Bentz50 Tech Blog

In the past the most cost effective way to upgrade your computer was to increase the amount of RAM in your system.  Today that has changed with Solid State Drives (SSD) becoming the most cost effective upgrade to an existing computer system as long as it has a SATA port.  Sure, they make SSDs for other interfaces, but the ones I have seen are much pricier than their SATA cousins.

So the idea of having a SSD is to put your operating system partition on this drive and any programs that your frequently use.  This will drastically decrease the system boot time and the amount of time it takes for your programs to open.  It may not sound like a lot of savings but over the course of a year it adds up, not to mention the decreased frustration you will have towards your computer.

The first thing most people wonder is whether or not they will have to reinstall Windows or whatever operating system they are running  If you have Windows 7 then you can utilize this technology with an implement-and-forget mindset.  However, if you are running anything else you will probably need to set up third party software to clean the SSD on a predetermined schedule. I will revisit the reason for this later.

To determine which SSD you should buy, you need to shrink the operating system partition to an affordable level.  (Unfortunately Windows 7 is the only Microsoft operating system that will allow you to shrink the operating system partition.  I am sure there are third party tools that do the same thing but I do not know of any good free ones off the top of my head.)  By that I mean SSDs are expensive and paying $1.50 per GB is average.  Compare that to a traditional hard drive where you pay about 5 cents per GB and you’ll understand why the operating system partition needs to be shrunk.  To achieve that, uninstall all unused programs and delete or move all unused files residing on that drive. Reducing the size of the recycling bin is also a safe, easy method for freeing up some space. (There are a few more ways to reduce the size of your operating partition, but if you do not know about them or how to find out about them, then you should not be trying them.)  Run a defragmentation on the partition once or twice to make sure that the next step will recover the maximum amount of space possible.  Now go to the Disk Management and shrink the partition to its minimum size plus about ten percent growth space.

Now that you are in the market for a SSD you need to keep a few things in mind.  If you have Windows 7 or plan on buying Windows 7, make sure the SSD you purchase a drive with TRIM support.  Check the connection you will be plugging this drive into and make sure that you are getting a compatible drive.  (If this connection is not SATA then you may not want to make this purchase since you will end up paying a premium.)  Lastly, the drive you purchase can be no smaller that the size of your current operating partition plus ten percent.

Once the new drive arrives you will need to copy over the needed partitions from your old hard drive.  If you think this will be as easy as copy and pasting, do not attempt this upgrade.  After playing around with a couple of programs trying to make an exact copy of my operating partition, I came across EASEUS Disk Copy and it not only worked exactly how I wanted but also had a graphical user interface and was easy to use.  Burn EASEUS Disk Copy to a disc and use it as a boot disc with the operating system hard drive and new SSD attached to the computer.  Use the program to copy over the System Reserve partition and then run through the program a second time and copy the operating system partition.  When the computer restarts make sure to go into the BIOS and set the new SSD as the first boot device.

Congratulations, you are now booting from your new SSD.  Now it’s time to finish configuring your system.  First, double check and make sure you are booting from the SSD.  You will be able to verify this from My Computer or the Disk Management.  If this is indeed the case, you can now use the storage manager to make sure that your drives have the proper letters.  When I did this upgrade, my original C drive became D and D became E. Since half of my programs were on D in the beginning, I had to change the letter of the new D and change the new E back to D.  Remove the letter from the System Reserve partition since you cannot access its contents anyways.  Drop the original System Reserve and Operating system partitions if you wish so that they can be used for other things.  Also expand the partition on the SSD to fill the entire drive and give you a little more room for expansion.

To ensure that your SSD will continue to perform at its best, you need to do a few configuration settings. If you’re running Windows 7, you need to make sure that TRIM command is enabled. If you are not running Windows 7, you need to get an application from the manufacturer that will perform the same function as the TRIM command to ensure that the SSD is running at it’s top speed.  You also need to make sure that the SATA controller on the motherboard is in AHCI mode if this is an option in the BIOS. If this makes your computer unable to load your operating system switch the option back to its original value. It is a performance hit but it is not big one.

“Oops, I ****ing lost all my data.”  Not to fear, during my experimentation with SSD’s, my southbridge repeatedly threw the SSD into my mirrored array.  That caused my 500 GB array to lose its formatting and drop into RAW.  After the initial panic was over, I realized I should be able to find a free program to recover all the data.  Sure enough, I ended up finding EASEUS Partition Recovery, and while it didn’t perform perfectly, it worked well enough.  It was able to recover my data on two out of the three times I tried it.  The one time the recovery did not work it was blatantly obvious because every single file was corrupt.  But if that happens do not let that sinking feeling get to you and rerun it before panicking.

To sum it all up, switching over to an SSD can greatly enhance the performance of both an aged or brand new computer.  If you have a laptop and like to use it in your lap then this upgrade is highly recommended so that you remove the risk of ruining a hard drive from being in odd positions.  Before you go about installing an SSD into an existing system, I would highly recommend backing up all of your data or removing storage hard drives.  Last, but not least, EASEUS is a godsend for an individual working with hard drives as their free programs are of high quality and cover almost all of your needs.

Update: I built my first computer with SATA III and tried cloning the hard drive over to a SSD. After several futile attempts I have given up and am not sure if the SATA III is the issue or if it is just the motherboard. As a compromise I used Windows Easy Transfer to copy the entire contents of my C partition over to my new Windows installation. This worked very well except that you have to reinstall some of your programs to set them up in the registry.

Next, I tried to clone a hard drive from a Lenovo laptop without success. I’m not sure exactly why this is, but I’m guessing it has something to do with the original Lenovo hard drive not having a System Reserve partition and some sort of proprietary partition instead.

After using several SSDs from the Intel 320 line and not being able to successfully clone the original System Reserve and operating system partitions, I have come to the conclusion that my issue is this line of SSDs.

On a more successful note I stumbled upon MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition v7.0. This is a great tool for shrinking a partition if Disk Management is not allowing you to shrink the partition even though you have free space. That happens when Windows needs a file open in order to run and this file is located in the middle of the partition.

I recently decided to upgrade my PlayStation 3 (PS3) hard drive (HD) from the stock unit to a Solid State Drive (SSD).  The reason for this was to not only increase the amount of space available, but to also increase loading and install speeds since they are the biggest drawbacks to the PS3.  Before doing this I tried to find a resource online that would walk me through the process step-by-step so that I didn’t run into any surprises, but I could not find any.  Now that I have finished this process I am making this post to hopefully help someone else looking to install a SSD in their PS3.

If you go to “Settings” and then “System Settings” in the XrossMediaBar of the PS3 you will find the “Format Utility” and “Backup Utility”.  While we will not be using the Format Utility I would like to mention it because my logic made me think that if you were to hook up an external HD you would be able to format it using this.  However, that is currently not an option.  Anyways, unless you have a brand new PS3, you will probably want to use the Backup Utility to transfer your data from your HD to your new SSD.

Once you have an external USB HD you will want to connect it to the PS3 and use the Backup Utility to backup the data on your current hard drive.  Unfortunately the PS3 requires external HDs to be in the FAT32 format.  This means that you will have to make a separate partition on your external HD no bigger than 32GB in order to format it to FAT32 (assuming your external HD is bigger than 32GB).  This can be done using Disk Management on a Windows computer.  With the drive in the proper format you will probably realize that you have more than 32GB of data on your PS3, which really sucks because you will have to delete game installs and downloaded content until you have less than 32GB of data.  Just make sure not to delete game saves since they cannot be redownloaded or reinstalled from a game disk.  After all of that hassle you can finally use the Backup Utility to copy your hard drive contents onto the external HD.  This process will take about an hour and a half.

With all of your data backed up it is now time to remove your old hard drive.  If you have a newer model the screws should come out easily.  I have a launch model and was forced to drill off the heads of the screws after stripping them.  I’m not sure why they didn’t want to come out, but newer model do not seem to be so reluctant to give up their hard drives.  With the old HD out you can install the new SSD and power on your system.  The system will prompt you to format the SSD.  With that completed, use the Backup Utility to transfer your files from the external HD to the SSD.  Once the hour and a half process is over you can start redownloading/installing anything that did not make the transfer.

The new SSD will make your PS3 run slightly cooler since you are removing a HD that has a spinning platter.  But, more importantly, you will be halving load times and decreasing install times.  If you have Gran Turismo 5 you will be very grateful that you upgraded to a SSD.  (The load times for that game were driving me insane.)

As for the old PS3 HD, you now have a new SATA HD for your computer or you could buy a case for it and turn it into an external HD.  On that note I would like to mention that I wonder if you could pull the PS3 HD out, put it in an external case, and then use the Backup Utility to transfer the files directly.  However, it is much more likely that the PS3 would not be able to read it since the HD inside a PS3 is formatted to some Linux standard.

Senior Design is like a rite of passage for engineering students.  In one semester, students are tasked with designing a project from start to finish.  This ends up having the effect of a major lab project where the students are responsible for the organization, planning and execution of the lab.  For some groups this is a pleasant process in which they have the experience and foresight to start working as soon as possible and soldier through for the duration of the project.  Other groups will enjoy a slow start to the semester with lots of time to waste before realizing that they have wasted too much time and are now screwed.  Now that I have just finished this class, I am going to do a postmortem of my experience and see how we fared this experience. 

What Went Right  

1. Project Start – KISS

When most groups start on this project they are over ambitious and bite off more than they can chew.  My group almost fell into this category, but Dr. King wisely limited our scope.  If he had not helped us out in this regard, we may have bloated our project and never even come close to finishing. 

1. Leveraging Resources – The easiest way to increase productivity.

When we first started this project we had the feeling that we must finish this project on our own without very much faculty support.  This could not be further from the truth.  Once we realized that we should be heavily utilizing our advisor, the project started moving forward at a constant pace.  If we had not come to this realization, we may not have started building the project soon enough to develop a working prototype.

1. Extra Parts - Don’t worry about it, we have another!

When building a project like this you have parts that are defective or ones that you break during the testing process.  This was very frustrating and time consuming when it happened to our project.  However, for the most part, we made sure to have extra parts and ordered more parts when the extras were used.  This ensured that we never got stuck in the position of having to wait on parts to be shipped.

1. Crunch Time – This can go right?

While it is unfortunate that we were forced to crunch, at least it was successful.  By successful I mean that we put ourselves in a situation in which I was questioning whether or not we would be able to finish the project by the due date.  But we were able to pull through and, after putting all of our free time into the project for a week and nearly pulling an all-nighter, finished.  I know that the quality of the work during this period was not outstanding.  However, the fact that we finished with a decent length and coherent paper is a testament that the crunch was successful.

1.  The Poster Board – Because looks matter.

I really have to hand it to the group member that came up with the idea of designing our poster board in GIMP and then printing it out on a plotter.  While all the other groups had various sized pieces of paper glued to their boards, we had one big poster that covered ours.  Even though this does not sound like a big deal, it made our display look like a presentation for a board of directors instead of some sort of art project.

What Went Wrong 

1. Trust – I trust you will meet that deadline?

The biggest issue this group had was a lack of trust.  This was not an issue at the start of the project, but as group members missed deadlines or forgot about their tasks, it sprouted and flourished since it was never formally addressed.  This may have happened out of a lack of communication and/or forgetfulness that could have been remedied with a group calendar on Google or weekly administrative meeting.  However, I think that the main problem here was a lack of consequence.  In this project there really was no consequence for not finishing your tasks other than your fellow group members being upset with you.  This means that many people will put this project off and not be concerned with finishing their tasks on time.  Besides, you can slide your work off onto the other group members as they become fed up with your inability to meet deadlines.  This may affect your grade, but not anymore that it affects the other group members’ grades.  While the other members may never trust you to be in their group again, it really is of no consequence because most of the people that were in this class graduated at the end of the semester.

1. Micromanager – When the manager has his hands in everything…

When we started this project the management was great.  But about a month and a half into this project something happened because we ended up with a micromanager.  I think it may have been a result of people missing deadlines and the resultant lack of trust.  However, I cannot be certain.  Regardless, this was another major issue that, once manifesting itself, reduced our productivity right through to the last day of the project.

When the manager insists on reviewing and changing everything that you have done, you begin to wonder, “What is the point of doing this since it will just be redone?”  That led to reduced moral in the group members and thus a reduction in the quality and quantity of work produced.  A better alternative would have been the manager telling the group members what to change and then rechecking it later.  This would also have increased the amount of work done on the project since the group members would not have spent nearly as much time waiting for the manager to finish other parts of the project.

1. Procrastination – It’s not due tomorrow so let’s go to Chipotle.

With a project of this scale it is hard to know how long it will take you to finish.  So it was very easy for us to procrastinate.  This was most evident during the first two months since the end was so far in the future that everything else had priority.  I also found myself swamped with programming projects during this period, including the most arduous one of my college career.  This led to the team, especially myself, not spending nearly as much time on the project as was needed until November.    Once we reached that point, we were devoting time to the project regularly.  However, we were not devoting as much time to the project as we should have.  We were prone to calling it quits for the day whenever we ran into a problem and got frustrated.  What we should have done was started working religiously sooner in the semester and soldiered through our setbacks.

1. Planning – How many Electrical Engineers does it take to…

It’s always nice to see your group members struggle through the project with you.  But, our insufficient planning skills would sometimes mean that one or two people were struggling with boredom instead of the project.  This was a result of our project being relatively small (only two people could test or work on the project at one time without getting in the way of each other) and the affects of having a micromanager.  With that in mind, the other two people should have been writing up documentation or working on the next iteration of the demo board instead of sitting in the corner watching.  Better yet, if we would have had some trust, we could have staggered our efforts and only brought in two members at a time.  It’s sad when I look back at this since any number of small changes could have changed our work habits and made us more efficient.

1. Presentation – Because it’s more important than a working model?

When I talk about presentation here I do not mean the one that we gave as required by the course.  I am talking about the way that our demonstration board looked.  The week before Thanksgiving break we soldered up the microcontroller circuit and it looked great.  Now with electronic circuits consisting of small components, the better it looks the better it will probably function.  Not to mention how much easier it is to fix/change a well soldered board.

With the boost converter circuit, we had high current which means large parts.  Large parts are very hard to solder in securely unless you use a lot of solder, which makes it look messy.  Due to this stark contrast between the two pieces of our project, my group decided that the boost converter circuit needed cleaned up.  In that process it became apparent that to make it look clean we would have to etch a new circuit board, consequently a few parts got damaged.  This meant that we had to spend the rest of the time before Thanksgiving rebuilding the circuit instead of completing valuable testing.  Since we did not have the testing done, we could not work on the report over break.  Thus we effectively wasted a week and a half in order to have a boost converter circuit that looked nice.  We should have just continued with the ugly version and made an untested pretty version exclusively for the expo.  That alternative process would have also increased the quality of the final report.

1. Instructor – Did he really just spend fifteen minutes turning on the computer?

Our instructor was not experienced in teaching senior design and it showed.  There were many weeks in which we would spend the first ten to fifteen minutes of the class period watching him log into the class room computer.  Since the class met for only fifty minutes per week, this ended up taking up a large portion of our classroom time.  He also spent the first month of classes talking about and assigning papers on how to do library searches, the project design process, and ethics in engineering.  This time should have been spent pushing us to do our preliminary designs and documentation on the process.  In the end we never did that and gave the preliminary design presentations half way through the semester.  As a result, when it came time to write the final paper, we did not know where to start since we had never written a preliminary design paper.

I am also confused as to what the point of doing all of the assignments at the beginning of the semester was.  Everyone in my group got the same grade and I am the only one who made sure to turn in every assignment.  I thought that the assignments would make a difference of at least a plus or minus.  However, this could have been attributed to the fact that I took the course for honors and no one else in my group did. But then I realized that another member who turned in almost everything got the same grade as a member who turned in none of the beginning assignments.  Therefore I am still left wondering, “Why did I do that extra work and what exactly did we get graded on?”

1. Microcontroller – What makes this one special?

For this project we decided to use a PIC microcontroller due to the manufacturer, Microchip, specializing in microcontrollers and having some very cutting edge chips.  However the three hundred dollar hardware and software needed to program these chips is expensive for a student. We were then forced to find a cost acceptable programming method.  Once that method was found we were limited to the older lines of microcontrollers and ended up using a microcontroller similar to the Infineon C505C.  The problem with this was that our college uses the Infineon C505C.  So we should have just used that in order to save money.  We would then have also had access to faculty with experience in the microcontroller we would have used.

1. Final Report – You seriously have not looked at that yet?

We started the final report early enough – a month before it was due.  But we did not produce enough content.  This was because the person who was supposed to consolidate the individual parts procrastinated and did not take a thorough look at these pieces until the night before it was due.  This is the reason that we were forced to stay up nearly all night the day before our presentation.  Saving this for the very end meant that no one in the group had read the report in its entirety.  I am certain that every part had been reviewed by at least two people, but no one made sure that it flowed correctly and did not repeat information, since we were all too tired to think at that point in the morning when we had finally finished producing content.  If we had produced a rough copy of the report at least a week before it was due, then we could have ended with a concise, coherent, and polished report.

1. Sleep – That hour already passed?

During the final week of the project we were all slightly sleep deprived going into the day before the presentation.  That got exacerbated when we stayed up until five in the morning finishing our presentation and paper.  Compounding that problem was the fact that we needed to be back at the college two and a half hours later for our presentation since we had made the mistake of scheduling our presentation bright and early.  This sleep deprivation definitely hurt the quality of our paper and, at least for my part, impaired the quality of the presentation.

While the point of this project was to learn about the design process of a product, I feel that a valuable opportunity was lost.  I think that we could have learned a lot more about ourselves and the real world work environment if this class had incorporated instruction on how to work in groups, how to communicate in groups without stepping on toes, and how to analyze the strengths and weaknesses within a group environment.   This information would have enhanced our group’s productivity and probably strengthened our relationships.  Instead I am left with a bitter taste in my mouth and I wonder whether or not I would ever want to take a job in which I would once again work with my former group members.  I feel that if this class had provided this type of critical analysis of group dynamics, it would have been an experience that transcended the traditional learning experience and truly prepared us for the real work environment.

Epic Games gave indie game developers an early Christmas.  They released the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) as a free download.   While you could have previously used most of what is available in the package through Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3), the players of your work also had to have a copy of UT3.  This now allows you to package your endeavors as a standalone game that anyone can download and play.

Once I heard about this, how could I not download this package?  I mean I have a rig that is a Crysis killer, so it is also a perfect development machine.  (If you look at the recommend requirements for the UDK that is pretty much my rig.)  After a 600 MB download that lasted a little less than two hours I was able to install the UDK.  (If you download this file do not forget to add “.exe” to the name.  I do not know why it was not included when I downloaded the file.)  The UDK is suppose to link with Visual Studio 2008, which I already had installed, but I have not seen this functionality yet.

With that completed, I fired up the editor and loaded one of the premade levels that came with the download.  So, this lead to four views of the level, lots of buttons, and a movement system that is not as intuitive as the ones used in games.  There was nothing else to do now except try and move items in the editor.  After figuring this out, I decided that I needed a guide.  Luckily, I found one for Learning Unreal Engine 3 – UE3 Editor which should be pertinent since the UDK is just a newer version of that engine, but I have not gotten around to playing with it yet.

While I was navigating to the editor I noticed that SpeedTree is included in the UDK.  I had always scoffed at the trees in games that were early adopters of this technology, but recently trees coming from it have been looking good.  After playing around awhile, I have realized that this program has matured and is actually fun to play with.  The ease with which I could build trees was amazing.  I just wish that some messes were included (or if they were I could not find them) so that I could see my trees in color.

Unreal Level Editor with one of the included maps loaded.