Gongalong

Hi folks, We've been having ongoing problems with our LA provided Internet connection. The SLT have asked me to record and graph the quality of the connection, and also provide something that alerts when the connection is problematic. My networking skills aren't the best, but I do already use The Dude for LAN monitoring (simple PING-ing of vital network assets). I could of course use The Dude to ping external resources (aside from the issue of what to ping), but ultimately I don't think this is a great gauge of what the fundamental problem is, which is the speed of web browsing. So two questions: 1. Is there something other than The Dude which will simply record and graph the stability of a connection? The more tests it can do the better (PING, DNS resolution speed... what else?), and I'm sure we can spend money to get something decent. 2. Is there something which will test web browsing? e.g. open a handful of sites say once every 5 minutes and time how long they take to open, then record that and alert if it goes above a certain threshold. TIA

It's synchronous 100Mb/s. Technically we have 92 available as a chunk is used for the LEA phone system, which we're also likely to be moving away from. We use The Dude for LAN monitoring (just pinging devices), but haven't delved much further than that.

Can you give a bit more detail?

Can I ask who that's with?

We've been stung before with rebadged laptops - both in terms of quality and getting spares - so ideally I'd like to stick with "normal" brands.

Hi All, I'm trying to find a powerful lightweight laptop that we can lug around the school for troubleshooting - its predecessor has failed - with the following ideal spec: - i5/i7 - SSD - around a 12" screen - 4/8GB RAM - good quality graphics chipset - decent brand - Windows 7 (or 8 if I have to) - VGA socket would be ideal for projector tests - less than 1.5kg I'm struggling to find anything, other than this (which probably hasn't got the best graphics chipset, and no VGA socket) Toshiba Satellite U920T-11C Laptop - Laptops | Ebuyer.com Am I missing any obvious contenders? TIA

Hi folks, We're considering moving away from our LA provided connection, as the stability is less than great and it's overcomplicated. Based on the experience here, what's a 100Mb/s synchronous connection likely to cost us, and who are suppliers to use (or avoid)? Is more than 100Mb/s viable in this day and age, and again what are likely costs? TIA

ZAR is 60 bucks, and the trial did well. Let's see if the full version does the same... (it's going to take another 2+ days to scan the drive)

ZAR found around 90% of the files intact, but unfortunately it was a trial. I recovered what I could with the trial, and we've bought a license now. Running it again to try to recover the remainder... (it looks like it will need a couple of days to scan)

Thanks all for the suggestions so far. Update: I've removed the drive from the caddy, put it in a SATA dock, and it does at least appear in Disk Administrator now. It's a 4TB Seagate drive, and appears with a 460GB RAW partition (!), along with two 1.5TB unallocated partitions. The drive definitely had a Windows partition of some form, with the relevant files on it, because I was able to view it until it died completely. I'm going to try ZAR on it, as that can view the drive as a whole, to see if it will recover anything...

Yep, that's next on my list to try. Ironically I did get the drive to work - it kicked into life half an hour after I'd connected it - but I was only told afterwards that the data was vital, after I'd disconnected it *facepalm* I've tried it many times over the last 3 days, and it has never revived again since. When the drive is connected it does spin up, so something's alive in there.

Hi folks, I've got an external HDD here (Seagate) which has been used to store some vital data, has failed, there's no backup etc. etc. (wrists have been slapped) Something in the drive is detected by Windows when I connect it as Device Manager adds something (and there's an event sound), but the drive letter never appears. I'm about to break open the case to double check whether it's the drive or not. In the past we have approached Kroll about disk recovery (I have a friend who used to work for them, and am assured they are legitimate!), but is there anyone else I should try? Or anything else I can try with the HDD before going the disk recovery route? Suggestions appreciated! TIA

Hi folks, Anyone know if Ruckus are still offering any form of deal for Education customers? I know historically they have done a BOGOF for APs. TIA

Thanks, that's reassuring. FragglePete: did you just have one AP covering a classroom, or go for more than one? My worry is that with the current AP locations we typically only have one covering a classroom. Is that going to be enough?

Hi folks, We bought 15 LearnPads a few months ago, and I finally had time today to witness trying a lesson with them - and it was pretty dreadful. The students were all trying to login to our Internet based VLE. I don't think the LearnPads were at fault per se. There was an HP V-M200 in the next room, so I'm guessing that was giving around 30-40Mb/s in the next room, then divided by 15 tablets, along with the other various overheads = unusably slow. We are planning to replace our piecemeal system with Ruckus, but what is the reality of this? Are we going to need two APs per classroom? (Seems near impossible with channel issues) Would Ruckus perform much better than the HP AP? Will it only be possible to have a few tablets in use at any one time? Very interested to know how others have got over this hurdle, if at all. TIA

I had put that down to the uninstall of 7u21, but very frustrating if it's a problem with the new version also.

And 7u51 is out...

I was forgetting I had the Crucial M4 in my home laptop (Samsung's in the home desktop). I had a problem with the M4 where it wouldn't be detected by BIOS, and I had to go through a rather tedious routine of powering it up and down in a certain sequence, but a newer firmware seems to have fixed that.

It looks like the US firmware has been loaded on some of these APs, yet curiously they work!

Hi folks, I've spotted that some of our APs are set to US region, yet they seem to be working (as best we can tell with our network!). Does switching between UK and US region on an AP actually have any practical effect? TIA

I'm glad I went for a Samsung in my home PC!

I tried Crucial's firmware updater, but it didn't create a bootable USB disk (tested it on a couple of machines). It did appear from Device Manager though that it was on the v25 firmware, as far as I could tell. We had a third of a batch of OCZ drives fail as well. Are there *any* SSD manufacturers that can be trusted?...

Windows reported disk errors this morning (first time I've seen it) with a dialog that asked to reboot. I did, checked Event Viewer, and it's full of disk errors. So that explains that!

Hi folks, I'm getting a weird issue with 8.1, although I suspect it's hardware as we have two other machines running 8.1 (different hardware) that are fine. This problem machine (mine, annoyingly) is initially fine for 2-3 weeks, then suddenly the SSD slows to a crawl - Task Manager shows very little throughput on the disk, and access times of seconds. Reinstalling 8.1 fixes it, but then 2-3 weeks later the same thing happens again. I'm now on my fourth install of 8.1. The machine has an MSI-7788 motherboard, for which I've updated the firmware. The SSD is a Crucial V4, which I've tried to update the firmware for but Crucial's update tool (USB boot disk) doesn't boot. It does appear though that it has the latest firmware (25) from its Device Manager properties. Does anyone know what could be wrong? TIA

I'm going to try the Logitech Z320's. Twice the price, but I can't see anything else obvious that's good quality.