SATA SSDs that changed their specs #1

 

Silicon Power Ace A55 256GB SATA SSD
Compare the pictures with those in this review: SILICON POWER ACE A55 256GB SSD REVIEW
I wonder who controls what those companies sell

Orico M.2 NVMe enclosure that somewhat works #2

This is Orico M.2 NVMe M-Key 10Gbps Space Gray MM2C3-G2-GY that works on USB3 5Gbps ports but is not stable at 10Gbps. Even after firmware update which cannot be found on their site, it constantly connects/disconnects on 10Gbps ports (Type-C and Type-A)

Orico HDD/SATA enclosure that works #1

Chip is VIA VL716-Q4
This works - no disconnects connected to USB3.x and USB2.0 ports, SMART status data is also visible

 

Orico enclosures in a nutshell

 Seems Orico (Leading Technology as stated on the product's box) continues to sell broken products. In this case their 2521U3 2.5" hard drive enclosure when connected to USB3 ports of different machines (two desktops, 4 laptops) cannot be used - nonstop connect/disconnect Windows sound. And the chip used  in the enclosure is ASM22xx. TLDR; 5Gbps not possible with this enclosure when connected to USB3, but perfectly stable at USB2

This enclosure is my 5th from Orico, only two of them work as expected (based on the claims printed on the box)

How to clone OS from non-RAID drive to RAID1 on Asus X370-PRO motherboard

 Let's go straight-forward to the solution:

1. Power off the computer and make your SATA bootable drive to be connected to SATA's second column upper port (from left to right)

2. Install an empty NVMe drive in the M.2 slot on the motherboard

3. Start the PC and clone your bootable SATA non-RAID drive to the NVMe with Macrium Reflect

4. Shutdown the PC and remove the bootable non-RAID SATA drive

5. Connect your two SSDs to first two SATA ports

6. Start the PC and change drive settings in the BIOS to be [SATA mode = RAID] and [NVMe RAID = Enabled], then save and exit

7. Activate RAID configuration utility when prompted for [Ctrl + R] shortcut

8. Make new RAID1 array from both SSD. Save and exit

9. When your Windows boot, clone the NVMe to RAID1 array (your RAID drivers must be installed or you can't see the array) and shutdown the PC

10. Remove the NVMe

11. Start the PC and if everything is ok your Windows will boot normally. Test with CrystalDiskMark the array and check if the Read/Write speeds are around 1100/500 MB/s, something a lot lower should point to problems with the cables/drives or probably OS processes that bottleneck drive I/O 

12. Profit

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USB3 fanboys: No, it's not wise to try to clone OS from USB3 connected drive because INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE blue screen error can pop-up and burst your holiday bubble

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This combat mission was created by your friend Asus (written in their manual):

How to check if the HDD or SSD are 4k aligned

Just type in command prompt as administrator:

wmic partition get BlockSize, StartingOffset, Name, Index

The last column in the output is the offset in bytes for where each partition starts, if this value is divisible by 4096 without a reminder then the partition is aligned. For example:

C:\Windows\system32>wmic partition get BlockSize, StartingOffset, Name, Index

BlockSize  Index  Name                   StartingOffset

512        0      Disk #0, Partition #0  1048576

512        1      Disk #0, Partition #1  105906176

512        0      Disk #1, Partition #0  135266304

512        0      Disk #2, Partition #0  1048576

This shows that all partitions are aligned (under NTFS)

Worst game servers in Europe #2: [BlER]Wiese >>> Italy [ONLY] <<< [css] Counter Strike Source

Name: [BlER]Wiese >>> Italy [ONLY] <<< [css] Counter Strike Source

IP address: 94.249.194.112:27015

Reason: Decided to do some casual shooting after years after abandoning the fps genre ... First time joining in that server and instantly detected one wall-hack cheater in it. Got kicked when pointed the obvious

Dyson Sphere Program - optimization training game

Dyson Sphere Program

Warning! Shortest review ahead!


Goal - eat all planet resources and build Dyson spheres

Pros - trains you in optimization techniques. Players doing OCD-layered buildings don't realize the power of spaghetti code

Cons - not fully automated and half of the time in-game camera tries to cut your nerves

Conclusion - The game is not bad, it's a casual production simulator at galactic scale. Give it a try (around 100-120 hours of gameplay to first finished sphere)

Introduction to scoop

Scoop is a tiny command-line installer for Windows, which helps to organize user's apps in more convenient way. All of them are installed by default in home directory or in selected by the use directory, and of course this is not the only feature: - updating all of them with one command - continuously growing database of supported apps - fully portable between Windows version that support at least PowerShell 5 and .NET Framework 4.5 Those features mean the users finally have a tool similar to Linux package managers like dpkg/apt, yum/dnf, portage (btw very powerful), slackpkg, Homebrew for MacOS and Chocolatey/Ninite/OneGet for Windows. It works like this (assuming the user OS meets the requirements):

1. Open a PowerShell command prompt 

2. Write "scoop search nameofyourapp"

3. If it's found in the buckets (collections of apps in scoop) write "scoop install name-of-your-app"

4. After successful app installation (scoop warns if there are problems during installation procedure and suggests what to do to fix them) the user must open "Start Menu -> All Programs -> Scoop Apps" and click on the corresponding shortcut to start the freshly installed application

There are also limitations: - number of bucketed apps is still less than those in Chocolatey - sometimes changes in app version or small code errors in app manifests block the user from successfully installing or updating desired apps. Usually an update to scoop fixes that because the whole development is on GitHub where every scoop user can report the problems

GDPR compliance in a nutshell

Recently MongoDB added field encryption in version 4.2. This means if there's a request to delete all user data (stated in GDPR) administrator can delete the encryption key(s) which is used for access to the personal data. So no key - no data ... right ... but the data is still there and probably ready to be brute-force decrypted. Nice try, MongoDB