Time for a replacement car...

Well, it's that time again...

The Ford Mondeo I got a little under a year ago was a stop-gap measure to give me breathing room to keep me on the road; it's been a champ, and done exactly that. It's the second of these cars I've owned, and while some curse them, it is, to me, one of the few wagons that Ford got right, straight out of the gate. It's not let me down once, and I put cars to hard use, trust me.

So, time to get a replacement wagon as, sadly, this one's now on it's last legs.

I also own, as some of you might know, a Series 3 (Siii) Land Rover, a former military one, no less. Unfortunately, I haven't really got the skill set to keep that one on the road, so that's going too. It's already sparked interest from a couple of enthusiasts (both known to me), so it'll get a new lease of life with either of them, whoever makes the best offer ;)

To replace both of these wagons, I need a bit of a combination. It's got to have four-wheel drive (4WD) capability, it's got to have the load-carrying capability of the Siii, the ease of use of the Ford, be able to take a few additions/modifications, and above all, be comfortable for long drives (say, to France and back).

After a lot of chat with friends and those much more knowledgeable in mechanical issues than I am (remember: I'm an electronics nut, not a mechanical nut), the conclusion is that I need a Land Rover Discovery Mk 2.

Yes, there are more reliable off-road-capable cars from other manufacturers, but I like the Land Rover marque, so there ;)

But why a "Disco" Mk 2? It is, basically, the same as a Mark 1, but with a little bit of refinement; most of the issues of the Mk 1 were already ironed out, and the Mk 2 took all of these improvements, and added a few more features here and there. The result is a slightly better wagon in many respects, not the least of which of the TD5 engine, a five-cylinder 2.5 Turbo Diesel, that's apparently miles more reliable than earlier engines in the Mk 1.

Add to this that it can be easily upgraded/modified for off-road use, and the parts and accessories for it are plentiful and, in the main, relatively cheap, when compared to similar products for other makes and marques.

So, what do I plan on doing to my new wagon, once I get my mitts on it? Well, here's a non-exhaustive list...

• Phone mounting:
  (easy, not difficult at all, already have the suction mount for the windscreen)
• Additional 12 Vdc accessory outlets cab and load space:
  Easy, socket extenders for both.
• Additional Security:
  Thatcham Steering wheel lock (Disklok) (via Amazon.co.uk)
• Radio Fit:
  Quad-band Amateur Radio transceiver + quad-band antenna, PBR set and antenna (VHF-UHF), poss CB as well (to be decided)
• Dashcam:
  DDPai M6+ GPS, WiFi, Magnetic Mount (Techmoan recommended best cam)
• New Tyres:
  To be all-terrain-capable, not yet specified/sourced
• Light guards for front and rear:
  Not yet sourced
• Snorkel (for deeper water wading):
  To be sourced
• Front bumper and winch kit:
  One of the units from Extreme 4x4
• Strobes/beacons (Yellow):
  To be decided/sourced
• Tree guards:
  To be decided/sourced
• Roll bars:
  To be decided/sourced
• Sump, differential, tank, and other under-body shields/guards
  To be specified/sourced

And the chances are good that I'll add other bits and bobs to the mix, over time, too ;)

The great thing here is that most of these don't need to be added immediately; they can be added in piecemeal fashion, allowing me to spread the cost of obtaining and fitting them over time, which is nice.

In terms of additional specifications for the Disco, I'm looking at the five-seat version, the one without the extra fold-down seats in the load space, as the 5-seat ones come with two very handy light storage bins, which I've already got ideas for ;) Also, the five-seat versions omit the self-levelling air suspension system, which can, in some cases, cause problems. The less to go wrong, the better, after all ;)

I've already identified three Discos that I like the look of (one belongs to a mate, and is tentatively on the market), and I'm going to be looking at the others over the next week or two; there are others, of course, but not as nearby to me.

I'll keep you all posted on how the search progresses :)

Ah, that's better :)

Well, the replacement hard drive for my notebook arrived this morning from Amazon.co.uk (nice and fast, that was good!), and inside the larger-than-expected box (L 23cm, W 16cm, H 11cm) was a surprisingly small hard drive (roughly 10cm x 7.5cm x 1cm - Good God, these things have got a LOT smaller in thirty years!), sealed in a factory-issue Toshiba-stamped Anti-Static bag.

The new drive was successfully fitted (it was pitifully easy, one screw, prize off a plastic panel, carefully ground myself against the metalwork (static electricity kills modern electronics), and swap them out. Many orders of magnitude easier than when I worked in the IT game - at least someone's learned how to make things simple!)

Then came formatting and installing Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS (Long Term Service). For that, I had to go into the BIOS (hitting the F12 key as you turn the machine on to access the settings menu), and tell it to boot off the USB port. Again, dead easy.

The installer, running off a LiveUSB thumb drive, did the job with no problems; the new installation then took itself off to update everything in sight to current release levels, as expected.

All in all, a relatively easy and simple fix to conduct. Nice to know some things come along with no dramas attached!

One or two comments need to be added, however. The installer makes one massive partition; you really need three: One for the operating system, one for your data, and one for the swap file. For this, you really need a decent disk management tool, and there exists in Linux, one such excellent tool, called gparted. However, it's been over two decades since I played with partitions, and a LOT of standards and practices have changed in that time, so I left it to the Ubuntu installer to do its thing.

And got one partition, not three. Live and learn.

I'll know better next time (and there WILL be a next time, as I plan to replace this new hard drive in about a year, with a Solid State Drive, which are much better than conventional hard drives (or HDDs), as there are no moving parts in an SSD, they're on average three times quicker than an HDD, consume less power, don't get as hot, and are quieter as a result of all of this as well.

The downside at the moment is that SSDs are expensive in comparison to HDDs, and tend to have much lower capacity than HDDs. Hopefully, that will have changed a fair bit for the better by this time next year.

And that will give me sufficient time to bone up on current partitioning practices, so I can do a much better job of sorting out a new drive for the machine.

Still, at least it's done for now

Enough Already (Part two)

Awrighty, then...

Well, I got bored trying to sleep, so booted up the machine using the thumb drive. Whoopee, it worked (F12, got into the bios, changed it to boot from USB , and BINGO, Ubuntu Linux was on the display).

The bad news is that it looks like the hard drive may well be completely shagged. Here's the error message I got when I tried to mount it in Linux:

Error mounting /dev/sda4 at /media/ubuntu/RogersBlant: Command-line `mount -t "ntfs" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=999,gid=999,dmask=0077,fmask=0177" "/dev/sda4" "/media/ubuntu/RogersBlant"' exited with non-zero exit status 14: The disk contains an unclean file system (0, 0).
Metadata kept in Windows cache, refused to mount.
Failed to mount '/dev/sda4': Operation not permitted
The NTFS partition is in an unsafe state. Please resume and shutdown
Windows fully (no hibernation or fast restarting), or mount the volume
read-only with the 'ro' mount option.

This suggests that it's got some form of fault that can only be fixed from within the system, and without being able to get in the system, you can't fix it. Catch-22.

To say that this is beyond irritating is something of an understatement.

Here are the cons: I may well have lost EVERYTHING on the damn drive since the last backup before the move - I can't find the one from afterwards; looks like it got lost in the move, along with the recovery disk.

Good news: My bookmarks are safe. A while ago, I began using Xmarks, a service I heartily recommend to one and all. It saved my bacon more than once, and allowed me to sync bookmarks between the notebook and my android phone. So, no bookmarks lost.

Critical 'PersInfo' files have been backed up regularly to a secure server on the cloud (obviously, I'm not saying where!), and I've been using Gmail for so long, every one of my contacts and emails for the last few years is safely preserved there, which is even better.

So.

Assuming the HDD is shagged beyond repair (and I've one more person to talk to on this), then it'll be time to order a replacement HDD from Toshiba, and install Ubuntu on it. If it's merely Windows 8 that's utterly failed, it'll be a reformat and disk wipe, then an Ubuntu installation.

Either way, I'll be playing with Ubuntu from now on.

I have truly had my fill of Windows.

Bugger off, Bill, Torvalds is playing, now.