Garry Newman's Portable Workstation: A Hard Drive | Hacker News Reader

Garry Newman's Portable Workstation: A Hard Drive

garry.tv

14 pointsthetabyte20 comments

I'd like to know more about the hardware. Does Garry have identical computers on both sides of his commute?

It's my decades-long experience with Windows that the moment you swap an existing boot drive into a new/different PC, Windows completely shits the bed with driver mismatches and incompatible versions.

I'm curious about this as well; Windows shouldn't handle that well. Linux doesn't either but you can pretty much script it to handle it, not sure if that's possible with Windows?

I do remember now that Windows has a way to set up multiple "configurations" that you can choose at boot, but I don't recall if that will let you hop from PC to PC.

Let's not forget that most licenses will freak out and stop working when they see new hardware. That's the Microsoft Genuine Software Advantage™

After I installed the new NVIDIA graphics driver yesterday to play Tribes Ascend, Microsoft-Security-Essentials informed me that it had ceased running because my Windows was not genuine. A second reboot seemed to placate it.

I used to do the same thing he describes. I had a core2duo in one PC and an i7 in the other. Both powered by Nvidia graphics and on 64bit OS'es.

Both Linux (arch) and Windows 7 worked without a complaint when swapping hard disk between the two. I do remember that back in the days you'd get an instant blue screen as soon as you change anything important hardware related on your rig.

The only risk factor I can see is that the hard drive might get damaged during transport.

Doesn't the frequently changing hardware play hell with Windows activation and other DRM systems that track serial numbers and MAC addresses?

I am not an expert on Windows Activation, but I think that this depends upon what kind of license you have. I know Technet/MSDN install keys allow you to use the same key on up to X different machine "fingerprints" depending upon what type of subscription you have, so in this case I think he'd be OK. It should just look like 2 of X activations on different machines.

If you tried doing the same with an off-the-shelf Windows 7 upgrade install or an OEM install, I'm pretty sure you'd run into problems, though, unless the two machines were identical from the point of view of Windows Activation.

No it's absolutely fine. Once activated, it's pretty much 100% ok if you move it around.

It used to be an issue in Vista days but no longer - they have relaxed most requirements.

I think it's mostly OEM editions that are restrictive. "Standard" licenses give you more freedom.

Lenovo do multiple ThinkPads that have docks that support 3 monitors. Example: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t520 and http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product-and-parts/detail.pag...

Lack of SSD surprises me, one would think Gary Newman (creator of Garry's Mod) had need.

And if you're so inclined, you can pick them up at a nice discount from Lenovo's Outlet site -- as long as you don't mind refurbs and other returns: http://outlet.lenovo.com/laptops.html?series=143

> Lack of SSD surprises me, one would think Gary Newman (creator of Garry's Mod) had need.

I don't know if a quality SSD would play well with the size of modern games.

Most mid-high level gamers use SSDs already, myself included, yes you cannot store TBs of games but why do that when you have Steam.

Because a huge hard drive is presumably cheaper than the Garry Newman time spent deciding to remove games instead of working on fun projects.

It's the same reason I simply archive every email instead of deciding what to keep and what to trash.

When I was doing a lot of Windows development and upgrading laptops a lot, I reached the point that I just imaged a laptop to a VMWare image. I could copy that image back and forth anywhere I needed to work - home desktop, work laptop, work ESX server, etc.

in the end I thought the whole system was flawed because I’d be transferring stuff from the office via my home internet connection.

I don't get what he means by this...?

He's running an Active Directory server on his home network, so it would be using his slow home internet connection to upload data.

Oh, right, I didn't consider that AD would only upload stuff when he logs in.

I don't quite get why doesn't he use something that syncs before he reaches the office, though. Setting up the machine to power-on automatically a couple hours earlier and syncing using Dropbox, Unison, etc is not that hard.

To those wondering about hardware differences - Just run your OS in VM. With modern processors you won't be able to tell the difference performance wise. Also, it's easy to make a backup of the image when you are wrapping up at work/home. This way, if you lose the drive or it fails - you will have a backup of your most recent work. I have seen people doing this for at least the last 10 years (I am surprised it is news).

I agree with what some others have posted about using an SSD with eSata or USB3. This really is a great way to go. I wold recommend also throwing some kind of encryption in the mix (either encrypt the hard drive or use BitLocker or something comparable withing the OS since you will no doubt be carrying sensitive data or intellectual property around.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com