Post by plutronus on Jun 19, 2020 0:24:59 GMT
This post is for the compu-tech-nics in our forum. So if ya ain't particularly interested in tek type yakking, just skip it!
Two years have past since I last performed a system backup, much too long for restful sanctity of mind. There were mitigating circustances regarding my tardiness in doing so, and a bit of ongoing frustrations did not assist in that matter.
I was finally forced to upgrade from Windows XP, to Windows 7, only because none of the then current HW & SW development systems available would work properly (absolutely no good technical reason for that, aside from forcing folks to buy, buy, buy...). So, grudgingly I upgraded. I bought an older HP laptop running Windows 7. I've really grown to like using laptops, especially those manufactured by Hewlett-Packard. I bought the used laptop via an auction on eBay, $150. It arrived containing a 500Gb hard disk. I remember the first hard drive I used, it was a 5mb Rodime!! And it was roughly the size of a football. To get it to work in the computer that I engineered for the company I worked for, I had to create a hard disk controller to go with it!! Those were the days, my friends. Shucks, people even called me 'Sir' back then!
So, I have this 500gb drive and all my backup drives were full, most of those drives being only 10 ~ 250gb drives, so when I did backups, I would only backup the data rather than clone the entire drive. Under Windows there are problems with cloning, as Micro$oft uses various little tricks to keep folks from cloning...from stealing their OSs. I at one time wrote cloning software as well as security software that utilized partition strategies, Micro$oft uses similar tricks. And because of that, I have found that the best, most reliable way to create partitions and format drives, is to boot a live Linux CD...it loads the entire contents into a RAM DISK and all the tools for partition editing, formatting and fixing broken files are available. One really useful linux tool, is that published by a Linux guru who markets the 'Parted Magic' live Linux CD product, for a whopping $25, PayPal. Ya download CDrom ISO image file with which you cook a blank CDrom disc, using the OpenSource InfraRecorder program in windows or Linux.
To backup my previously owned but 'new' to me HP Laptop, with the half-full 500gb drive, I dug out all my backup drives, and they are all full. So I went down to Frye's (a local US computer super-store) and bought a nice little Western Digital 2.5"/6,35cm 2 TeraByte (2000 x 1000 x 1,000,000 byte drive...a tiny big MoFo) SATA-3 disk drive. $90 bucks, brand new.
Back home, I dug out of my pile of hard drive stuff a USB to SATA disk drive interface adapter, booted up my Parted Magic, as I do all my partitioning and formatting in Linux, so much more reliable, and informative. I hooked up the new 2Tib WD drive to the adapter, and tried to partition it, normally about 15 minutes. Twelve hours later, I finally came to the conclusion that maybe the adapter would not handle SATA-3 drives although the adapter was in fact an IDE/SATA interface. Just around that time, I went in for an electional, 1 day gall-bladder removal surgery, and things went south to the Mexican border and the good Drs kept me 2 1/2 months, five surgeries later, instead. So, after nearly a two year recovery period, I'm back to trying back up my laptop!!
"dollar," 1856, American English, perhaps an abbreviation of buckskin as a unit of trade among Indians and Europeans in frontier days (attested from 1748)
I found a slick little USB-3 to IDE/SATA-3 hard disk adapter on eBay for $30 bucks (a nickname for American folding currency in the mid 1850s, a likely abbreviation of 'buckskin' used as a trading item among North American Native Indians and Europeans in the frontier days around 1750s, and so are known collectively as 'bucks', also a phrase that was used to describe brave young Indian warriors):
It arrived on time, pulled it out of the packaging, stuck it inside my UV-C dis-infectant box and UV cooked it for 10 minutes, top & bottom & sides (...came from China, don't desire to hob-nob with any little hitch-hikers from over there just now). Plugged it in, hooked up the WD drive and still no worky! Rats! So, I tracked down another drive, this unit is also new, on eBay, good deal for another 2Tib drive, only this one is manufactured by Hitachi and it isn't a micro-drive either, I'm not too keen on those, as too many have failed for my tastes. So here's that drive:
$40 + Free Shipping. Its robust and built well. I like it.
It was shipped and arrived on time, well packaged, brand new. Hooked it up to the new USB to SATA-3 adapter, booted Parted Magic live Linux CD, and shit-howdy, this combonation works. I ran the Partition Editor, 4 minutes, and then formatted the entire drive as FAT32, another 4 minutes. So, the Western Digital, (another brand new, product from Frye's) was dead-on-arrival, but because its two years out of warranty, I just gotta take it in the shorts. Maybe it'll have a nice magnet in it somewhere?
Instead of formatting it NTFS which is Macro$haft's hard drive format strategy, I chose to do it using FAT32, which can support up to 2 terabytes volume size, but the reason I did this is so that I can move files between different operating systems I have on my various computers in my lab. Some are Windows 95/ME, Win2000 and WinXP as well now Windows 7. Which makes it truely universal for my needs.
So I restarted Windows and I use a really slick and useful program written by and given away gratis, from RoadKill. Anyway, his program, Unstoppable Copier, is just that, unstoppable. It also prints a log so if there are any skipped files, malforned filenames, corrupt files, etc, you can go back to figure out what needs to be done, or corrected, etc.
Using the UnStoppable Copier, I've finally backed-up all of my development directories, including all my OScad 3D files and my delta 3D printer information. <whew> 2 years worth of work! I feel much better now. Some good news for a change.
So, to make a short Texas story longer, it works and I have finally, been able to back up of all my important information from my main laptop. <s> These things are always a journey.
plutornus
