SuzukiSavage.com - When a hard drive goes bad ....

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Re: When a hard drive goes bad ....
Reply #15 - 08/27/13 at 10:51:41

Oldfeller--FSO wrote on 08/27/13 at 10:16:58:

When you copy something, it is just a copy.

When you "burn an ISO image" you are laying down executable code in a fashion that makes the DVD both readable, executable and bootable.

You run the code through a program that takes the compressed input code, unpacks it, expands it and lays it down correctly complete with a boot sector and file structure.

The code you lay down is much larger than the compressed source file.

YUP.. what he said...
Two funny stories

I use to work in a library ( university) .. Stanford University came up with a neat application.. they then built that inside a unix OS...
Any library could download the ISO file and burn it to a CD ( didn't even need a DVD... then pop that ISO bootable CD into a server with some blank hard drives. The OS would boot.. right into the application. Write a small config file the HDD and then do its thing.

Two wonderful parts to this.. if the program or OS needed to be upgraded .. just replace the CD with a new ISO CD...

but the best part ( besides being easy enough for a lay librarian to do) was that it was 100% hack proof. There was no way to write anything to the CD ... no way to damage the OS... if someone did take it off line... re-boot! The data on the HDD was nothing valuable.. and the only way to get to it was through the program ( on CD) and the OS ( on the CD) .. pretty safe!

Then years later the IT department ( which had given up on UNIX) and was a WINDOWS only shop... demanded we start giving them our servers for them to move onto card based servers. Yeah the first one we gave them was the one Stanford. They spent 2 days looking at it.. scratched their head and their butt and gave up. It bought us 4 years of peace till they took over just this year.

http://www.lockss.org/

Grin

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justin_o_guy2

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Re: When a hard drive goes bad ....
Reply #16 - 08/27/13 at 22:35:15

Oldfeller--FSO wrote on 08/27/13 at 10:16:58:

When you copy something, it is just a copy.

When you "burn an ISO image" you are laying down executable code in a fashion that makes the DVD both readable, executable and bootable.

You run the code through a program that takes the compressed input code, unpacks it, expands it and lays it down correctly complete with a boot sector and file structure.

The code you lay down is much larger than the compressed source file.

AHHH! I had a CD with , IIRC, Ubuntu on it,, guy told me I could go anywhere & never get a virus, cuz my hard drive wasnt involved, the computer was using the cd as a hard drive & OS,, something bad happened to it,, bummer,,

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Re: When a hard drive goes bad ....
Reply #17 - 08/28/13 at 09:22:26

Ok, just for kicks, I have several older PC's sitting around (Pentium III's or IV's) so i'm going to experiment. I'm going to dump a whole hard drive and download Ubuntu or Linux Mint.

Are they free? what site should I go to? are all of them safe? lol, remember I'm using windows to burn the ISO so i'm hoping there are no mad Linux scientist that HATE windblows soo badly that they will toast my computer.

OF, thanks for the link, it is very informative, but i'm gonna have to find a Linux for dummies or Ubuntu for dummies site also, meanwhile i'm gonna go mad scientist on one or two PC's and maybe my little laptop! Grin

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Re: When a hard drive goes bad ....
Reply #18 - 08/28/13 at 12:18:23

Well, didn't turn out like I wanted.... I downloaded Linux Mint 15 to a 32gig flash drive, but the old computer didn't have a usb boot capability. So I commenced to burn the .iso file to a dvd and tried to install that way, didn't work, it told me my supposed 2gighz computer was only an i686 and not compatible with linux mint 15.

Soooo, I stuck the disk my old laptop and bingo! I'm using firefox in Linux Mint 15 mode! Grin

Playing around to see how to run it is a bit of a pain tho...the cdrom has to search and load alot, but its ok, I think i'll do a double check on this laptop and see if there is anything I really need and just load Mint up anyway and see whats out there with it.

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Re: When a hard drive goes bad ....
Reply #19 - 08/28/13 at 12:55:15

Ok, decided since I looked around and found I could somehow load my favorite game using "wine?" I can play it using Linux mint 15, so I've split my HD into two 56 gig sections and will load on boot, neat that it just asks that and doesn't just erase all data without your permission.

I believe I read somewhere that I can import stuff from the windows side to the Linux side and use it there also...wwhhheeeee this sounds fun! and easy! If all goes well, I might just dedicate the little laptop to go completely Linux and learn to use it like it needs to be used...I've already discovered it can read and save a document in windows format...go figure....

Ok done for now..... gonna listen to the dvd drive go ticketytick and watch the schooling on Linux .

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Re: When a hard drive goes bad ....
Reply #20 - 08/28/13 at 13:48:28

Yup, I found that Open Office can save a file in ANY format except the very latest and greatest most modern Word format (MS does that on purpose to make folks HAVE to upgrade).

In a lot of cases Open Office will figure out the new Word format quicker than MS will figure out their free translation app, so that a lot of folks habitually use Open Office as a file format translator in most big company offices.

Before long you will discover you can do just about everything in Linux and you quit having to go back & forth between Mint and Windows so much any more.

The next time MS wants to pick your pocket for an upgrade is when it will really strike home to you.

"Heck NO !!!" you sez -- and you mean really it.

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Re: When a hard drive goes bad ....
Reply #21 - 08/28/13 at 15:00:21

Got the game working with mint 15, so I am happy sooo far, now I know I could use it for gaming if I wanted to when vacationing. Now to open a few files or send myself a few files via email, that's yet another thing to setup, not a bad system all in all either, very user friendly, just gotta wrap your mind around a different perspective of use.

Can hardly believe all this is free OS stuff....makes you wonder

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Steve H

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Re: When a hard drive goes bad ....
Reply #22 - 08/28/13 at 15:39:51

I've used Linux off and on for years. I am running xp on this box and will not 'upgrade' to any of the newer stuff. If and when xp stops working, I will just install a good linux distro and be done with it.

Question for those in the know...is there a decent functioning flash out there yet? I do watch a lot of video on the computer.

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Re: When a hard drive goes bad ....
Reply #23 - 08/28/13 at 17:41:40

Which browser do you use? Flash is browser specific and there are several browsers that do a very good job with flash in Linux.

Firefox used to do a good job with flash but now it's beginning to get to the point they really don't want to use flash all if they can avoid it. Flash is not being supported well any more in Android with Linux not far behind it.

HTML 5 is slowly replacing flash ..... very slowly.

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old_rider Serious Thumper Offline Backyard Bill Productions Posts: 3147 flordia panhandle Gender:	Re: When a hard drive goes bad .... Reply #24 - 08/28/13 at 17:58:25 Video off the net or video on dvd? LM15 comes with a couple of viewers loaded already, i'll throw a dvd in and see what pops up. Firefox is doing ok with youtube vids, no break what so ever...fluid.
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old_rider Serious Thumper Offline Backyard Bill Productions Posts: 3147 flordia panhandle Gender:	Re: When a hard drive goes bad .... Reply #25 - 08/28/13 at 18:45:37 Well a Blue Ray disc don't work, but a standard dvd movie will work. Thats with the VLC player that came with Linux Mint 15. Just popped in the disc, started VLC media player and hit play, the movie started no problem, cept it was in "wide" mode didn't matter tho, was still high def.
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Oldfeller--FSO Serious Thumper ModSquad Offline Hobby is now "concentrated neuropany" Posts: 12671 Fayetteville, NC Gender:	Re: When a hard drive goes bad .... Reply #26 - 08/28/13 at 19:00:04 Sounds like he likes that there Minty freshness .... The LTS versions have more attention to detail and fine polish, because they are the flagship for the next 5 years. Wait until you see the Mint 17 .....
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Re: When a hard drive goes bad ....
Reply #27 - 08/28/13 at 20:10:36

I really liked the fact that it fit on one dvd+r disc and you could use it without loading it up on your system, just hit esc as your system boots up and tell it to boot from cd, then tell it to run in command mode. You can use it to surf and watch videos and such without worrying about loading it up, kinda kewl.

I made a back-up for our new laptops and it took 5 dvd's! and took like 3hrs to do, I downloaded LM15, burned it, stuck it in my little computer and played for an hour, then loaded it in 14 min.

When I initially reworked my little laptop, it took me 2hrs just to get it running and another hour to get the settings right..and that was with windows vista.

LM15 formatted itself and the windows drive into 2 separate partitions and loaded all in 14 minutes and it was ready to go!

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Re: When a hard drive goes bad ....
Reply #28 - 08/29/13 at 09:16:04

Well, I updated to Mint 15 MATE 64 bit as I could see they finally pulled their thumbs out of their butts over Firefox since the last LTS came out.

(Mint wouldn't use the Firefox name or icon because the French dudes were feuding with Firefox a bit over not getting paid per hit or some such nonsense).

Mate is Gnome with future tools, but not the official Gnome 3.x exactly as the Gome folks went off into the starry starry night and nobody chose to follow them into that great nebulous starry beyond except the folks at Red Hat. As a matter of fact the only Gnome developer people that are left are the ones who actually WORK at Red Hat, so Red Hat has inherited their very own personal desktop now, built the way their folks like it ..... good for them.

So you could say Gnome actually forked 3 ways, the offical "Red Hat" Gnome 3.xx, Gnome as Mate and Gnome as Cinnamon. Cinnamon is soon going to cut all ties with the official old gnome base as of the next update and become a total inhouse thing with the Mint folks. Lots of work there, but apparently Mint is popular enough to support its own desktop development team ...... good for them.

Mate is also becoming completely independent, but will still keep whatever good bits of old Gnomishness that are still considered worth while.

Mate is actually used by 3-4 distros now and it seems to be the surviving as an independent open source project "child of Gnome" that will actually go forward into the future as an old style open source project.

You can't really spit on the differences between Mate and Cinnamon right now as Linux Mint is still polishing both up to be about equal in all things, but eventually they will pick just one and roll forward with it.

I liked Gnome 2.0 and I'm very sorry they picked a team leader that led them off the cliff and thy were stupid enough to go follow him there.

(even though Torvalds and others told them it was stupid and a total disaster ....)

The ones that balked right at the crumbly edge of things now work on the Mate Project.

Roll Eyes

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Re: When a hard drive goes bad ....
Reply #29 - 08/29/13 at 15:25:02

Had my first boot errors today...didn't understand a bit of it...but it did say "hit the f key to fix" so I did that, and rebooted (3rd time) and it booted fine.

So far i'm liking it, using it instead of windows 8 this week, to see if I can live with out windows..

I suppose I could get a book and learn to write linux code, after all I was pretty good at the dos stuff.

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