Slashdot Mirror

For what you are wanting to do? Grab a copy of Hiren's Boot CD, specifically you'll want to use HDAT2 or if you are in Windows you can use HDTune and run the error scan.

For what you are wanting to do? Grab a copy of Hiren's Boot CD, specifically you'll want to use HDAT2 or if you are in Windows you can use HDTune and run the error scan.

Microsoft is running out of cash cows.

Right now they are so desperate that they are trying to milk Windows 8 as much while the going is still good.

Nope, they have a large market to harass for monies, and XP ain't going to get an extension due to it.

I've used Windows since 3.1 and I'd never purchased a copy. Since XP is headed to the end of the line; I started getting
"This isn't a genuine copy of Win7" alerts, something very new for me, This but one of a number of copies I've used,
nothing I did blocked the notices, my IP was targeted I assume.

Programs didn't open within a reasonable time, hell even within an unreasonable time. And the Internet didn't work.

Everything I checked said the Internet was fine, I questioned my new router, and any other reasonable cause. Then I got my hands
on a genuine version of Win7.

Still everything ran like $#!t and no Internet, I glanced at the validation at one point and it claimed I had 25 days left
on my trial, hell I'd never registered a version of windows before, I thought one just entered the number and that was it.

I entered the number once more, it contacted MS, and like magic my Internet worked again, a matter of seconds after being
told how a genuine copy is a good thing for everybody.

This is just one case, I figure they are making a haul due to the end of life of XP.

A note of interest: Everybody knows what an excellent piece of work Hiren's BootCD is http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd ,
version 15.2 mentions it's got a mini XP (as had previous versions), It appears this version (15.2) is main stream and with the blessing of MS.
XP is being phased out.

Actually there is a MUCH better tool friend, I'd suggest Hiren's Boot CD instead. not only does it have Dban as well as a good dozen or more HDD utilities but it has just about every tool you'd ever need from password reset to system info to testing of all major components. It really is a Swiss army knife of system tools and can be run off the CD in Windows so you can use the tools without needing to boot off the disc first. Truly a great tool to have.

If you haven't tried it Hiram's Boot CD is like a Swiss Army knife for repairmen and anybody else that needs to work on a PC and it includes DBAN as well as...hell look at the list, the better question would be "What DON'T it have?" . But I personally use the Diskwipe utility as it completely erases the drive with random ones and zeroes so when its gone its gone. pretty quick too i might add.

But you need to work on a box just boot Hiram either off CD or stick and there you go, just about every tool you could need in a single place. Enjoy and Merry Xmas!

There is a Windows tool made by... HP? that allows you to create a bootable USB drive (hp usb format tool), you could use this to boot into Hi-Ren's Boot CD (actually Hi-Ren's may have instructions on creating bootable drives themselves, apparently yes; http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd-on-usb-disk). Many image explorer programs also support creating boot sectors for USB drives. Most recent Linux distros support creating bootable USB drives. Again, I would recommend something like HiRen for fixing Windows machines.

When I hear a question like this, I usually recommend heading over to the NCIX forums. There's some crazy guy over there - death_hawk - building a 100TB array.

What I did was a bit less ambitious. A regular old NAS running off a cheap non-RAID SATA card in a case with lots of HDD bays.

For interest, I'll throw up a build that easily scales to 12TB. Since you mentioned noise, I'll prioritize that instead of capacity. I'll use a case geared for silence, a fanless mobo/cpu, a quiet PSU, WD Green HDDs, and a ridiculously cheap SATA card.

Case - 8 bays: http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=51277&vpn=6900654&manufacture=Fractal%20Design *1
Motherboard/CPU - Silent: http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=50891&vpn=AT5NM10-I&manufacture=ASUS *2
DDR2 - 1GB: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=18584&vpn=VS1GB667D2&manufacture=Corsair&promoid=1114 *3
PSU: http://ncix.com/products/?sku=33357&vpn=CMPSU-400CX&manufacture=Corsair&promoid=1114 *4
SATA Card: http://ncix.com/products/?sku=19892&vpn=SY-SA3114-4R&manufacture=Syba *5

HDD - 2TB 4KB http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=49591&vpn=WD20EARS&manufacture=Western%20Digital%20WD&promoid=1114 *6
HDD - 2TB 512b: http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=36130&vpn=WD20EADS&manufacture=Western%20Digital%20WD&promoid=1114 *7

OS: FreeNAS, Ubuntu, Win7, Other *8

*1 Only six will be filled. 6 SATA ports.
*2 Case still requires fans/airflow.
*3 A NAS probably only needs 512MB, but 1GB is cheap. A Win7 NAS may benefit from 2GB.
*4 Must be capable of spinning up 6-8 HDDs at once.
*5 Must be flashed with new non-RAID BIOS to avoid silent data corruption for > 1.0TB HDDs; disk read/write speeds around 30MB/sec, in my experience, on ext2. (but running with a VIA CPU - not dual-core Atom)
*6 Must be specially formatted under Windows and Linux. (Most distros only support 4KB sectors when the drive reports 4KB - these report 512b to maintain XP compatibility)
*7 May have longevity issues. (too early to say right now - lots of complainers, which reminds me of the 7200.10 days. A heck of a lot of those chirping barracudas perished early)
*8 Please verify SATA card support first. Ubuntu and FreeNAS work fine with this card, but I've never checked if Win7 has drivers. Do note that you'll have to flash it. *9 If that's a problem, buy a more expensive card. (which may give better performance, and SATA2 support) Promise makes nice non-RAID SATA cards.

*9 Flashing the PCI SATA card requires making a DOS boot CD: http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootablecd

Please note: A solution like this will take 12+ hours to set up. It's highly likely you'll blow a whole weekend, even if you know what you're doing. You may have to try multiple distros to get proper Atom D510 support, unless you go with Windows. When I put mine together, atoms weren't available affordably, so I went with a cheap VIA board. Ironically, Ubu

You can use floppy emulation on CD. I have one DVD that I use to flash BIOS's for plenty of different motherboards. Interestingly, it seems to get around the floppy size limit, too. I've got well over 6MB of stuff on that one DVD.

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootablecd

Most slashdot readers would be able to decipher these instructions. This is the easiest method I've found - and because it generates the iso, you can burn it with a free tool like ImgBurn.

Hiren Boot cd 10.0. Has lots of hardware testing programs that you can boot to and run. http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd. I use it often.

Hiren's BootCD contains a bunch of different utilities for doing just this. Plus it's bootable, so if you can't get into the OS you can still use the CD. It can do just about anything you'd need to in order to diagnose and repair a machine. You just gotta find it (usually the pirate bay or other torrent sites are a good place to look.)

yeah, nuking the bios from a cd is ridiculously easy. It's actually a feature that people can do so. Hirens boot CD comes with very simple methods for that.

I bet someone will just make an app that unlocks the laptop and wipes the firmware for them so that the laptops can have actual use.