Good Practices - Page 3

DeusExMachina · 11-04-2007, 09:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dieKatze88

Note for those of us who used to use older technologies.

Remember to update your backups if you plan on keeping any older data.

This weekend I spent 10 hours trying to get an old MFM hard disk (30 megs!) to work so I could get some important shit off of them. Dont let this happen to you. if you move up to a new system, recreate your backups if you have to jump through a big hoop to get to your old ones. Next up: My floppy disks and my 120 meg tapes.

MFM hard disk? is that from like a 286 or 386 computer?

Usually the biggest problem with backups IMO is not the longevity or shelf life but the fact that its technology will go obsolete and be unusable.

**dieKatze88** · 11-04-2007, 10:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeusExMachina

MFM hard disk? is that from like a 286 or 386 computer?

Usually the biggest problem with backups IMO is not the longevity or shelf life but the fact that its technology will go obsolete and be unusable.

Its actually not an MFM hard disk, its an RLL model. Same technology better formatting. Its from an 8086. One of my first machines.

DeusExMachina · 11-05-2007, 12:50 AM

Yeah old tech still rules. I went from backing up wolfenstein 3d, from 1 diskette, to on a cd, then to my external HD.

Wolfenstein 3d is the best computer game that fits on one 1.44 mb diskette

**dieKatze88** · 11-05-2007, 06:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeusExMachina

Yeah old tech still rules. I went from backing up wolfenstein 3d, from 1 diskette, to on a cd, then to my external HD.

Wolfenstein 3d is the best computer game that fits on one 1.44 mb diskette

Only the demo. the full version is 3 megs.

GameFreak19911991 · 04-10-2008, 11:24 PM

I have a few questions on the Image tools mentioned.

One, can any of them take an image from another hard drive in my computer and just copy the image over to my main drive? (I do not feel like digging out an old computer to transfer over a network)

Two, which is the best one to use out of the ones that can do the above.

Three, a link to it? (Or not, i'll find it myself if need be)

Excel-2010 · 04-11-2008, 10:26 AM

If by this you mean transferring image files, you can transfer the images between drives using any method you usually use for copying large files. I don't quite understand what you're asking here.
ImageCenter is recommended overall, but I would recommend the Acronis True Image products (the latest versions) if you work with Linux partitions. Unlike ImageCenter, True Image can actually do stuff with ext3 partitions other than create them. The Home edition can even mount image files as drives so you can take whatever files you need from those.
I don't know of any free imaging programs for Windows.

GameFreak19911991 · 04-11-2008, 04:30 PM

Question 1.. I mean, like making a Bootable CD that can read an image file off of one hard drive inside of my computer, and copy it to another drive inside of my computer without windows being installed on it.

I'd basicailly make an image of XP and some of my programs on it, and copy it to a drive, and when i'd need to reformat, just copy the image.

Excel-2010 · 04-11-2008, 05:27 PM

Both programs can do that. I recommend purchasing a large capacity external hard drive dedicated for image backups.

GameFreak19911991 · 04-11-2008, 06:35 PM

I already have a 160GB External drive, the problem is i'm not sure if its my computer being retarted or it's dying on me. Keeps giving me I/O errors and then decides to not show up in anything besides device manager until I restart windows or take power from it and restart.

It's only done it 3 times thoiugh.

LunarAura · 10-19-2009, 01:33 AM

Everything in the OP sounds good except disk defragmenting. The performance increase is marginal if not placebo given the recent file handling methods and such a marginal increase isn't worth the cumulative stress put on the HDD imo. Obviously, any OS set to defrag in the background will stress it more and defragmenting is pointless with SSD's. I'm not too versed with why but NTFS seems to benefit less from defragmenting than FAT32.

**dieKatze88** · 10-19-2009, 11:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LunarAura

Everything in the OP sounds good except disk defragmenting. The performance increase is marginal if not placebo given the recent file handling methods and such a marginal increase isn't worth the cumulative stress put on the HDD imo. Obviously, any OS set to defrag in the background will stress it more and defragmenting is pointless with SSD's. I'm not too versed with why but NTFS seems to benefit less from defragmenting than FAT32.

Actually NTFS benefits more from defragmenting, the difference isn't OS File handling, its disk controller file handling. Most people today have Intel Matrix Storage Controllers in their PCs with Intel processors, the drivers for these controllers can and will intelligently block partitions of space as they write large files to the disk to prevent fragmentation from ever occurring during initial writes, however, when fragmentation does occur (It will happen eventually!) these disks benefit from defragmentation much more than FAT32 disks ever will. I just recently defragmented F: on my server, and it took about a day, but the read times are down from about 80 seconds to list a large directory over the network to about 10 seconds.

Of course, you should NEVER defragment a SSD, and you should defragment in moderation. I defrag my gaming computer at least once a week, but thats because I demand that I never see the "You're on your way to..." screen in Team Fortress 2. My Server gets defragmented very infrequently (>_>) because I don't want to stress the disks that much.

LunarAura · 10-20-2009, 03:10 PM

Oh lawdy, lol! I guess my fears of defragmenting my AthlonXP nforce2 desktop shouldn't have carried over to newer tech. I only got exposure to the matrix storage controllers last year with a Intel C2D laptop and now have a further understanding of how it works thanks to your clarification. I still fear the defrag time of a 320gb HDD and hope it's nowhere near a whole day but if performance becomes noticeably laggy, I'll give it a shot.

**dieKatze88** · 10-20-2009, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LunarAura

Oh lawdy, lol! I guess my fears of defragmenting my AthlonXP nforce2 desktop shouldn't have carried over to newer tech. I only got exposure to the matrix storage controllers last year with a Intel C2D laptop and now have a further understanding of how it works thanks to your clarification. I still fear the defrag time of a 320gb HDD and hope it's nowhere near a whole day but if performance becomes noticeably laggy, I'll give it a shot.

No, defrag. You need to do that on ALL physical disks, even floppies.

LunarAura · 10-20-2009, 06:34 PM

Which defrag utility did you use to get that speed improvement? Is the built-in Windows defragmenter still based off Diskeeper or any good at all?

**dieKatze88** · 10-21-2009, 08:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LunarAura

Which defrag utility did you use to get that speed improvement? Is the built-in Windows defragmenter still based off Diskeeper or any good at all?

Well windows defrag from NT5 and up is Diskeeper, but a stripped out version that doesn't do nearly as much as Diskeeper, but I refuse to support the cult of Scientology so I use MyDefrag.