Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On Monday 15 November 2010 18:07:27 Alan McKinnon wrote: Apparently, though unproven, at 17:10 on Monday 15 November 2010, J. Roeleveld did opine thusly: snipped How is this different from: 1) take a backup 2) check for bad sectors (badblocks) 3) restore backup This is also less risky as the data is backed up somewhere safe spinrite claims to make the head do other things than what the drive firmware makes it do. Meaning that spinrite can extract data that the drive itself in normal conditions cannot. This reasoning is sound. True, provided it actually knows HOW to override the firmware on all drives currently in use... Remember that a drive is an analogue device, not a digital one (only the *output data* is digital). Ofcourse, but is the head actually sensitive enough to be able to cooperate with this? Professional data recovery companies actually take out the platters and use their own drive-heads to get the data out. There is some doubt as to whether spinrite can even function in this wise with modern drives though. Yes, and that's exactly my point. Something that overrides the drives firmware can, in my view, easily brick the drive. -- Joost
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On Tuesday 16 November 2010 03:33:19 Dale wrote: Adam Carter wrote: One post mentioned that this needs to be reinstalled, I AGREE. Re installation may be *correct*, but sometimes its impractical. I would 1. Pull the drive, and connect it to another fully patched, fully security updated windows box. 2. From that box run chkdsk - full virus scan - defrag 3. Reconnect the disk to the original box, and boot from the windows install disk and perform a repair. Use an installation disk that has been slipstreamed with the correct service pack. You should be able to find the media - just remember that OEM media is different to standard media. 4. Uninstall all the crap (check Run registry keys) That's not doable here tho. This is a Linux only house. My nieces puter is the only puter in the house with windoze on it and it is just visiting. It does have NTFS so I am sort of chicken to hook it up to my Linux box. It would be just my luck that it screwed up something. I would mount it read only to save data but scared to do any writing to it. emerge sys-fs/ntfs3g I use it to read and write from/to NTFS drives without problems. The in-kernel one appears to be ok as well. I did reboot that thing. It does boot and it boots a lot faster now. It appears it was fragmented pretty badly. The error messages about software that used to pop up don't pop up when it boots now either. Maybe AVG did clean out some stuff. I'm not holding my breath but maybe it will last the kids a little while at least. It should, but just in case, take a backup of the whole drive (dd if=/dev/kidsdrive of=/backupofkidsdrive) That way you can always restore it quickly for them ;) For a Linux list, I sure am getting a lot of good ideas on windoze. O_O Linux users (especially on this list) are generally quite clued up about computers. The downside of having that knowledge is that relatives tend to come to us if they need help. At my home, the only MS Windows machine is the work laptop of my partner. For the rest, it's either Linux or Solaris :) -- Joost
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
J. Roeleveld writes: On Tuesday 16 November 2010 03:33:19 Dale wrote: That's not doable here tho. This is a Linux only house. My nieces puter is the only puter in the house with windoze on it and it is just visiting. It does have NTFS so I am sort of chicken to hook it up to my Linux box. It would be just my luck that it screwed up something. I would mount it read only to save data but scared to do any writing to it. emerge sys-fs/ntfs3g I use it to read and write from/to NTFS drives without problems. The in-kernel one appears to be ok as well. Doesn't the in-kernel one have only very basic write support? Like, modifying files only if the size stays the same? I did reboot that thing. It does boot and it boots a lot faster now. It appears it was fragmented pretty badly. The error messages about software that used to pop up don't pop up when it boots now either. Maybe AVG did clean out some stuff. I'm not holding my breath but maybe it will last the kids a little while at least. It should, but just in case, take a backup of the whole drive (dd if=/dev/kidsdrive of=/backupofkidsdrive) That way you can always restore it quickly for them ;) There is also the ntfsclone command in sys-fs/ntfsprogs. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
J. Roeleveld writes: On Tuesday 16 November 2010 03:33:19 Dale wrote: That's not doable here tho. This is a Linux only house. My nieces puter is the only puter in the house with windoze on it and it is just visiting. It does have NTFS so I am sort of chicken to hook it up to my Linux box. It would be just my luck that it screwed up something. I would mount it read only to save data but scared to do any writing to it. emerge sys-fs/ntfs3g I use it to read and write from/to NTFS drives without problems. The in-kernel one appears to be ok as well. Doesn't the in-kernel one have only very basic write support? Like, modifying files only if the size stays the same? I did reboot that thing. It does boot and it boots a lot faster now. It appears it was fragmented pretty badly. The error messages about software that used to pop up don't pop up when it boots now either. Maybe AVG did clean out some stuff. I'm not holding my breath but maybe it will last the kids a little while at least. It should, but just in case, take a backup of the whole drive (dd if=/dev/kidsdrive of=/backupofkidsdrive) That way you can always restore it quickly for them ;) There is also the ntfsclone command in sys-fs/ntfsprogs. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On Tuesday 16 November 2010 10:53:28 Alex Schuster wrote: J. Roeleveld writes: On Tuesday 16 November 2010 03:33:19 Dale wrote: That's not doable here tho. This is a Linux only house. My nieces puter is the only puter in the house with windoze on it and it is just visiting. It does have NTFS so I am sort of chicken to hook it up to my Linux box. It would be just my luck that it screwed up something. I would mount it read only to save data but scared to do any writing to it. emerge sys-fs/ntfs3g I use it to read and write from/to NTFS drives without problems. The in-kernel one appears to be ok as well. Doesn't the in-kernel one have only very basic write support? Like, modifying files only if the size stays the same? Not sure, I'm running current kernels (2.6.30+) and have on occasion accidentally used the ink-kernel one and then copied file around. I didn't loose any data with that. but I agree, ntfs-3g seems to be the more reliable one for this. I did reboot that thing. It does boot and it boots a lot faster now. It appears it was fragmented pretty badly. The error messages about software that used to pop up don't pop up when it boots now either. Maybe AVG did clean out some stuff. I'm not holding my breath but maybe it will last the kids a little while at least. It should, but just in case, take a backup of the whole drive (dd if=/dev/kidsdrive of=/backupofkidsdrive) That way you can always restore it quickly for them ;) There is also the ntfsclone command in sys-fs/ntfsprogs. True, except that I was thinking of backup up the whole drive, including the boot-sector. It's a bigger backup, but I have never had a stable system after just restoring the filesystem for a MS Windows system. Not sure if this has improved with current systems, but last time I tried it, it didn't work. -- Joost
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On 15/11/2010, at 3:56am, Dale wrote: ... I have a niece that brought me her puter. It's a HP with windoze XP on it. I want to defrag the hard drive but the one that comes with windoze won't work. Is there a free defrag tool that is safe on windoze? I would be more concerned why defrag itself (Start Run `dfrg.msc`) isn't working. If it's refusing because there's filesystem corruption, then I would advise against using anything else! You need to be logged in as an administrator in order to run defrag. If you boot XP to safe mode then a user named Administrator will be shown amongst the logon icons, and that user has no password. Running defrag,exe at the command-line (Start Run `cmd`; `defrag,exe /?`) might give an explanation. Running `chkdsk /?`, choosing the most aggressive options and then `chkdsk c:` will cause the disk to be checked for corruption (`fsck` equivalent) at the next reboot. Obviously you should take a backup before doing this, as occasionally filesystem corruption will be *really* bad. Ideally you will disable swap / pagefile before defragmenting and enable it again afterwards. You can boot from a PE boot CD and run defrag from that, but it doesn't really seem necessary. Also check that compress files and folders is disabled http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307987. You're best to apply it to the whole drive (actually tick the box saying you DO want to compress files and folders), but when the dialog box comes up saying shall I apply that to all sub-directories tell it no. Then go back to checkbox again, disable it, then when the dialog box comes up tell it yes. That will crunch away for some time ensuring that compression is not being used at all. Because Windows XP launched a decade ago, when disks were much smaller, the option to compress files and folders is recommended in the Disk Cleanup Wizard, so this option may be set incorrectly, and it is worth checking. Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Stroller wrote: On 15/11/2010, at 3:56am, Dale wrote: ... I have a niece that brought me her puter. It's a HP with windoze XP on it. I want to defrag the hard drive but the one that comes with windoze won't work. Is there a free defrag tool that is safe on windoze? I would be more concerned why defrag itself (Start Run `dfrg.msc`) isn't working. If it's refusing because there's filesystem corruption, then I would advise against using anything else! You need to be logged in as an administrator in order to run defrag. If you boot XP to safe mode then a user named Administrator will be shown amongst the logon icons, and that user has no password. Running defrag,exe at the command-line (Start Run `cmd`; `defrag,exe /?`) might give an explanation. Running `chkdsk /?`, choosing the most aggressive options and then `chkdsk c:` will cause the disk to be checked for corruption (`fsck` equivalent) at the next reboot. Obviously you should take a backup before doing this, as occasionally filesystem corruption will be *really* bad. Ideally you will disable swap / pagefile before defragmenting and enable it again afterwards. You can boot from a PE boot CD and run defrag from that, but it doesn't really seem necessary. Also check that compress files and folders is disabledhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/307987. You're best to apply it to the whole drive (actually tick the box saying you DO want to compress files and folders), but when the dialog box comes up saying shall I apply that to all sub-directories tell it no. Then go back to checkbox again, disable it, then when the dialog box comes up tell it yes. That will crunch away for some time ensuring that compression is not being used at all. Because Windows XP launched a decade ago, when disks were much smaller, the option to compress files and folders is recommended in the Disk Cleanup Wizard, so this option may be set incorrectly, and it is worth checking. Stroller. I am thinking like you on the reason it is not working. It was brought to me because it was not running as fast as it used to. First thing I noticed was that AVG hasn't been updated in about 2 YEARS. I installed the newest AVG and it found hundreds of infections and said it fixed them. I never was a big believer in fixing a infection. Anyway, I got that updated and got it to scan until nothing was found. While doing that, I noticed the drive was really doing some serious searching while booting and such. It is also pretty slow to boot. The poor drive light stays on about all the time and you can hear the heads going back and forth. I wanted to run defrag just to see if it would help. I figure if AVG hasn't been updated in that long, I doubt they ran defrag either, not to mention it doesn't work. I couldn't get Defraggler to work either. Different error and I even tried a older version that wasn't beta with the same results. I then found mydefrag and gave it a try. So far, it is working on it and it seems to be doing something at least. The window makes it look like it was fragmented really bad. It looks like something that would come out of a blender after hitting frappé. If this completes, I'm going to let them try it to see if it is any better. If it is still not to their liking, they will just have to get a windoze CD and I'll reinstall from scratch. That should help. In case you can't tell, I don't claim to know a lot about windoze. People in my family just like me to work on their puters. I worked on puters until windoze 3.1 came out. I changed careers. I got tired of that pretty quick. I just thought DOS was bad. lol Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On Monday 15 November 2010 10:32:00 Dale wrote: Stroller wrote: On 15/11/2010, at 3:56am, Dale wrote: ... snipped I am thinking like you on the reason it is not working. It was brought to me because it was not running as fast as it used to. First thing I noticed was that AVG hasn't been updated in about 2 YEARS. I installed the newest AVG and it found hundreds of infections and said it fixed them. I never was a big believer in fixing a infection. Anyway, I got that updated and got it to scan until nothing was found. Great, a MS Windows PC that hasn't been maintained in 2+ years... If there are hundreds of infections, I'd scrap the install, but then you do need the install-media for the OS and software they use. Some of them might simply be cookies, btw. I've seen virus scanners delete all the cookies just because they might be wrong. While doing that, I noticed the drive was really doing some serious searching while booting and such. It is also pretty slow to boot. The poor drive light stays on about all the time and you can hear the heads going back and forth. I wanted to run defrag just to see if it would help. I figure if AVG hasn't been updated in that long, I doubt they ran defrag either, not to mention it doesn't work. Sounds like a good guess, however, I told my parents how to do basic maintenance on their computer (including defrag), but it will still slow down over time. No idea why, but I'd check the installed programs list and uninstall anything they do NOT use. I couldn't get Defraggler to work either. Different error and I even tried a older version that wasn't beta with the same results. I then found mydefrag and gave it a try. So far, it is working on it and it seems to be doing something at least. The window makes it look like it was fragmented really bad. It looks like something that would come out of a blender after hitting frappé. My guess for the error: There is insufficient diskspace to defragment this drive Solution: Copy documents over onto an external drive Then delete the copied documents from the harddrive and then run defrag. Do NOT use move with MS Windows, I've had it fail and then had to manually figure out what was and wasn't moved yet. If this completes, I'm going to let them try it to see if it is any better. If it is still not to their liking, they will just have to get a windoze CD and I'll reinstall from scratch. That should help. To be honest, I doubt it'll be much better. In the old days, Symantec had a utility that could also optimize the registry. That generally did work, but the last time I used that was with MS Windows 98. Never did see a copy for later versions. (Ok, I admit, I didn't bother to look for it) In case you can't tell, I don't claim to know a lot about windoze. People in my family just like me to work on their puters. I worked on puters until windoze 3.1 came out. I changed careers. I got tired of that pretty quick. I just thought DOS was bad. lol I swtiched completely over to Linux in 1998 for personal use. Only use MS Windows when I have no choice (eg. using MS Windows only software/applications for work). I did the switch after MS Windows crashed and stole my email and documents one time too many. -- Joost
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On Monday 15 November 2010 09:46:38 J. Roeleveld wrote: I ... only use MS Windows when I have no choice (eg. using MS Windows only software/applications for work). The one use I have for it nowadays is to run IE to check how it displays my website. I found (was told of) a utility that emulates any or all versions of IE, so I can see what almost any visitor will see. That's why I haven't evicted it from my laptop yet. -- Rgds Peter. Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23.
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On Monday 15 November 2010 12:01:49 Peter Humphrey wrote: On Monday 15 November 2010 09:46:38 J. Roeleveld wrote: I ... only use MS Windows when I have no choice (eg. using MS Windows only software/applications for work). The one use I have for it nowadays is to run IE to check how it displays my website. I found (was told of) a utility that emulates any or all versions of IE, so I can see what almost any visitor will see. That's why I haven't evicted it from my laptop yet. Doesn't that utility run under Wine? :) I tend not to bother with other browsers, the few web sites I have are mainly for private use and the few visitors I get are me and my family :) They know better then to complain it doesn't work with IE. My standard reply is: use a decent browser ;) -- Joost PS. it helps if the userbase will actually listen ;)
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On 15 November 2010 09:46, J. Roeleveld jo...@antarean.org wrote: My guess for the error: There is insufficient diskspace to defragment this drive Solution: Copy documents over onto an external drive Then delete the copied documents from the harddrive and then run defrag. It would be easier to suggest solutions if we knew what the *exact* error was when trying to run defrag.exe Insufficient disk space is often caused by a corrupt page file, which on a MSWindows machine is typically on the same partition as the OS. The solution would be to: a) Boot into safe mode (pressing F8) then disable System Restore: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial56.html b) Disable page file and reboot. Then enable it again and reboot. c) Move/delete a load of the MSWindows updates uninstall files from the C:\WINDOWS directory; first google for something like this to find out what you can mv/zip/delete and what not: http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Hotfix_backup.htm c) Clean all *.tmp files, and empty directories: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/maintenance/ht/manualtempxp.htm d) Delete all Internet files from Internet Explorer. e) Install MS Security Essentials and give it a full scan. f) Then run defrag.exe. g) Reboot, then use MyDefrag to defrag the drive, using the System - Monthly defrag pattern. Precautions that would pay dividends in the longevity of your niece's WinXP would be to: Shrink the MSWindows OS partition (using gparted LiveCD) to something like 25-30G and create one more large partition. Move all personal data there and change the paths of all MSWindows applications to save their docs in the new partition instead of MyDocuments, et al. Create a new page file into the new partition and remove the old page file. When you boot into Safe Mode set up a passwd for the administrator account and change your niece's privileges to plain user. Teach her how to use the admin account to manage her MSWindows Updates and install remove programs. Viruses will not be able to install when she goes wild on the Internet without her running them as administrator. HTH. PS. Personally, I would create yet one more partition, install Ubuntu for her and give her a 10 minute induction course on using Linux ... then come back in 3 months and uninstall WinXP all together ;-) -- Regards, Mick
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
You might want to run spinrite on the drive if you have/can find a copy of it. On Nov 15, 2010 4:33 AM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Stroller wrote: On 15/11/2010, at 3:56am, Dale wrote: ... I have a niece that brought me her puter. It's a HP with windoze XP on it. I want to defrag the hard drive but the one that comes with windoze won't work. Is there a free defrag tool that is safe on windoze? I would be more concerned why defrag itself (Start Run `dfrg.msc`) isn't working. If it's refusing because there's filesystem corruption, then I would advise against using anything else! You need to be logged in as an administrator in order to run defrag. If you boot XP to safe mode then a user named Administrator will be shown amongst the logon icons, and that user has no password. Running defrag,exe at the command-line (Start Run `cmd`; `defrag,exe /?`) might give an explanation. Running `chkdsk /?`, choosing the most aggressive options and then `chkdsk c:` will cause the disk to be checked for corruption (`fsck` equivalent) at the next reboot. Obviously you should take a backup before doing this, as occasionally filesystem corruption will be *really* bad. Ideally you will disable swap / pagefile before defragmenting and enable it again afterwards. You can boot from a PE boot CD and run defrag from that, but it doesn't really seem necessary. Also check that compress files and folders is disabled http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307987. You're best to apply it to the whole drive (actually tick the box saying you DO want to compress files and folders), but when the dialog box comes up saying shall I apply that to all sub-directories tell it no. Then go back to checkbox again, disable it, then when the dialog box comes up tell it yes. That will crunch away for some time ensuring that compression is not being used at all. Because Windows XP launched a decade ago, when disks were much smaller, the option to compress files and folders is recommended in the Disk Cleanup Wizard, so this option may be set incorrectly, and it is worth checking. Stroller. I am thinking like you on the reason it is not working. It was brought to me because it was not running as fast as it used to. First thing I noticed was that AVG hasn't been updated in about 2 YEARS. I installed the newest AVG and it found hundreds of infections and said it fixed them. I never was a big believer in fixing a infection. Anyway, I got that updated and got it to scan until nothing was found. While doing that, I noticed the drive was really doing some serious searching while booting and such. It is also pretty slow to boot. The poor drive light stays on about all the time and you can hear the heads going back and forth. I wanted to run defrag just to see if it would help. I figure if AVG hasn't been updated in that long, I doubt they ran defrag either, not to mention it doesn't work. I couldn't get Defraggler to work either. Different error and I even tried a older version that wasn't beta with the same results. I then found mydefrag and gave it a try. So far, it is working on it and it seems to be doing something at least. The window makes it look like it was fragmented really bad. It looks like something that would come out of a blender after hitting frappé. If this completes, I'm going to let them try it to see if it is any better. If it is still not to their liking, they will just have to get a windoze CD and I'll reinstall from scratch. That should help. In case you can't tell, I don't claim to know a lot about windoze. People in my family just like me to work on their puters. I worked on puters until windoze 3.1 came out. I changed careers. I got tired of that pretty quick. I just thought DOS was bad. lol Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On 15 November 2010 13:13, Jacob Todd jaketodd...@gmail.com wrote: You might want to run spinrite on the drive if you have/can find a copy of it. Why? -- Regards, Mick
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Sounds like something is wrong with te drive, and spinrite.can probably fix it. On Nov 15, 2010 9:16 AM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 November 2010 13:13, Jacob Todd jaketodd...@gmail.com wrote: You might want to run spinrite on the drive if you have/can find a copy of it. Why? -- Regards, Mick
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On Monday 15 November 2010 15:50:37 Jacob Todd wrote: Sounds like something is wrong with te drive, and spinrite.can probably fix it. I don't see what Spinrite can do to help with defragging a harddrive for MS Windows? I like the bit where it explains how it prevents a disk crash: It first reads the data out of a region, then exercises that region with patterns of data that SpinRite has determined are the most difficult for the drive to read and write. In this way, any weak and failing areas within the region are located and removed from use while none of the drive's original data is being stored there. Only after the region has been made absolutely safe, will the drive's original data be restored to that area. (quoted from the website for Spinrite: http://www.grc.com/sroverview.htm ) supposedly this is unique (Just hope the system doesn't freeze up or the power goes while it's doing this) How is this different from: 1) take a backup 2) check for bad sectors (badblocks) 3) restore backup This is also less risky as the data is backed up somewhere safe -- Joost On Nov 15, 2010 9:16 AM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 November 2010 13:13, Jacob Todd jaketodd...@gmail.com wrote: You might want to run spinrite on the drive if you have/can find a copy of it. Why? -- Regards, Mick
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
- Original Message From: Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com I have a niece that brought me her puter. It's a HP with windoze XP on it. I want to defrag the hard drive but the one that comes with windoze won't work. Is there a free defrag tool that is safe on windoze? I ask because I don't want to install something and not know what I am installing. You know, some program with a nasty virus attached or something. I did Google and found a lot of tools but I'm not sure which one to trust. If someone here has used one before and trusts the one they used, I would be happy to hear about it. Well, the build-in version of the Defrag program is a really a shill. But that's mostly b/c Microsoft is licensing a stripped down version of a really good piece of software called Disk Keeper (http://www.diskeeper.com/). While it's not free, open source, etc. the price is worth it to keep a Windows system in check and running smoothly. Ben
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On 15 November 2010 14:50, Jacob Todd jaketodd...@gmail.com wrote: Sounds like something is wrong with te drive, and spinrite.can probably fix it. If the drive had badblocks it would probably launch chkdsk or bring up similar errors about a corrupt fs. As I said, without a clear and succinct error message we're stabbing in the dark as to what problem Dale's niece has with her PC ... -- Regards, Mick
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Am 15.11.2010 04:56, schrieb Dale: Hi, I have a niece that brought me her puter. It's a HP with windoze XP on it. I want to defrag the hard drive but the one that comes with windoze won't work. Is there a free defrag tool that is safe on windoze? I ask because I don't want to install something and not know what I am installing. You know, some program with a nasty virus attached or something. I did Google and found a lot of tools but I'm not sure which one to trust. If someone here has used one before and trusts the one they used, I would be happy to hear about it. Thanks. Dale :-) :-) Try jkdefrag [1] or its modern successor mydefrag [2]. I've worked with jkdefrag for some time. I don't know mydefrag, though. It's LGPL licensed. The GUI is a bit ugly but it has a lot of functionality and can handle cases in which the Windows defragger doesn't work. That mostly happens when the disk is nearly full. AFAIK all free and commercial defraggers use the same API that the Windows defragger provides, they just do their job more intelligent. [1] http://kessels.com/jkdefrag/ [2] http://www.mydefrag.com/ Hope this helps, Florian Philipp signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Apparently, though unproven, at 17:10 on Monday 15 November 2010, J. Roeleveld did opine thusly: On Monday 15 November 2010 15:50:37 Jacob Todd wrote: Sounds like something is wrong with te drive, and spinrite.can probably fix it. I don't see what Spinrite can do to help with defragging a harddrive for MS Windows? I like the bit where it explains how it prevents a disk crash: It first reads the data out of a region, then exercises that region with patterns of data that SpinRite has determined are the most difficult for the drive to read and write. In this way, any weak and failing areas within the region are located and removed from use while none of the drive's original data is being stored there. Only after the region has been made absolutely safe, will the drive's original data be restored to that area. (quoted from the website for Spinrite: http://www.grc.com/sroverview.htm ) supposedly this is unique (Just hope the system doesn't freeze up or the power goes while it's doing this) How is this different from: 1) take a backup 2) check for bad sectors (badblocks) 3) restore backup This is also less risky as the data is backed up somewhere safe spinrite claims to make the head do other things than what the drive firmware makes it do. Meaning that spinrite can extract data that the drive itself in normal conditions cannot. This reasoning is sound. Remember that a drive is an analogue device, not a digital one (only the *output data* is digital). There is some doubt as to whether spinrite can even function in this wise with modern drives though. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On 11/15/2010 11:05 AM, Florian Philipp wrote: It's LGPL licensed. The GUI is a bit ugly but it has a lot of functionality and can handle cases in which the Windows defragger doesn't work. That mostly happens when the disk is nearly full. Since we're *way* off topic as it is: mydefrag isn't LGPL, just freeware, but I did notice this on the jkdefrag site: The executables are released under the GNU General Public License, and the sources are released under the GNU Lesser General Public License. Is that even possible? --Mike
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
- Original Message From: Mike Edenfield kut...@kutulu.org On 11/15/2010 11:05 AM, Florian Philipp wrote: It's LGPL licensed. The GUI is a bit ugly but it has a lot of functionality and can handle cases in which the Windows defragger doesn't work. That mostly happens when the disk is nearly full. Since we're *way* off topic as it is: mydefrag isn't LGPL, just freeware, but I did notice this on the jkdefrag site: The executables are released under the GNU General Public License, and the sources are released under the GNU Lesser General Public License. Is that even possible? I doubt it, but you'd have to ask FSF to know for sure. (IANAL) Ben
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Apparently, though unproven, at 19:43 on Monday 15 November 2010, Mike Edenfield did opine thusly: On 11/15/2010 11:05 AM, Florian Philipp wrote: It's LGPL licensed. The GUI is a bit ugly but it has a lot of functionality and can handle cases in which the Windows defragger doesn't work. That mostly happens when the disk is nearly full. Since we're *way* off topic as it is: mydefrag isn't LGPL, just freeware, but I did notice this on the jkdefrag site: The executables are released under the GNU General Public License, and the sources are released under the GNU Lesser General Public License. Is that even possible? It's possible, as someone did it ... :-) It's not valid though, and it's nonsensical. If they give you binaries per GPL, then they must make the sources available. They already make the sources available per LGPL, so now they are dual-licensed. If you choose to accept them under GPL, then you may only compile and redistribute them under GPL. If you choose to accept them under LGPL, compile them and redistribute them, then other non-GPL software can link to them per the terms of the LGPL. So which is it? GPL? LGPL? Both? Sounds like someone on that project has a gigantic misunderstanding on how the licenses work. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Alan McKinnon wrote: Apparently, though unproven, at 19:43 on Monday 15 November 2010, Mike Edenfield did opine thusly: On 11/15/2010 11:05 AM, Florian Philipp wrote: It's LGPL licensed. The GUI is a bit ugly but it has a lot of functionality and can handle cases in which the Windows defragger doesn't work. That mostly happens when the disk is nearly full. Since we're *way* off topic as it is: mydefrag isn't LGPL, just freeware, but I did notice this on the jkdefrag site: The executables are released under the GNU General Public License, and the sources are released under the GNU Lesser General Public License. Is that even possible? It's possible, as someone did it ... :-) It's not valid though, and it's nonsensical. If they give you binaries per GPL, then they must make the sources available. They already make the sources available per LGPL, so now they are dual-licensed. If you choose to accept them under GPL, then you may only compile and redistribute them under GPL. If you choose to accept them under LGPL, compile them and redistribute them, then other non-GPL software can link to them per the terms of the LGPL. So which is it? GPL? LGPL? Both? Sounds like someone on that project has a gigantic misunderstanding on how the licenses work. OK. I took a nap and it seems everyone on the list wanted to chime in. lol This is one reason I posted here. I knew I would get at least a few replies. Just picking one to reply to so not pointing at Alan here. First, the drive is not full. It has about 30% or so left. I think the virus broke something and I don't have the OS media to reinstall. If I had my way, that puter would have Linux and a root password that only I know. Second, it has not been kept up to date for sure. They are little kids, oldest is getting about old enough to understand how to maintain things tho. Third, I'm not going to go to to much trouble with this thing and trying to get it back to shiny new. If it doesn't work to their liking, I'll tell them to get a CD/DVD with the install on it or I can put Linux on it for free. Let them decide. One post mentioned that this needs to be reinstalled, I AGREE. If I had the CD/DVD to install from, I would do just that. Heck, I would have done that right after I saw AVG being so out of date. I wouldn't have even turned the thing off. I would have put in the CD, pulled the plug and booted the CD and reinstalled. The program mydefragger seemed to work pretty well. It is done and I am running it again just to be sure. I'll see if it reboots any faster now. That should tell me if it helped any at all. I don't think it could hurt for sure. Thanks for the replies. Going to download one of those defraggers that someone mentioned and save it for a rainy day. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Apparently, though unproven, at 00:01 on Tuesday 16 November 2010, Dale did opine thusly: OK. I took a nap and it seems everyone on the list wanted to chime in. lol This is one reason I posted here. I knew I would get at least a few replies. Just picking one to reply to so not pointing at Alan here. First, the drive is not full. It has about 30% or so left. I think the virus broke something and I don't have the OS media to reinstall. If I had my way, that puter would have Linux and a root password that only I know. Second, it has not been kept up to date for sure. They are little kids, oldest is getting about old enough to understand how to maintain things tho. Third, I'm not going to go to to much trouble with this thing and trying to get it back to shiny new. If it doesn't work to their liking, I'll tell them to get a CD/DVD with the install on it or I can put Linux on it for free. Let them decide. One post mentioned that this needs to be reinstalled, I AGREE. Same here. I find this approach workable: Tell them the machine needs an OS re-install. They can pick Windows - which they will pay for Linux - it's free Either way they will lose their data. Give them that choice and let them decide for themselves. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Alan McKinnon wrote: Apparently, though unproven, at 00:01 on Tuesday 16 November 2010, Dale did opine thusly: OK. I took a nap and it seems everyone on the list wanted to chime in. lol This is one reason I posted here. I knew I would get at least a few replies. Just picking one to reply to so not pointing at Alan here. First, the drive is not full. It has about 30% or so left. I think the virus broke something and I don't have the OS media to reinstall. If I had my way, that puter would have Linux and a root password that only I know. Second, it has not been kept up to date for sure. They are little kids, oldest is getting about old enough to understand how to maintain things tho. Third, I'm not going to go to to much trouble with this thing and trying to get it back to shiny new. If it doesn't work to their liking, I'll tell them to get a CD/DVD with the install on it or I can put Linux on it for free. Let them decide. One post mentioned that this needs to be reinstalled, I AGREE. Same here. I find this approach workable: Tell them the machine needs an OS re-install. They can pick Windows - which they will pay for Linux - it's free Either way they will lose their data. Give them that choice and let them decide for themselves. I'm just adding one option. Hope it works as is. They are kids. Even if windoze won't boot, I'll put the drive in my system and copy anything important over, pictures or something. Then they are left with the options you gave. Because it is kids, they don't want to buy the OS. They will break it anyway. lol Then again, if I reinstall it, they will still break it. :/ They are kids and it is still windoze. I'm going to mention putting Linux on it tho. I can install Mandriva on it pretty quick and just not give the kids the root password. They check email, play those games on facebook and that is about it. The oldest one is getting close to the age where she can start learning to upgrade too. This is like dating, time will tell. ;-) Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 3:36 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: Apparently, though unproven, at 00:01 on Tuesday 16 November 2010, Dale did opine thusly: OK. I took a nap and it seems everyone on the list wanted to chime in. lol This is one reason I posted here. I knew I would get at least a few replies. Just picking one to reply to so not pointing at Alan here. First, the drive is not full. It has about 30% or so left. I think the virus broke something and I don't have the OS media to reinstall. If I had my way, that puter would have Linux and a root password that only I know. Second, it has not been kept up to date for sure. They are little kids, oldest is getting about old enough to understand how to maintain things tho. Third, I'm not going to go to to much trouble with this thing and trying to get it back to shiny new. If it doesn't work to their liking, I'll tell them to get a CD/DVD with the install on it or I can put Linux on it for free. Let them decide. One post mentioned that this needs to be reinstalled, I AGREE. Same here. I find this approach workable: Tell them the machine needs an OS re-install. They can pick Windows - which they will pay for Linux - it's free Either way they will lose their data. Give them that choice and let them decide for themselves. I'm just adding one option. Hope it works as is. They are kids. Even if windoze won't boot, I'll put the drive in my system and copy anything important over, pictures or something. Then they are left with the options you gave. Because it is kids, they don't want to buy the OS. They will break it anyway. lol Then again, if I reinstall it, they will still break it. :/ They are kids and it is still windoze. I'm going to mention putting Linux on it tho. I can install Mandriva on it pretty quick and just not give the kids the root password. They check email, play those games on facebook and that is about it. The oldest one is getting close to the age where she can start learning to upgrade too. This is like dating, time will tell. ;-) Dale :-) :-) Dale, I spent my day working on my big Gentoo box that has a 980x processor with 6 cores/12 threads. I only mention this because I was running 3 copies of Windows (2 XP and 1 Win 7) all day long in VMWare Player. If your kids just want to run a basic Windows then consider going that direction. I ran a numerical program all day long crunching numbers in a VMWare instance with 4 threads (Win XP), traded live in the market using TradeStation on a 2 thread machine (Win XP) and ran NetFlix Instant Watch in a 3rd machine (Win 7) with a single thread. Not a hiccup anywhere. And remember, even though Windows breaks, AND IT DOES, I have backups of the 20GB VMWare disks so I can rollback 1 week in a matter of a few minutes if things go bad with Windows. The whole Windows installation is just a bunch of files. Restore that one directory and you're back in business. I play games in VMWare on Gentoo once in awhile. It's OK for me, probably not for my son looking for lots of 3D performance, etc. Also, I own and use SpinRite. If you want or need info get in touch off list. I like the program but it does have issues and it's not all that actively updated anymore. (From what I can tell...) Cheers, Mark I didn't have time to dig into my copy of SpinRite to reacquaint myself with that tool, but I've found it helpful. The problem is that for large modern drives its pretty slow as its testing features
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
One post mentioned that this needs to be reinstalled, I AGREE. Re installation may be *correct*, but sometimes its impractical. I would 1. Pull the drive, and connect it to another fully patched, fully security updated windows box. 2. From that box run chkdsk - full virus scan - defrag 3. Reconnect the disk to the original box, and boot from the windows install disk and perform a repair. Use an installation disk that has been slipstreamed with the correct service pack. You should be able to find the media - just remember that OEM media is different to standard media. 4. Uninstall all the crap (check Run registry keys)
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Adam Carter wrote: One post mentioned that this needs to be reinstalled, I AGREE. Re installation may be *correct*, but sometimes its impractical. I would 1. Pull the drive, and connect it to another fully patched, fully security updated windows box. 2. From that box run chkdsk - full virus scan - defrag 3. Reconnect the disk to the original box, and boot from the windows install disk and perform a repair. Use an installation disk that has been slipstreamed with the correct service pack. You should be able to find the media - just remember that OEM media is different to standard media. 4. Uninstall all the crap (check Run registry keys) That's not doable here tho. This is a Linux only house. My nieces puter is the only puter in the house with windoze on it and it is just visiting. It does have NTFS so I am sort of chicken to hook it up to my Linux box. It would be just my luck that it screwed up something. I would mount it read only to save data but scared to do any writing to it. I do wish I could do what I want to with it tho. It's not a bad machine. 3.2GHz CPU with a little over a Gig of ram and about a 60Gb hard drive. It would run Linux sweetly. I did reboot that thing. It does boot and it boots a lot faster now. It appears it was fragmented pretty badly. The error messages about software that used to pop up don't pop up when it boots now either. Maybe AVG did clean out some stuff. I'm not holding my breath but maybe it will last the kids a little while at least. For a Linux list, I sure am getting a lot of good ideas on windoze. O_O Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
For a Linux list, I sure am getting a lot of good ideas on windoze. O_O I'm sure there's many people on this list that have to support relatives broken PCs ^_^ For me, i have Vista (OEM, came with the laptop) running in a VMware virtual machine for iTunes (dont get me started on that POS) and Office (still cant trust OO to do a good enough job for paying customers who use MS Office).
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
On 15/11/2010, at 11:36pm, Dale wrote: ... I don't have the OS media to reinstall. Because it is kids, they don't want to buy the OS. Assuming the laptop has an OEM Windows license sticker on the underside, it is not necessary to buy a new o/s disk. Any standard Microsoft XP OEM CD [1] will install using that license key. Even if the sticker says Dell or Sony on it - you only have to match up the home or professional version. I periodically hear claims that this is not the case, but I don't believe them, as I have never encountered it myself over literally dozens of installs. Also: uninstall AVG and replace it with Microsoft Security Essentials. I know, I know - you'd think that if you don't trust Microsoft to write a secure o/s in the first place, why should you trust them to write antivirus, right? But Security Essentials is really good, and will find malware that AVG misses. AVG has been going downhill for 2 or 3 years, but has got really bad in the last year and anyone with any sense (who maintains home Windows PCs regularly) has moved to Security Essentials now. http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ Stroller. [1] E.G.: http://www.techsouq.com/images/mwxphe.jpg
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Stroller wrote: On 15/11/2010, at 11:36pm, Dale wrote: ... I don't have the OS media to reinstall. Because it is kids, they don't want to buy the OS. Assuming the laptop has an OEM Windows license sticker on the underside, it is not necessary to buy a new o/s disk. Any standard Microsoft XP OEM CD [1] will install using that license key. Even if the sticker says Dell or Sony on it - you only have to match up the home or professional version. I periodically hear claims that this is not the case, but I don't believe them, as I have never encountered it myself over literally dozens of installs. Also: uninstall AVG and replace it with Microsoft Security Essentials. I know, I know - you'd think that if you don't trust Microsoft to write a secure o/s in the first place, why should you trust them to write antivirus, right? But Security Essentials is really good, and will find malware that AVG misses. AVG has been going downhill for 2 or 3 years, but has got really bad in the last year and anyone with any sense (who maintains home Windows PCs regularly) has moved to Security Essentials now. http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ Stroller. [1] E.G.: http://www.techsouq.com/images/mwxphe.jpg I have read the same thing about the media and the code. I only had it to fail once and it was a home key but a pro media. I wasn't surprised when it didn't work. My ex bought it off ebay and when we contacted the seller, he went and found the key so we could use it. At least he was good about it. I'll check into security essentials tho. I would like something that once installed, it updates itself in the background with no input from the user. The kids don't know much about puters as far as maintaining them. I'm sure AVG told them several times that it was expired, out of date or something and they just closed the box and did nothing about it. Since it is a M$ thing, maybe it will update like the OS does and the kids never even know it happened. Thanks for the link and info. Oh, it's a desktop, not a laptop. Doesn't matter much but anyway. ;-) Dale :-) :-)
[gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Hi, I have a niece that brought me her puter. It's a HP with windoze XP on it. I want to defrag the hard drive but the one that comes with windoze won't work. Is there a free defrag tool that is safe on windoze? I ask because I don't want to install something and not know what I am installing. You know, some program with a nasty virus attached or something. I did Google and found a lot of tools but I'm not sure which one to trust. If someone here has used one before and trusts the one they used, I would be happy to hear about it. Thanks. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Defraggler. Ccleaner by the same company is also nice.
Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze
Jacob Todd wrote: Defraggler. Ccleaner by the same company is also nice. That is one I ran across with google. It appears it can run from the OS itself. Is it capable of running from within the OS it is defragging? Way back when, defraggers had to be run from either another drive or something. Back then, we boot them off floppies. lol Yea, I'm getting old. :-( Thanks. Dale :-) :-)
