A couple of different topics today…usually I try to separate them into different posts, but tonight I am not going to.

We use a Data Robotics Drobo for file storage.  We have four one-terabyte drives in it, giving us a total storage of approximately 2.7 terabytes.  It is a USB storage device, for those who are not familiar with the unit.  USB has an upper storage limit of 2.0 terabytes, which means that according to Windows, we are missing 700 gigabytes of capacity!

Through all the forums that I have perused, there is no easy fix for this, short of partitioning the available capacity on the Drobo unit.  This requires that the entire unit be offloaded prior to removing the existing partition and reformatting.  The other solution out there is to run Linux.  Given my lack of Linux knowledge, that is not the best solution, as this is a production server.  Since we have some spare computers, I am going to haul one out and begin to expand my knowlegebase.  As an aside, on a personal level this year will be one of re-education, reviewing, renewing, and adding to my certification base.  I did not do any certification testing during my six years at Netbored, to my dissatisfaction.

For those of you who have an Epson R260 printer (or an Epson R280 or 360, or any of those printers that use the same driver line), I have discovered a bug in the Epson Status Monitor under Windows Vista x64 Ultimate.  The filename is E_FAMTBNA.EXE and it stays resident in memory after you have sent your print job to the printer.  Even more irritating is that if you send another print job out, it runs a second instance of E_FAMTBNA.EXE.  A third print job, you get three copies running, and so forth.  Each instance of E_FAMTBNA.EXE eats up 13% of your CPU power.

This issue first came to light due to the fact that my computer was idling and somehow using up 88% of its total CPU power.  On a dual quad-core Xeon machine, that is generally a tough task to do during peak usage, much less when the machine is doing nothing but checking e-mail.  It would be easy to blame it on Windows Vista, which is a notorious memory hog (and bloated, do not even get me started on that one), but in this case… Epson Status Monitor, you are the weakest link.  Goodbye.