Relatively recently, I setup an Openfiler box in the house. ~2 TB software RAID5, 3 member array. I recently transitioned it from the original hardware to an Atom board; I'm pretty happy with it so far, but the more I research silent bit rot and the RAID5/6 write hole the more I get concerned for my data.

The more I research on ZFS and RAIDZ the more I like. I'm leaning towards NexentaStor; anyone have any opinions on the ZFS alternatives out there/transitioned from Openfiler or another more conventional filer to ZFS-based storage?

How does the performance on the replacement compare to the old card? I have a MSI 8800 GTS 512 that I suspect is causing some lockups.

I'd like a replacement that can run the current crop at the same levels and play Starcraft 2 when it hits.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_cat.php?id=3&t=qanda

I did this over the weekend. Seemed to work fine, been installing some of the new purchases to a larger drive and all the old stuff is working fine also.

I had missed the SupCom 2 sale a little while back.... got it this time!

I'd love to see Jak and Daxter get the same treatment... but as stated earlier, Ico/SoTC should be next.

I had lots of fun with them. I haven't finished either. Most of the way through the first, took a break and started the 2nd.  if you have a 360 controller and the adapter for the pc (or any other pc dual axis gamepad) I'd advise using the controller instead of the kb and mouse controls. Sweeping minions, etc is a -lot- easier with a controller.

as ico/sotc hd draws ever closer ...

Word!

how about some random hotness?

Ok, the 3rd is Olivia Munns, but who are the other two?

The Overlord collection is a steal at 5 bucks. Grab it now.

--edit--

Here's hopeing for a deal on Defense Grid later in the sale.

Very cool. SOTS is one of those games that is always in the wings to eat up some time. Provided they can deliver (and since SOTS really appears to be a labor of love for Kerberos) this will be a day 1 purchase.

Oblivion bought and downloading.  Also got a couple of the bigger mods downloading too.

Kind of a side question, but what mods are you getting for Oblivion?

Universe at War is definately worth 5 bucks.

Galciv 2 is complete and maxed on expansions at 10 bucks. Sins will just get you the base game, and you'd want to grab the xpacs also... I think that would bring it up to 30 bucks or so, not sure what the xpacs (Diplomacy and Entrenchement) are going for now.

I've never gotten into Galciv, but I've put a lot of time into skirmishing in Sins. Either way, it's a lot of gaming value for $10. Both for $20 is a great deal, I'd pick up the Galciv2 pack just to have it around.

I had picked up and played through a good bit of Oblivion on the 360 a while back... never finished it. During one of the Christmas sales last year I picked up the GOTY edition on steam... I'd like to pick it back up and get into it. What are the must have mods for it.... and will they work with Steam?

The shots from the game have always looked good, but the reviews have always made me hold off on picking it up. Looking forward to your impressions of it.

here's a video of Terrans vs Protoss.

This is a very cool match... as always, a lot of replays are crap but this was really worth watching.

Kabuto also includes the soundtrack... awesome score by Jeremy Soule. Arguably worth the price right there. I'll second that Kabuto is a great game and has a ton of piss yourself funny moments in it.

I think I actually have 2 copies of Kabuto and this is -still tempting-.

Another vote here for the game. If you have a pc that can run it, you really owe it to yourself to play it. It's a shame the console port got canned, as I can't image it being anything other than a huge hit, and the bigger installed user base would have helped give this franchise and dev more legs.

Hard to go wrong on this for 3 bucks....

Typo there and not a temporal blip. Either way, the fan is working on my card when set via Rivatuner ( I can hear it) and I'm not getting the truely insane temps others have reported having with SC2. Bad board (or MB, ick) or corruption in windows?

I've thought about getting a 9800 board to test with... we had purchased and opened one at work before checking the form factor of the pc it was going into... oops. So we have one to sell. On the other hand, I could get a clean install of Windows on another drive and see if the issue goes away. Don't have a spare sata drive sitting around, though.

296.21; reloaded them last night. (confirmed this is the most recent version from nvidia's website.

Can we start a username list here for ingame? Provided I can resolve the issues I'm having with the beta (check it out, if anyone has any ideas post in there) some multi would be fun.

I was lucky enough to get one of the SC II beta keys Ron has been giving out. However, I'm running into a bit of an issue: I can play about 5-10 minutes and then I get graphical corruption, sometimes followed by a stop code. After this, I have to power cycle the system. I've replicated this with multiple graphics settings in SC2, including with it set to low. To date, this is the only program I've had a repeatable crash like this; I've had lockups in both Mass Effect 2 and STO, but only after several hours of play. Cold boot, warm boot same issues.

Stop code (when  it has popped up) is a machine_check_exception. According to what I've seen this is usually MB or memory related. I've ran prime95 in cpu check mode (ran overnight, clear) and it's currently running an overall torture test (started after the other stress test finished, clear so far). I haven't ran a dedicated memtest yet(prime95 in torture should test memory to a degree, but I really only trust memtest86); I will probably run it overnight next.... although I don't expect it to fail.

MSI 8800 GTS 512 on an Asus p5n-d, current drivers from nvidia (can't recall the driver number off the top of my head)
PSU is CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W, which should have 28 amps on the 12v rail... so I wouldn't think this is PSU related.

My first thought with the faults was heat related. I've bumped the fan all the way up to 100% (from 60% and 80% duty) with no joy. Doesn't appear to be heat related, as the highest reported temp from the gpu core is ~60C (maybe 63-64 with max settings and low fan duty) before fault. Ambient on the board is below this.

Do I have a bad card? Windows issues? MB issues (bad pci-x slot)? Ambient temps too high?

I supposed it could be beta issues with my card, but I wanted to rule out a hardware issue first.

is the beta about to end?

No, but Steam is going to get a lot more beta testers!  

I think I passed on this during all the nuts holiday online sales, even though I was tempted, so I had to pick it up now. Either that or now I've got 2 copies of it 

** Transmission Incoming **

Nutoumo@Greeneggsnham here! Can I get a fleet invite? Also, do we have a KDF fleet also?

It was a really bad decision to force you to play through a second time as the same class for new game+.

What do you mean? The Long Service award? If you import an existing ME1 character you should get this at the end of your first completion. Any further characters (new or import) get 50k of each mineral starting and 200k cash, plus any other import boni they would have (pretty sure on those numbers).

$40 shipped.

budget cuts.

In Soviet Russia Budget Cuts You!

Any thoughts on the preorder equipment? This is one of the few times where the Gamestop preorder actually looks to be worth having, though I'd rather order the game through D2D or Steam.

I really hate the asshatery from GW. The only things I was interested from them (Epic 40k, BFG) are pretty much DOA at this point. I'd LOVE to see Man O' War get reprinted, although the chances of that happening are pretty much slim to none. However, SH -did- get a reprint, so I guess anything is possible.

I'd love to see FFG do some reprints of GW material. Horus Heresy is getting a reprint, so maybe we'll see more...

Yeah, I think I was fooling myself thinking I might wait on picking this up. My current playtime in DA has renewed my love for Bioware; this will be a day one purchase now next year.

Engineer looks pretty sweet. My playthrough of the first (360) was as an engineer; I had a great time with it.

Looks like a pc purchase for me. Picking up the original for 5 bucks on one of these digital download sales kinda sealed it for me. Plus with DA I'll also have access to any of the shared content from it also.

As noted before, J&D1 is largely self contained; you could stop at the end of it, although if you get all the goodies it hints at a sequel. The story actually works.... J&D2 and 3 really should be looked at as one story that spans accross 2 games. Both are excellent; the difficulty on 2 is uneven, at times very very difficult. 3 is more even, IMO. Hard to pick a favorite on the 2 of these, since they are tied so closely together, although I want to say that 2 had a heck of a cliffhanger ending, but it's been a long while since I finished it, so I could be wrong.

This series, along with the Sly Cooper games, are probably my favorites on the PS2. (As far as Sly goes, 2 was my favorite. 3 was good also, but not quite as good as 2)

I haven't finished all the way through the J&D racing game. It seemed ok but not as good as the others.

$40 shipped or just ship me a copy of Halo Wars.

The last few years they've had a B2G1 on preowned games on Black Friday. I would expect them to do the same this year.

Very cool. Will be a day one purchase for me

Backwards compatibility for Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath.

Picked up my copy (1 of 4 the local store is getting) from the FLGS the other day. Now the box has to set in storage for Christmas/birthday. My wife was nice enough to open it up, confirm that we have both a rulebook and mission book (I've heard some have 2x of one or the other) and the correct number of counter/floor pages.

Another vote for Malwarebytes. However, I've seen variations of Antivirus2009 or whatever it's morphed into now that will kill Malwarebytes and Hijackthis on infected pcs. You start the process and before you can do anything the processes is killed.