Spinrite will also read a track multiple times, until it's sure it has a clean version, and then rewrite the entire track all at once; it will do this as a refresh process on a working drive so that all your tracks are fresh and cleanly laid out, and this sounds like snakeoil -- and Steve Gibson, the author is a *very* polarizing personality; you either think he is the Second Coming or the worst possible form of snake oil salesman -- but I have had exceptional luck with Spinrite.
It simply will not give up until it gets a clean read: I once had it take a *week* to get a clean refresh of an ST-512 (yes, 10MB) on a Tandy 1200.
I borrowed a UPS, cause I knew it was going to take longer to finish than my utility's MTBF. It did. It got every single byte... and we copied it to a 40MB and threw the old one in the trash.
I haven't seen anyone point that out: a recovered disk is trash, don't try to return it to service, regardless the failure mode.
I have done board swaps to recover data back to the 170MB SCSI half-height 5.25 days.
It is generally much easier on SCSI and corporate drives, since they don't rev the boards as frequently.
If you're buying a whole bunch of identical drives for a project, buy and bag a few spares for precisely this purpose, and mark them as such.
There's actually a guy in New Jersey somewhere, can't find his name anymore, who has a warehouse full of drives for precisely this purpose, and will let you *fax him a xerox of the drive board*, and walk his warehouse looking for your drive, and then sell it to you, for 3 or 4 times retail. Saved my ass a couple times...
Indeed. I had a client who had a 200GB IDE drive get scribbled on, probably by a dying cable. It whacked the partition table, the FAT and the root directory of the lower partition, and for some reason, there wasn't a backup FAT.
GDB found both partitions, rebuilt the table, FAT, and the lower root, and let me copy everything off.
It's slow (I think each 100GB partition scan took about 11 hours), but aside from making me rename the directories in the root -- another great argument for not putting stuff in the root -- it worked fine.
"XWindows" is explicitly deprecated in all the documentation, presumably to make Microsoft happy, though I don't think anyone ever admitted to it in public.
Well, thank ghod we're on the ball. If a Godwin's Law citation had *not* been the first post, I'd have been bulk ordering thermometers from Braun to take Slashdot's temperature...
It's interesting this topic should come up this afternoont -- and annoying that you hit the solution I could not find.
I just this morning wrote a piece for RISKS about SSNs and why they make bad authenticators, and why that leads directly to identify theft.
The hole was "how do you authenticate yourself to vendors as the person a credit record belongs to if *not* by either an SSN or a "real" National ID Card #... and some system involving notaries is probably it.
Maybe PKI and short hex signatures...
but the notaries are the linchpin, and I missed it. Thanks.
Interesting that the checklists don't match, isn't it? Does that say more about the problem... or the people (excuse me, this is slashdot: "guys") filling in the checklists?
No, the *actual* lesson -- and I'm having exactly this same discussion this week in the comments at This Is True, oddly -- that *SPINNING MAGNETIC STORAGE IS NOT A "BACKUP"*.
If a processor can reach it, it's not a backup.
If the same fire can consume both the computer and the "backup", it's not a backup.
DLT or LTO magtape, and move it out of the building, folks.
I used to be even just the least little bit more generous on this, but given the prices on used DLT-4 drives, not anymore. If you're not backing up on tape at least half an inch wide, you're not backing up, and quit lying to yourself.
It sucks to be That Guy... but perhaps he'll save hundreds of other sites in his catastrophe...
Maybe I'm an oddball, but I use FBreader on an n800.
Sure, getting *legal* books in TXT or HTML format is troublesome, but since, in general, I'm downloading books I've already bought new (or even used/remainder), then I've made my financial contribution, and I feel no moral qu...hey! Put down that truncheo%^&*()
I read this article as "we're going to provide you with a means to make your computer throttle back as far as possible without getting in your way, and you can decide what to do with it".
Slashdot Mirror
Spinrite will also read a track multiple times, until it's sure it has a clean version, and then rewrite the entire track all at once; it will do this as a refresh process on a working drive so that all your tracks are fresh and cleanly laid out, and this sounds like snakeoil -- and Steve Gibson, the author is a *very* polarizing personality; you either think he is the Second Coming or the worst possible form of snake oil salesman -- but I have had exceptional luck with Spinrite.
It simply will not give up until it gets a clean read: I once had it take a *week* to get a clean refresh of an ST-512 (yes, 10MB) on a Tandy 1200.
I borrowed a UPS, cause I knew it was going to take longer to finish than my utility's MTBF. It did. It got every single byte... and we copied it to a 40MB and threw the old one in the trash.
I haven't seen anyone point that out: a recovered disk is trash, don't try to return it to service, regardless the failure mode.
I have done board swaps to recover data back to the 170MB SCSI half-height 5.25 days.
It is generally much easier on SCSI and corporate drives, since they don't rev the boards as frequently.
If you're buying a whole bunch of identical drives for a project, buy and bag a few spares for precisely this purpose, and mark them as such.
There's actually a guy in New Jersey somewhere, can't find his name anymore, who has a warehouse full of drives for precisely this purpose, and will let you *fax him a xerox of the drive board*, and walk his warehouse looking for your drive, and then sell it to you, for 3 or 4 times retail. Saved my ass a couple times...
Indeed. I had a client who had a 200GB IDE drive get scribbled on, probably by a dying cable. It whacked the partition table, the FAT and the root directory of the lower partition, and for some reason, there wasn't a backup FAT.
GDB found both partitions, rebuilt the table, FAT, and the lower root, and let me copy everything off.
It's slow (I think each 100GB partition scan took about 11 hours), but aside from making me rename the directories in the root -- another great argument for not putting stuff in the root -- it worked fine.
They sound a fair amount like what I understand OpenVZ to be about as well; does the comparison hold there, too?
"The X Window System".
"XWindows" is explicitly deprecated in all the documentation, presumably to make Microsoft happy, though I don't think anyone ever admitted to it in public.
Funny goes to 6. Who knew?
Well, thank ghod we're on the ball. If a Godwin's Law citation had *not* been the first post, I'd have been bulk ordering thermometers from Braun to take Slashdot's temperature...
If anyone has any Model M's they hate and want to get rid of, I'll pay shipping. :-)
I have 4 at the moment, but spares and gifts are always useful...
It's interesting this topic should come up this afternoont -- and annoying that you hit the solution I could not find.
I just this morning wrote a piece for RISKS about SSNs and why they make bad authenticators, and why that leads directly to identify theft.
The hole was "how do you authenticate yourself to vendors as the person a credit record belongs to if *not* by either an SSN or a "real" National ID Card #... and some system involving notaries is probably it.
Maybe PKI and short hex signatures...
but the notaries are the linchpin, and I missed it. Thanks.
"You can be a cop or a soldier, not both"
Don't send police to do the military's job, then?
Interesting that the checklists don't match, isn't it? Does that say more about the problem... or the people (excuse me, this is slashdot: "guys") filling in the checklists?
I'd forgotten about this form letter; thanks. I needed a laugh on a Friday afternoon...
Phoenix means you never had to say you're sorry.
Does Bacula in fact now allow you to hierarch back on to tape? I was hoping for that, but the latest doco didn't seem definitive.
No, the *actual* lesson -- and I'm having exactly this same discussion this week in the comments at This Is True, oddly -- that *SPINNING MAGNETIC STORAGE IS NOT A "BACKUP"*.
If a processor can reach it, it's not a backup.
If the same fire can consume both the computer and the "backup", it's not a backup.
DLT or LTO magtape, and move it out of the building, folks.
I used to be even just the least little bit more generous on this, but given the prices on used DLT-4 drives, not anymore. If you're not backing up on tape at least half an inch wide, you're not backing up, and quit lying to yourself.
It sucks to be That Guy... but perhaps he'll save hundreds of other sites in his catastrophe...
> the memento flag:
> you can only read the chapters once and in reverse order only.
Well... that will make reading Imzadi quite a bit easier...
Hee.
Maybe I'm an oddball, but I use FBreader on an n800.
Sure, getting *legal* books in TXT or HTML format is troublesome, but since, in general, I'm downloading books I've already bought new (or even used/remainder), then I've made my financial contribution, and I feel no moral qu...hey! Put down that truncheo%^&*()
[The connection was reset while loading the page]
"Reflections on Trusting Trust."
Damn, yours is even lower than mine. :-)
(And, please, nobody chime in with "that's what she said"...)
And more to the point: if I purchase a *used book*, none of the parties involved get any (more) money -- they got paid the first time.
But they'd certainly *like* to stomp out that "revenue leak", and eviscerate the First Sale Doctrine, as noted above...
I read this article as "we're going to provide you with a means to make your computer throttle back as far as possible without getting in your way, and you can decide what to do with it".
Are slashdotters really this paranoid these days?
Turbos, buddie!!
I would love to mod this as insightful, but everyone else already did.
Is there a "most insightful comment on /. this year" mod?
I believe the observation you were looking for was "a lot of alliteration from anxious authors placed in powerful posts."
Or am I the only one left who remembers Broadcast News?
(No, I have no idea why I thought each of those sentences needed it's own graf...)