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Chris C-B wrote: I hate to be pedantic, but I think you will find the expression is just desserts
Of course, if you commute between the Sahara and the Kalahari, then you are quite right - it's just deserts. 
Yeah...No, you're wrong it is Just deserts[^]
Michael Martin
Australia
"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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"Folk" is a collective noun; don't pluralize it -- says the representative from the great state of Arizona.
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Are you referring to the collective nouns rule?
If the sentence suggests a group you should use the singular form. If it implies more individuality you should use the plural form.
A couple of folk is dancing together.
A couple of folks are in their own cars.
That's how I was taught English, I am not sure that it has anything to do with being American or British.
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Hmmm, I suspect differences in usage as opposed to rules.
I would expect to hear:
A couple of folk are dancing.
My old folks (parents) are at home.
The old folk (parents again) are at home.
The s is optional and comprehensible in the second of those.
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Trivial. You both are totally incapable of understanding or using the concept of genders in a language. 
Sent from my BatComputer via HAL 9000 and M5
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I'm currently learning French (because I now live there), in that context I agree I am totally incapable of using genders in language 
Although I would argue that French gender and pronunciation rules are sufficiently intertwined and confused thaat it's not my fault 
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1. You should avoid using idiomatic speech in texts that are to be read outside of your idiom. This usage of "folk/s" is idiomatic, so the correction is no better or worse than the original text.
2. You should be as precise as possible, without adding words that do not add meaning, i.e:
-- What were these "folks" really? Developers? inventors? Users? Idiots?
-- By "a couple of", do you mean "two", "Dave and Arthur", or just developers/inventors/users/idiots?
The whole phrase could be replaced by a single word, which would communicate meaning better and to more readers.
3. You should show the written language the same respect that you do a programming language -- written languages are far more sophisticated and harder to use, granted, but that does not mean that using them badly is acceptable. Do you redesign "IF" statements, every time you use one? If not, don't screw with English, either. And note that "clever" use of written language doesn't communicate well; it just shows that the writer is a dick.
4. You never write for yourself -- actually, you can, but it's become a bit more difficult since Geocities went under -- so look at words you have written, think of the poor buggers who will have to read them, and make sure that they're a good match.
TBH, if I saw the phrase "a couple of folk/s" in a technical document, which is intended to inform people of how to do technical things that they don't already know how to do, I wouldn't release the document until it had been fixed.
The stuff people have to learn, and the hoops they have to jump through to make things work, are difficult enough already, without someone making it harder by writing instructions that do not communicate well to the reader.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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At the risk of being a complete arse, I would say a "couple of people" as "folk" has rather a vernacular ring to it.
I would not use that term outside of speech.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Folk can hardly be singular; making it plural is redundant. It's only used in Simplified English (aka, American).
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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For something like this you should do ngram searches.
British English[^] uses the non-pluralized version almost exclusively; in American English[^] folks has ran away with the lead since 1980.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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So I was playing cards with my friends at my home and my 2TB external Seagate HDD was sitting on top of DVD case holder. One of my friend accidentally hit it and my HDD dropped and started making clicking noise... One drop from about 2 feet height and HDD is gone.. All my movies and tv series collection that I managed to collect over the years has gone..  ..No hope to recover it as I took out the HDD from its case and here the head making clicking noise..I m not too much fussed about movies but some of my TV Series and documentary collection is hard to find..
Now I have ordered new Synology NAS as a replacement for my HDD ..
Lesson learned : Always backup the backup.. Never buy Seagate HDD again (It cannot sustain a 2 feet fall !!! )...
Zen and the art of software maintenance : rm -rf *
Math is like love : a simple idea but it can get complicated.
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virang_21 wrote: Never buy Seagate HDD again (It cannot sustain a 2 feet fall !!! )...
Feets doesn't matter, it's the shock/impact that matters, specially when it's running. No running HDD will sustain 2-3 feet fall.
I never store anything permanent on an external HDD, for this same reason. All your important stuff should be on a non-portable place. with at-least one more copy on different location.
Now, when you get your NAS, don't be greedy and setup a RAID 1. 
Backup is like Exercise, we always learn its value the hard way.
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I learned that lesson, thankfully many years ago, I worked two weeks on a project got a printout and then went to copy to another floppy and mixed up source and destination and overwrote the work I had done. Luckily I had a printout and it only took me a couple of days to retype and correct before getting back my work. After that it was double backup.
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Rutvik Dave wrote: don't be greedy and setup a RAID 1.
Agreed! 
RAID 5, minimum 3 disks, from different manufacturers if possible, if not then different batches. That way, that should fail at different times...
And keep the NAS on the floor! 
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger.
English doesn't borrow from other languages.
English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.
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OriginalGriff wrote: RAID 5, minimum 3 disks, from different manufacturers if possible, if not then different batches. That way, that should fail at different times...
What do you use for your NAS?
I got the following hardware just haven't set it up yet.
Asrock B75M R2.0 M/B with 3 x SATA3 and 5 x SATA2 ports
Pentium G2120 CPU
2 x 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws-X DDR3-2133
3 x Western Disgital 2TB Caviar Black HDD
5 x Seagate Barracuda 3TB HDD
Planning on running FreeNAS 9.1 and having 2 separate RAID5 arrays. The 3 x WD 2TB will be iSCSI targets for virtual machines. The 5 x Seagate 3TB will be network storage for Movies, TV shows, ISO's, software and family data.
Got anothe Asrock B75M R2.0 M/B, Core i7-3770 CPU and yet to get another set of the G.Skill RAM mentioned above so I can setup my server. Hoping to run VMware ESXi 5.1 as the host, but if I have issues with the hardware will have to play with Windows Server 2012 and HyperV.
Michael Martin
Australia
"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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Acer Aspire Easy store with 4 x 1Tb HDD. It's a few years old now, but it has power management and intelligent cooling, so it spins the disks down when they aren't in use which preserves the bearing life, and Works well to keep the temperatures nice and cool.
And it's a damn sight quieter than the NetGear ReadyNAS I tried replacing it with a couple of years ago. Plus that was way, easy too fussy about it's drives - it wouldn't accept two of the new drives I got at all. Big plus it had was hot swap, and automatic upgrade if you added a clean disk.
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger.
English doesn't borrow from other languages.
English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.
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How much power does such a NAS consume? (In use, and stand-by)
I was considering buying a NAS for storage but I'm a bit concerned about an ever running "server" in my home 
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Depends on the make and model - but most manufacturers will quote it. The more disks, the more power! 
It's not that bad: certainly less than the equivalent PC because it's dedicated hardware rather than general-purpose. So the processor is "enough for the job" and no more, and so forth. Plus there is no graphics (it's all configured via HTML through your browser) and if it spins down your disks and hibernates itself (as most do) then the power is "just enough to wake-up on LAN" or similar.
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger.
English doesn't borrow from other languages.
English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.
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If you want higher performance and flexibility, build your own NAS, but if you want hassle-free and stable solution buy ready-made.
I am using D-Link DNS-321[^] ($60.00) since 4 years now, no problems so far. It is not as quiet as it should be, and the file transfers are slow (14 MB/Sec MAX). But it is very stable, haven't restarted in years. Feature set is also very impressive. Compatible with almost every device I own (Tablets / TV / Phone / PC / Mac).
There are other very good solutions are available, but since all my network components are D-Link I bought D-Link NAS. (i.e. Synology DiskStation)
I used it as a media server, so that I can watch movies / tv shows from any device at my home. It works great.
This is the newer model of it, D-Link DNS-320 ShareCenter[^].
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That's interesting (14 MB/Sec MAX).
I am working on a program that is generating over 2 TB of data. At a transfer rate of 14 MB/Sec that would be:
219,023,255,552 BYTES
149,796 seconds
2,496.6 minutes
41.6 hours
1.7 days
I guess that I should not try to back this up, especially since I make test runs several times a day.
Dave.
PS. And then my external hard drive (4 TB Seagate) refused to read one of the files during verification - CRC error), and these are just several months old.
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Member 4194593 wrote: 1.7 days
The one I mentioned is for Home use, you should buy the business line of NAS products like Cisco / Drobo / Synology (they have much higher transfer speed). or if you have the budget then setup SAN.
Member 4194593 wrote: (4 TB Seagate)
After a lot of research I have found that we are not ready for HDD > 2 TB yet. The manufacturers are still struggling with the firmware to support higher density. And the most reliable HDD in the market right now, is the Western Digital Green 2 TB.
But you should try upgrading the firmware of your 4 TB HDD, if available.
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I contacted Seagate. Some Script Kiddy suggested that I try chkdsk. I had already done that, but I tried again with the same result - no errors. I then tried a scan for bad sectors. It was scanning at a rate of about 1 file a second.
The drive had 374517 files
scan time 374517 seconds
6241.95 minutes
104.03 hours
4.33 days
I decided to kill the scan.
Still waiting for the next response.
I had asked about whether a single bad file this early indicated a surface defect. No response yet for that.
I allowed that I was renaming the directory with the bad file as "BadSpace", re-creating the directory, moving the good files preceding the bad file and the good files following the bad file to the re-created directory, then recalculating the bad file data (a 4 minute process vs 44 hours to rebuild all of the files), then never releasing the bad file to free up the bad space. No response yet for that.
I do not want to return the drive to Seagate under warranty, too much personal data, would take too much time to clear all of my personal backup data, and much to much time to secure erase the 374517 files. I'll just eat the bad drive if necessary and buy a new one.
Dave.
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You must have a big case for that lot
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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pkfox wrote: You must have a big case for that lot
Mid Tower have brackets to install the 3 x Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB HDD in the 3 available 5.25" DVD bays.
Michael Martin
Australia
"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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