So I upgraded my desktop to 6GB recently (from 2GB), mainly for virtual machines, but also just because I hate virtual memory. That necessitated switching to full-time use of an AMD64 edition. Up to then, I’d been jumping back and forth trying different combinations of 64-bit OS and 64-/32-bit apps, given issues with drivers, software availability, etc. Since 64-bit flash came out a while back, that pretty much closed the issue. However, I discovered after upgrading that the drivers for my onboard Marvell ethernet didn’t work with that much memory installed, even though it did work fine in 64-bit previously. Annoying. Still, I had an unused USB ethernet adapter lying around, and it’s mainly used for broadband, so no performance issue there really.
I also had bought an external drive (Western Digital MyBook Pro) about a year ago, for backups. It was the most reasonable one I could find that offered USB and firewire. Performance was abysmal though, and it lasted literally a week, before packing up. Seems I’m far from the only one who discovered their cheap PSUs. Tracked down a compatible PSU after a while, and it kind of worked for another week, but then wouldn’t boot any more. Cracked the case open, took the drive out, and installed it in my PC, where it’s been running nicely ever since. Their actual drives are nice, but after that so-called “Pro” product, I’ve scratch western digital off my manufacturers list.
Anyway. I used that for backup for quite a while, but don’t really have that much actual personal, irretrievable data to back up, as opposed to stuff I can download from a distro site or wherever. I also have a small laptop at home running as a server, and a few servers online. Between them, I have more than enough sources and targets for rdiff-backup. So yesterday, I converted my desktop to RAID-1 (mirroring) with mdadm, and LVM on top. Between that and the memory, things seem pretty zippy so far 
One thing with doing that is that Debian Sid doesn’t seem to be able to detect mdadm/LVM and build a decent initrd for them right now. When booting, it gets to the initrd stage, but then I have to manually run mdadm to start the raid array, and pvchange to enable the logical volumes. After that, I can exit the initrd shell, and boot will continue as normal, so it’s not too much hassle. There’s a debian bug filed for this, but I can’t be bothered tracking it down right now. Seems to be just a regression, so I’m sure it’ll get fixed soon.
Oh, while I’m on about upgrades, I also got me an Ergotron MX Desk-mount Monitor Arm. Very nice bit of kit, and great for moving the monitor around when your neck gets sore or something. The only thing is, I mainly got it for swapping to portrait orientation (with XRandR), but I haven’t used that half as much as I expected to, for a variety of (mainly technical) reasons. Still, I’m getting good use out of it, so it definitely fits in the “upgrade” category
Tags: backups, desktop, FOSS, lvm, mdadm, mirrors, pc, raid, ram, upgrades
