On Xen passing an external USB drive to a VM guest running windows, the external drive must be formatted as a logical drive. Primary partitions will be unreadable so if you get an external drive and you plug it into your Xen server and you attach it to your Windows guest. Your windows guest will be able to see the drive but not be able to manage any partitions within. Take the external drive out, plug it into your computer, and use a partition tool to create a logical partition. Be sure to delete all other partitions prior. Then when you plug it into your Xen and attach the External disk to your windows guest. It will be usable.
After Trying many Different External Drives
After trying many different external drives, we also determined that there is definitely a Hitachi external drive that fails to connect even if you format the partition as a logical partition. Removing the drive and putting it in another case shows that it works fine, so it’s not the physical drive, but rather the external case. Having no newer firmware available to upgrade the case we were not able to isolate it as a hardware or firmware problem, only that it was a case-specific issue.
Connecting your Apple devices to iCloud
Ever wanted to seamlessly share your files from your iPhone to your iPad or MacBook without having to deal with the begrudging task of e-mailing, syncing, and transferring? Now that Apple has fully integrated iCloud into the Lion OS (10.7.2) and iPad OS (5) and up, you can access everything from every device you have, even a PC. Unfortunately, iCloud is only available to the operating systems listed and higher; however, you can always contact an Apple store about purchasing a newer system and license (for PCs you must have either Windows Vista with the Service Pack 2, or Windows 7).
iBooks, iCalendar, Contacts and Mail, Backup and Restore
Once you know you’ve met the requirements for iCloud, you can go to the iCloud site to learn how to set up your account. Then once you’ve been set up, you no longer need to sync your iPod every time you’re away from home, everything is done automatically. Your photo stream, cloud documents, apps, iBooks, iCalendar, contacts and mail, backup and restore, and “Find my iPhone” (locating device when it has been lost) are all linked together to be accessed from anywhere.
The iCloud account sets you up with an instant 5GB of free storage, but if you need more, it’s $20.00 per year for a total of 15GB, $40.00 per year for a total of 25GB, and $100.00 per year for a total of 55GB of storage. However, there is one hiccup that seems to be plaguing many new cloud users: connecting calendars through iCloud. For example, you need to add a company meeting to your business calendar from your iPhone away from the office. What usually happens is the meeting is added to your business calendar, but only on your phone. An easy way to fix this problem is to check the settings on each calendar you use to make sure it’s set up to use iCloud; unfortunately, even though iCloud links most of everything for you, it will not link all of your calendars.
Where is the ” Battle “, the battle is in Recalling or Figuring it out. I don’t have to memorize my address, I know where I live. If I instead memorize my city’s address scheme I can calculate my address (19 blocks west of Central is 19th Ave . etc.). This is where database administrators and developers alike are constantly running their technical balancing act. The decision to calculate the result, or recall the result! Should I memorize all the data and count on indexes, or should I memorize the formula and count on the calculation to retrieve the data?
Can people benefit, I think we can! I find myself naturally counting more on “Calculating” the result than I do memorize. It works ok because I’m a logical thinker and it comes naturally. I get left behind far too often though. The problem is in remembering to do many things, or remembering whether I did something at all. Important dates, even vacations go by the wayside. My memory recall is all but shot because I count on logic as a crutch. In a pinch, I can pull it off but it takes a lot more effort for me to Recall than it does to deduce. If I were to optimize my inner indexes and work on utilizing my recall more often, just as DBAs do, it might very well be of great benefit to many.
Could I increase my ability to recall? In the database, there is a concept called re-indexing. It’s basically forcing the database to recreate its index. The more often it does this the more current and fresh the index is. Should I be doing the same thing for myself? If I were to go over and over and over a specific item (Such as what I had to do in grade school for the Preamble to the Constitution) I will insure it is stored and its index is strong. But do I need to go over the entire text over and over? If I already have the data (I’ve already experienced the vacation) and simply don’t want to lose it, I should re-index weekly (maybe monthly). This should insure I do not lose the data and could increase my reliance on memory, in hopes of striking a balance.
There are others around me who count on recall as a crutch and have deductive reasoning fall by the wayside. I think they are in the same boat on the opposite end. In the database, we either increase the CPU (brain exercises) or decrease the amount of CPU required by normalizing the data in a logical way (breaking down the tables). This simply forces the system to rely on memory instead of overburdening the processor. What could one do to decrease their reliance on memory?
