yet tell which service will win, one thing is certain: Consumers demand friendly, flexible solutions. They don’t want to fuss with their media, and they don’t want simple shared storage. They want integration with multiple devices and flexibility to access their content on any device. The first company to offer a simple, flexible storage server for the home will surely be on the right track!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | The Future of Home Storage
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

This post is part of my series focused on PC/Mac Integration.

• Vista, OS X Boot Time Compared
• Quick and Easy Bluetooth Sharing Between PC and Mac
• Yes, FireWire is Faster Than USB
• How to Keep an IOGear KVM from Dimming Your Mac's Screen
• Command and Control: The Clash of Keyboards

My test was simple: I used the iPhone’s stopwatch to time the following key events after startup:

1. The Mac Gong or disappearance of the PC or VMware BIOS screen
2. The appearance of the login box (I paused the timer at this point to give me time to enter my password)
3. The appearance of the desktop
4. I then clicked on the icons to launch my mail and web browser apps, assuming this would be the first thing most people would do on startup, and timed how long it took for each to load and present content
5. Finally, I stopped the clock when the system appeared usable – hourglasses disappeared, the disk stopped chugging like crazy, and all background apps had loaded and were running
6. I also timed how long it took for the system to power down after ordering a shutdown

Not surprisingly, the MacBook with OS X was fastest, though it took a surprisingly longish time to get Mail and Safari launched compared to Firefox and Outlook in Windows. OS X also excels at knocking off the backup tasks and giving a stable, ready-to-use system.

Booting Windows Vista Ultimate in Boot Camp was surprisingly speedy, too, and this was the core of my test. The Mac gave me a working Windows environment in just 2:15, compared to 1:40 for OS X and 3:10 for my Dell XPS M1330. I’m not sure exactly what the Dell is doing, but it churns and chugs for quite a while on bootup, even after I stopped the clock, and it’s got a nice clean install with few apps running.

Finally, I timed my Boot Camp volume in VMware Fusion (1.1.3) and found that, although it was speedy enough when it was running, it took 30 seconds longer to get started than booting natively. But even Fusion was quicker than the Dell.

My feeling is that Microsoft has spent some time optimizing the startup experience in Vista, trimming the time it takes to get a login window and desktop by shifting some work to background tasks that interfere with usability once the system appears to be running. A clever trick, that, but one that frustrates me on a daily basis as I stare at a desktop full of icons that I can’t use quite yet.

Once again, this is not the most scientific test ever, but it helps to show what I feel about the Mac:

• It’s quicker when I want to sit down and start working
• Windows is much quicker on the Mac than the Dell, despite only slightly better specs (2.2/4 GB vs. 2.0/2 GB)

I ran each test a few times, and although they varied by a few seconds they were fairly consistent.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Vista, OS X Boot Time Compared
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.