Spectra Logic, an innovator in backup, data recovery and archive, and QStar Technologies, a leading global provider of enterprise-class data management and archive software, today announced that the University of Oslo has selected a Spectra Logic T-Finity coupled withQStar's Archive Manager 6.0 to upgrade its storage systems as part of the NorStore project, where the country's research community benefits from a government-funded storage infrastructure. With a requirement for 24/7, easy access to large volumes of scientific data, storage reliability is paramount to the University.

NorStore is a Norwegian national data storage project designed to provide the Norwegian research community from all universities, university colleges and research organizations with a centralised storage infrastructure, hosted by the University of Oslo. Financed by the Research Council of Norway and the participating centers, the infrastructure must provide easy and secure access to distributed storage resources, facilitate the creation and use of digital scientific repositories, provide large aggregate capacities for storage and data transfer, and optimize the utilization of the overall storage capacity.

Founded in 1811, the University of Oslo is Norway's largest and oldest institution of higher education. The university has over 27,000 students and 5,900 staff and the University Center for Information Technology Services (USIT) employs over 250 people to support its IT infrastructure, which includes 12,000 Windows PCs, 1,500 Mac clients, 1,000 Linux clients, 300 Windows servers, 1,500 Unix/Linux servers and associated systems such as SANs and backup applications.

USIT staff was finding that the capacity and flexibility of the legacy storage no longer met the University's requirements for the NorStore project. The system comprised of solutions that, as time passed, ran older architectures that were challenging and costly to run due to vendor fragmentation, expiring support contracts, frequent hardware failures and expensive and impractical offline requirements for routine maintenance. Furthermore, the unrelenting growth in data from scientific activities was putting additional pressure on the ageing system.

The University needed a new storage infrastructure that would offer a high degree of consolidation, management centralisation, performance and flexibility, as well as scalability, within its budget constraints.

The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) requires the Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA) – which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – to make yearly adjustments to the maximum conforming loan limits to reflect changes in the hosing market, particularly median home prices.

It’s important to note that not all mortgage products will abide by the conforming limits set forth by the FHFA. Examples of different products which have different loan limits include:

1. Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans

2. Veterans Affairs (VA) loans

3. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) loans

4. Non-conforming loans (jumbo mortgages)

Based on recent information released from the FHFA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s conforming loan limits are set for the upcoming year and will remain unchanged in most parts of the country.

Even if you’re in the market looking to purchase a property that exceeds the maximum conforming loan limits in your areas, FHA loans allow up to $729,750 (in high-cost areas) and jumbo mortgage products products are available around the country.

Conforming loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been unchanged since 2006 when the government raised the national limit to $417,000. Jumbo loans, or loans that exceed the conforming loan limit, are typically not backed by Fannie and Freddie.

Jumbo loans are not backed by the government and because of this, they often are subject to more stringent lender guidelines. For starters, buyers wishing to pursue a jumbo loan generally need great (often 680+) credit scores. Other requirements will vary on employment status, property guidelines and other factors. In addition, jumbo mortgages generally won’t come with lower down payment options. While FHA loans allow as little as 3.5% down and conventional financing only 5%, most jumbo loan products will require 20% of the purchase price.

MiniTool Halloween Treats! With the long-awaited Halloween just around the corner, MiniTool decided to celebrate this festival by dishing out MiniTool software license (Mac Data Recovery Personal, Power Data Recovery Personal or Partition Wizard Professional). Hurry and snap up your gifts. More details: http://www.partitionwizard.com/minitool-halloween-treats.html

Copy partitions is a function where a partition is copied to an area of free space of its own hard disk or another hard disk.

MiniTool Partition Manager released by MT Solution has the function of both copying partitions and copying disks. This software can copy partitions or disks to certain places with certain parameters. Now let's see how it works:



First, select the partition you want to copy. Here we select D: partition on disk 1 with a size of 74.53 GB. Then, right click the mouse and select Copy, of course you can also select Copy from the menus. Next you will see:


Here we can copy partition D: to an unallocated space. We mark the two spaces on the picture. If the button NEXT is active, the partition is able to be copied. Now we would like to select the second free space on the hard disk.


We click the button NEXT and we will see two diagrams showing the source and destination disk & partition. Of course, they will have the same size, but we can also copy the partition with resizing. We are allowed to select the partition type, logical or primary. All these features makes your partition copy easier and safer. You can also copy disks with the same operations.

In just a few simple steps, you can copy your partitions or disks without data loss. This process is completed in minutes and your time will be saved. 

Partitioning Windows Servers is an increasing need for IT administrators who want to maximize their partition performance of Windows Servers. Recently, Windows Server 2008 was released. Thus, how to perform partition operations on Windows Server 2008 is a question that many will soon be asking.

For instance, how does one enlarge the partition C on Windows Server 2008 for further usage or back up partition C for special use? Any improper operations could lead to data loss and system breakdown. What's more, the disk management built in Windows Server 2008 offers no function in partition copying. Thus, a professional partition management software is needed.

Partition Wizard Server Edition - A Professional Partition Manager for Server 2008.

Partition Wizard Server Edition is the leader in server partitioning software. With this excellent Windows Server partitioning software, you will find that it is a very simple job to partition Windows Server 2008 hard drives. For example, you can create and delete partitions on your hard disk quickly and easily, or resizing your partitions in Windows Server by utilizing the free spaces of your hard drive. Furthermore, it allows you to enlarge a partition like partition C: under Windows Server 2008 Operating System without losing data or destroying data during the resizing process. Here is a quick tour of Partition Wizard Server Edition and show how to create a partition.


The main interface includes an action panel with a shortcut for common tasks and an overview of pending operations, a map of each disk, and a list of the partitions on the selected disk. The menu bar and a toolbar appear at the top of the window. The menu bar offers you the access to all of MiniTool Partition Manager's features. It gives you quick access to commonly used options. When the pointer is over a toolbar, the status bar shows what the button does. 

 If there is some unallocated space on the disk, you can create a partition by manual disk operations. Select the unallocated space, the Create Partition will be available on the toolbar, on the sidebar, and on the Operation menu. In the Create Partition window, enter a partition label, select a drive letter, cluster size, partition size, partition type (Primary-Logical) and file system from the list. Normally, if the partition is used to contain an Operating System, Primary should be selected for it, and if the partition is meant for data storage, then Logical should be selected. Click OK; you will add a pending operation to the operations list. 

Apply the pending operation, and you have successfully created a new partition out of the free space. Reboot your Windows Server 2008 Operating System, and you're done!

Partition Wizard Server Edition now supports: Windows Server 2000/2003/2008 and Windows 2000 pro/XP/7/Vista 32 and 64 bit systems.