Messing With Stuff

I tend to mess with my computers quite a lot. I enjoy upgrading and tinkering, and it’s actually quite relaxing for me. As many of you know, I have a Windows Home Server that is awesome. It is no less than revolutionizing the way I store and access data. I am still tweaking it and adding storage, but it’s a fun project.

However, tonight I learned a few things about myself.

Things I am good at:
1) Creating five units of work by attempting to skip a step that saves one unit of work.
2) Not taking even a moment to complete that skipped step, regardless of how much extra work it created.
3) Stubbornly completing the now overly complex task, even after realizing it won’t come close to solving the original problem.

I had begun to grow frustrated with my otherwise awesome Hiper 580w modular power supply. It did not come with quite enough molex and SATA attachments to connect all my drives and still route the cables in a non-insane fashion. So, I started to wonder if the Antec 500w PSU that came with my server’s case wouldn’t be a better option. After a quick check of the power specs and run-down of the connectors, I decide to swap it in.

Power supplies are big. To make a long story short, I ended up having to remove two hard drive cages and a CPU cooler to accomplish this. And I did so without ever breaking down and unhooking the server so I could put it on the floor. FYI, my server lives in the corner of our office, and I had about two square feet of work space.

My back hurts now.

And initially, it created a bigger cable mess than I had before, but with the creative placement of a few twist ties, I resolved it, and like heck I’m putting the old power supply back in after all that.

It’s fine.