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jack
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Likes it here |
Location: England
Registered: September 2006
Messages: 304
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I was most put out today that is probably why I had a go at David.
I bought a new 80 gig hard drive that when loaded on to my windows xp system it would not run because the system would not pick up the new hardware.
I have ordered a new USB cable as I believe that this is the problem it does piss you off when you buy something and it does not function first time.
life is to enjoy.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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It is the hard drive season. My laptop has just started announcing that it can't see the hard drive. I thumped it and it started to see it. I've backed it up and am actually amazed that I bought a warranty, because i am about to invoke it.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy wrote:
> It is the hard drive season.
Oh lord, isn't it just! Having recounted my experiences with a dead hard drive, the freezer, and bags of frozen chips a few weeks ago (extracting data from my mum's dead drive), I'm off to my brothers place on Monday to sort out transferring data for him, as his hard drive is dying noisily! Fortunately, he's been able to do a full backup.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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I hope that my clicking hard disk will fail sooner rather than later, because I'm pretty sure it's still under warranty.
That said, I am not too happy at the thought of sending away all my data to a third party. I don't mean that I have anything dangerous, only that, being a backup disk, it holds all sorts of information that would represent a goldmine to identity thieves. Most of the really sensitive stuff (passwords, bank details) is encrypted, but I can't be absolutely sure it hasn't been cached somewhere on the disk in the past in plain text.
Unfortunately it's 300 GB. If it were smaller it would probably be much less hassle just to buy a new one.
David
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External (USB) 300 and 400 GB drives are now under £100, so that's what I've taken to using for backup. OK, they're slow, but my backups run overnight unattended. Not sure if they're Linux-friendly, though.
Assorted places have 400 GB internal HD's for just under £100 (PC world currently have a hitachi one for £99.99, I noticed on my last visit there) - personally, I'd rather spend that than send a used disc that once contained personal data to anyone!
In fact, I'm a bit funny about that kind of thing - I still have the HD's out of every PC I've ever owned 'cos of worrying about disposal. Right back to the full-height 10Mb (yes- Mb not Gb) HD from my original IBM-PC ...
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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I've not ever used USB hard disks, but my two external drives are firewire and work fine (and speedily) under both Linux and Windows. In fact, they are more reliable under Linux, because Windows always gets the drive letters muddled up. Firewire is much faster than USB version 1, and easily rivals version 2. It's designed for high-speed (video/data) transfer, whereas USB is designed more for compatibility. If I get another external hard disk, it'll be firewire (or better) -- unfortunately, as USB 2 has become more ubiquitous, they've become harder to find.
At the moment I'm feeling very broke, so if the disk fails I will have to do without backups for a while, I suspect.
David
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im just glad i have two external hard drives both have my operation system on then just in case
Jay, I love u. You are my heart and my soul.
You are my other half. The final piece to my puzzle. I am complete when I am with you.
You turn a dark day into a bright sunny day.
You make me giddy with joy.Just from hearing your voice.
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I have an external 80GB drive in a USB box and use it for backups. It is Linux-formatted and a simple script copies new or changed files in a snap (like using 'xcopy /d /s /e' in Windows). My external HD is almost full now, so when I buy a larger main HD the present HD will replace the 80GB.
Linux and USB is a very stable and fully plug-and-play compliant and hot-swappable combination.
Oh, nostalgia! You have a 10MB IBM HD? You shouldn't by any chance also own the original 64kB-256kB IBM PC, with a CGA or monochrome monitor?
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Do you use rsync? I don't know how I ever lived without it. Excellent for including in cron jobs and then forgetting about it (well, not quite, but it really does take all the stress out of automated backups).
I'm surprised that it's not more popular under Windows.
David
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Sailor wrote:
> Oh, nostalgia! You have a 10MB IBM HD? You shouldn't by any chance also own the original 64kB-256kB IBM PC, with a CGA or monochrome monitor?
I did - it was the first IBM compatible I owned. Before that, I had an absolutely adorable Apple IIc, complete with the optional portable 80-character LCD screen (the most loved of any computer I've ever owned), and before that the Commodore 64. Alas, the IBM-PC has long gone, and the only bits of it I have left are the aforementioned hard drive, and its companion full-height 5.25 floppy drive. Because the case (and cards) were lower in the replacement (was it the AT?) than in the original, it was one of the few times I've had to upgrade by replacing the whole thing, rather than just bits! The hard drive is buried in a cupboard, but I dug out the floppy drive and here's a pic of it, next to a modern-day hard drive!
I still use the laptop bag that the Apple II transportable came in, on a regular basis: remarkable as its over 20 years old by now!
-
Attachment: IBMdrive.JPG
(Size: 22.71KB, Downloaded 375 times)
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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The USB HD is automatically mounted like any local disc when attached to the computer, so the cp (copy) command is adequate. In that way it can, for security reasons, be stored away from the computer, e.g. in a different part of the house.
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Well, if you've never thought about rsync, I'd recommend you take a look. It basically automates the whole process of synchronising files and directories. You can get it to copy only changed files, or to mirror the entire contents of a directory, and it does incremental copying as well, so if a file has just changed slightly it'll only copy the data that has changed. Synchronising a large directory (even one containing thousands of files and directories) which has changed only by a few files since the last sync takes only a few seconds.
It also works remotely (over a network or the internet via SSH), so you can copy or mirror directories securely between machines. It may, of course, be overkill for your purposes, but it's well worth getting acquainted with it anyway in case you need something like it in the future.
David
[Updated on: Sun, 03 December 2006 13:51] |
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Brings back a lot of memories!
I never had an Apple II or a true IBM PC. My first computer was a Vic 20 and then a Commodore 64. I still have a BBC B tucked away somewhere and I started learning Turbo Pascal programming on a BBC Master with an Intel co-processor. But it was painfully slow so I had to buy a PC clone.
After I bought my first AT clone with a standard mainboard and case every upgrade has been in individual bits and pieces.
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My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81. It's the only computer I've ever had that made it seem a real effort to add one small integer to another small integer! The BASIC instruction manual was great fun; I never mastered the dialect of BASIC it used, but it was the first time I had ever tried to program anything (indeed, I think it may have been the first time I ever used a computer). I'm still vaguely amused by the slightly contrived real-life situations used in the early chapters of the book to illustrate basic programming concepts.
The other computers I've had (in order from 1995, mostly hand-me-downs or second hand, hence the seeming chronological inaccuracy) were a Macintosh SE (8Mhz Motorola 68000), a 486 (Cyrix 66MHz), a Pentium 166 MMX, a BBC Master (2MHz 65C102), an Acorn A5000 (25Mhz ARM), my current computer (formerly a Celeron 533, now an Athlon 2800+), an IBM laptop (Celeron 600) and an Acorn Risc PC (233Mhz StrongARM). The Athlon and the Risc PC are the most important to me, the former for video and audio editing and the latter so that I can run the computer programs and games I wrote at school many years ago. It also works all right as a web terminal; it's just about fast enough for basic web browsing (now that there's a modern open source browser available for Risc OS: http://netsurf.sourceforge.net/). I also run Debian on it -- it's really quite astounding what Linux'll run on if you're prepared to work out how to install it (and it wasn't easy!).
David
[Updated on: Sun, 03 December 2006 14:45] |
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Thanks, David, you've convinced me. Does it also delete files from the target directory which I have deleted from the source directory?
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Yes, if you ask it to. You need to use the --delete flag.
The best thing to do is to read the man page. It's a very versatile tool and the options that are best for me aren't necessarily best for you. E.g. http://www.hmug.org/man/1/rsync.php
The command I use on my server (as part of a complicated homemade perl script that automatically mounts and dismounts partitions, moves files around, mirrors others, manages backup directories for different days of the week, makes daily logs, and so on) is (as root):
nice -n 19 rsync -a --delete -v /path/to/files/ /path/to/backup/
(the final slashes are important)
This mirrors the directory /path/to/files/ to /path/to/backup/. If there are already files in /path/to/backup/ it only changes them if they differ from those in /path/to/files/.
nice -n 19 makes it lowest priority (optional) so that it doesn't upset anything else the system is doing
rsync is the command itself
-a means archive (preserve permissions and ownership and be recursive)
--delete means remove files from the backup directory that don't exist in the original
-v means be verbose (this is optional, but it's good so you can see what is going on, at least at first)
Just be careful not to get the directories the wrong way round in the arguments, otherwise you'll end up overwriting your files with the backup!
You don't have to run it as root, but if you don't then the ownership of the files will be changed to the user who ran rsync.
You can also use it for individual files by using: rsync /path/to/original /path/to/copy
This is generally used over networks where bandwidth is at a premium and you don't want to throw away any information in the copy that may be the same.
David
[Updated on: Sun, 03 December 2006 17:53] |
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Linux has such a wealth of utilities and functions and there's always something new to learn.
And there's always someone who is able to explain and make it look both simple and useful.
Thanks again, David!
[Updated on: Sun, 03 December 2006 18:23] |
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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And my laptop died. With luck Norton Ghost will work when I get it back and I will be back where I was before. I hate being reliant on software
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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So, I have my laptop back with a new disk. I used Norton Ghost to back my old disk up to another machine, so all should be simple.
And, of course, it is not.
I can't use it while windows is running, I have to use the symantec recovery environment. And this recoveryenvironment has a manulk written by peole who understand just enough to be able to tell people who understand far more what they chould be doing.
The recovery environemnt is arcane. And when I manage to get it running it shows me an error whcih cannot possibly be present on the target drive.
I hate Symantec, I hate their Mount Point Error E0BB0085 or whatever it is. This software was meant to make recovery easy. I have so far wasted most of my life trying to make it run.
Options now are to reformat the disk and start again with the recover environment, then to go for a virgin windows install and install every last goddam thing
[Updated on: Tue, 05 December 2006 19:49]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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I persevered. I tried all sorts of things. Finally I wrote the ghost backup file back to thy ehard disk I needed to recover. It hated that too.
But, after I did that, I tried one more time across the network. And after 6 hours it restored completeley.
I am now buying a firewire external disk in order to be able to backup and restore very easily.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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