my weekend of projects: hds, vista, snowboard and a ds lite

well, this weekend i had set aside for all of my recent geek projects/purchases.  lets see what was on the agenda: new hd/redo system storage scheme, get new DS One flashcart working, setup Vista, setup/tweak my snowboard, and of course get a blog in.

 my new harddrive project seemed to take up most of the weekend since i was redoing my whole partition/storage scheme.  redoing my scheme required me to basically setup my partitions on the 500GB first, install XP to my first partition, then hook up the rest of my drives and then one by one, backup the data to the 2nd and 3rd partitions on the new harddrive, then format/repartition the old harddrive, and finally copy data back to respective partitions.

this took me about a day to do (moving over 700GB of data manually is probably in my top ten of boring computer tasks) but was well worth the time.  My current drive/partition setup is as such:

-Disk1 (500GB), 3 partitions for XP, Vista, Ripping
-Disk2 (300GB), 2 partitions for files, games
-Disk3 (250GB), media files, my documents
-Disk4 (200GB), dedicated entirely to storing of Ghost images of my setups (so glad i made a Live Ghost Boot CD!)


vista seemed to run and load much faster on my new drive (has a 16mb cache vs my prev having only 8mb caches; i remember when most drives only had 1mb or 2mb caches, those must really seem slow these days).  the maxtor drive is a sata300 drive but my motherboard's sata controller is only a sata150; so i'm not getting the ideal speeds at all but still access times are good. 

i did my first real vista install today since i plan to run both that and XP SP2 on my main box.  my first few boots w/vista were interesting since i had installed nero 7 right away and it seems that nero 7 has an issue w/vista or the version i had did.  so i went online and found a micro and lite version of nero (made/customized for Vista), check it out over here:  http://web10.hotel450.server4you.de/index.php  install the micro version to get almost every feature, the lite is for basic burning only.

also used several tips from tech rx in getting my vista setup and adobe reader going.

after finally getting my XP Prof and Vista dual boot setup done, off to tweaking the snowboard. 

just got a new 2005 Burton Cruzer from REI for a pretty good deal. After riding some very sweet setups at the demo days at Spirit Mt, i decided that i had to actually spend some money for a brand name board. my current board is a cheapy, generic one.  the K2 and Burton setup i rode was beautiful, if not a bit scary.  i would consider myself to be a more aggressive freestyle rider, i love to go as fast as i can at times; however the k2 and burton setups it seemed almost hard to slow down or keep at a casual not screaming pace.  i had no problem w/the tougher, uneven terrain (a key thing for me since my face plant).  Last year i was up at Lutsen in northern MN snowboarding w/a bunch of my skier pals.  we hit up a pretty fast blackdiamond and i hit it too hard and did a faceplant going about 30mph.  not a fun weekend! since that wipeout i've been a bit on the softer side and also reason why i got my new board. 



one thing that amazes me with snowboarding is the level to which it has risen.  i started riding way back in 1994, so i'm pretty experienced (i'm a carver more than a jumper or pipe) and i remember my first board.  it was an airwalk 120 (started riding pretty small boards at first) and didn't have any of the quick release stuff or pads or anything.  i look at my latest board and the level of customization with it and it amazes me.  today i removed and adjusted the bindings (Morrow bindings).  the bindings can basically be taken fully apart and adjusted in almost each aspect.  pretty crazy i'd say!  well, got my new setup so we'll see how that holds out next weekend at my parents.

and the final project, my new DS Lite homebrew cart.  i decided to go and get a new DS One SC slot 1 card since my current SuperCard MiniSD is good and all, but sticks out a bit at the bottom.  plus, the DS One is a super key also so no firmware upgrade needed.  got it working but have been having some probs with the microSD card.  it seems i may have too slow of a microSD card, but we'll see after i play aroud a bit more.  



hoping to get my laptop power cord in (got from a pal that declared it dead, dead? never! hehe, popped a new 60gb hd in it so we'll see if an OS installs or not) and my Wiimote skins in.  i broke down and got 4 different ones from http://www.decalgirl.com   and hopefully my fourth and final wiimote i got off ebay will come soon too!

peace out