I’ve run a home NAS system for a number of years now – to be honest, I’ve used it for not much more than a backup drive. However, having it connected to my wireless network means that I can backup my Netbook to it.

The other week there was a strange power failure in my area. After that my NAS (a Maxtor Shared Storage II 500GB device) started making clicking and general drive noises that weren’t, well, healthy. They’ve now stopped but it’s not a good sign.

One thing I didn’t check when I purchased it though is how to replace the drive when it’s out of warranty. The answer is… not very easily. In fact the NAS runs Linux and requires the NAS’ operating system installing onto any new drive. Oh, and it’s not very easy to even get at the drive.

So, I’ve decided to look for a replacement – and this time I’m going to get one where I can easily swap the drive, if I need to.

The best option appeared to be the Buffalo LinkStation Pro LS-XHL. This comes with a drive built in and, after asking on their forums, it would appear that replacing the drive on that is not easy either.

I’m now looking at the ZyXEL NSA210 which, although not the quickest, is the one recommended by PC Pro. And, more importantly, comes diskless and is therefore easy to swap drives (I’ve read the online documentation to confirm too!). I’d probably stick in it a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green.

I’m just awaiting Maxtor (sorry, Seagate) to get back to my customer query, before I give up on my existing NAS.

The latest version of Xmarks for Firefox has added a new feature where, in the status bar at the bottom of the browser window, there are 5 stars, allowing you to easily rate websites that you visit. Unfortunately, they’re a bit of an “estate” hog and can only be turned off along with the Xmarks icon (which is useful for quick synchronisation). However, there is a way to turn off just the rating stars…

1. Enter about:config in the Firefox address bar
2. Right click in the main screen area
3. Select New -> Boolean
4. Type extensions.xmarks.hideStatusBarStars and press Enter
5. Select the value true

This will forever banish the stars. If you want to bring them back…

1. Enter about:config in the Firefox address bar
2. Find the value extensions.xmarks.hideStatusBarStars
3. Set it to false

Today is WordPress Plugin Developer Day.

The idea is to give back to those who provide useful, free plugins for WordPress.

What they’re asking is that anyone that has ever gotten even the slightest benefit from a WordPress plugin to say thank you today by making a small donation to the plugin/developer of your choice.

Yes, I’m one of those people, but this blog is also enhanced thanks to the plugins for others so I’ll be donating as well.

Hopefully this will make you feel as good as it does me – they deserve our gratitude.

I recently thought it would be a good idea to display on my blog a list of draft posts – a kind of “coming soon”. A plugin to do this exists but it hasn’t been updated for years and lacked some of the features that I was after (and, from the comments left on the authors website, features that others wanted as well).

I’ve therefore created my own plugin to do all this and more. Simple Draft List allows you to display a list of draft post/page titles – you can specify the type (post and/or page), the sequence and maximum number to list. You can also specify individual post/pages to omit by the simple use of a character in the title.

Full details are on the official WordPress page or on the page on this site.

Apologies if I’ve not responded to emails, comments and support requests – my family and I are unwell at present. I’ll respond to people as soon as I can.