What the.......
- Thread starter Bozo
- Start date
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Yeah, um, I think I'd like some of the crack they're smoking, too.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
WTF. I'll give it a try when I get home.
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
Theres a growing thread at the other place describing why this is an imposibility... looks like ghost just fuds up the partition table/file system so that the OS believes there is more space than there actually is.
GIANT
Learning Storage Performance
Are the Enquirer and Register rags even trustworthy, like even 1% trustworthy?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
It appears to me that it works.
I used a 20GB Barracuda III for a test drive.
Ghosted an XP installation onto it. Loaded Ghost. Did an update to 7.793 (slightly newer than the article suggests).
Followed the procedure: Booted off HDD-2 (on a GA7VAXP), loaded Ghost. Started a backup. Restarted and immediately shut down (just in case). Rebooted, set the boot order to boot HDD-0...
Loaded disk management on the original drive.
Sure enough, I see an 18.71GB primary partition, an 8MB partition labelled VSsomedamnthing and 11.83GB of unpartitioned space.
I configured it as an extended partition, formatted it NTFS and... there it is.
I then dumped ~10GB of AVIs onto it. They play, no data corruption or anything.
Rebooted, set the BIOS to boot off HDD-2 again, loaded XP from the "expanded" drive. That also worked fine with no apparent data corruption.
The only obnoxious part is that I have two extra drive letters. One for the VSwhatever partition and one for the "extra" space.
I watched a couple of the AVIs @ 32x fast forward with PowerDVD. They really are there, and there's no apparent data corruption.
Loading Partition Magic v8, the drive shows up as "BAD" when PQmagic attempts to access the drive. Eh. Whatever, I have a 20GB drive with around 28GB of stuff on it.
I used a 20GB Barracuda III for a test drive.
Ghosted an XP installation onto it. Loaded Ghost. Did an update to 7.793 (slightly newer than the article suggests).
Followed the procedure: Booted off HDD-2 (on a GA7VAXP), loaded Ghost. Started a backup. Restarted and immediately shut down (just in case). Rebooted, set the boot order to boot HDD-0...
Loaded disk management on the original drive.
Sure enough, I see an 18.71GB primary partition, an 8MB partition labelled VSsomedamnthing and 11.83GB of unpartitioned space.
I configured it as an extended partition, formatted it NTFS and... there it is.
I then dumped ~10GB of AVIs onto it. They play, no data corruption or anything.
Rebooted, set the BIOS to boot off HDD-2 again, loaded XP from the "expanded" drive. That also worked fine with no apparent data corruption.
The only obnoxious part is that I have two extra drive letters. One for the VSwhatever partition and one for the "extra" space.
I watched a couple of the AVIs @ 32x fast forward with PowerDVD. They really are there, and there's no apparent data corruption.
Loading Partition Magic v8, the drive shows up as "BAD" when PQmagic attempts to access the drive. Eh. Whatever, I have a 20GB drive with around 28GB of stuff on it.
timwhit
Hairy Aussie
Did you try filling up both of the partitions and verifying that all the data is still there?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
The drive is more than full. The initial disk load was ~18GB (the Windows XP on my "game" computer, complete with some games and applications). I added 10GB of extra stuff (the AVIs) on the extra partition. The AVIs play, and I'm playing "Simpsons Hit and Run" from the original data set right now.
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
Got a link to the discussions?
I'd be a lot more likely to believe that the partition data is f'd up, making it look like there's more space than there is.
If this really does work, however, where the heck is this space coming from?
I'd be a lot more likely to believe that the partition data is f'd up, making it look like there's more space than there is.
If this really does work, however, where the heck is this space coming from?
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
For giggles try chkdsk against the partitions.
ddrueding
Fixture
Cross-site quoting, for those who won't return...
ericq:
Sounds very likely to me.
ericq:
Sounds very likely to me.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Every disk utility I've run pukes with errors. I don't know if stuff is OK or not.
ddrueding
Fixture
Interesting...
To disprove this theory, Merc would have to find out what files would be near the end of the first partiton and test them.
To disprove this theory, Merc would have to find out what files would be near the end of the first partiton and test them.
Tea
Storage? I am Storage!
I'll take a case of gin to a used banana that it's hokum.Hell, I can't afford a case of gin and I don't want the used banana, but how can I pass up odds this good? Ericq (as quoted by Dave D) has the right of it.
PS: Anyone wanna buy a bridge?
PS: Anyone wanna buy a bridge?
Tea
Storage? I am Storage!
By the way, what iz this thread doing in the computers forum?
Jokez are supposed to go in the Pub and Brewar .... Bruwary ... Brewer ... AaaghIcanneverspellthedamnthing.
Jokez are supposed to go in the Pub and Brewar .... Bruwary ... Brewer ... AaaghIcanneverspellthedamnthing.
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
Mercutio said:
Maybe this is because you've mucked-up your disk?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I'm not discountiing that possibility. I'm not a believer. This isn't magic. I just haven't found the bad part yet. i'll keep using the drive for a while to see what breaks.
Platform
Learning Storage Performance
There's also some "territory" in between the normal end-of-data tracks, and the head landing zone, but the firmware is not programmed (as far as I know) to position the heads over this area -- provided there is any to begin with on a particular disc.
I also suspect that none of these areas discussed have gone through ANY low-level certification at the factory, meaning that they have potential sector errors.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
The only other possible place I can think to get space on a platter is from those sector that are reserved to relocate bad blocks. I can't see having enough reserved sectors to equal 50% or more of a drive's capacity, though.
Platform
Learning Storage Performance
At the moment, it escapes me what the typical ratio of reserved-sectors-to-numbers-of-tracks is.
ddrueding
Fixture
But reserved sectors would indeed be a happy thing, as those sectors do actually exist 
Platform
Learning Storage Performance
ddrueding said:But reserved sectors would indeed be a happy thing, as those sectors do actually exist
The big problem about using Reserved Sectors is that you are somehow going to *directly* access them, meaning somehow usurping the drive's firmware.
When a bad sector is detected by the firmware, the firware will re-map the bad sector address to a reserved sector.
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
but the reserved sectors for this purpose are in the order of a few MB... I would maybe suspect as much as possibly a hundred MB at most on the newer high density drives (although I think it's more like 10MB). In any event, this amount of space is inconsequential.
Mrec, if you think about it it is a complete imposibility. There are only so many platters on a disk and only so much capacity on those platters. You cant get more unless the manufacturers have ALL been lying in their race to increase capacity
You know as well as I do that WD only makes a 3 platter product at 80GB platter... there's no way they could have a 510GB disk
deskstar 80GB -> 150GB.... dont think so, it's nice of them not to include model numbers, but no matter how you look at it there has never been the posibility of a 150GB Deskstar (closest would be 166GB on the newest 7k250 or 123.5GB with the 180gxp)
It's hard to say anything about the others except for the last one which is certainly false, because the largest laptop drive I could even find on paper is 80GB... the largest newegg sells is 60GB....
Mrec, if you think about it it is a complete imposibility. There are only so many platters on a disk and only so much capacity on those platters. You cant get more unless the manufacturers have ALL been lying in their race to increase capacity
You know as well as I do that WD only makes a 3 platter product at 80GB platter... there's no way they could have a 510GB disk
deskstar 80GB -> 150GB.... dont think so, it's nice of them not to include model numbers, but no matter how you look at it there has never been the posibility of a 150GB Deskstar (closest would be 166GB on the newest 7k250 or 123.5GB with the 180gxp)
It's hard to say anything about the others except for the last one which is certainly false, because the largest laptop drive I could even find on paper is 80GB... the largest newegg sells is 60GB....
ddrueding
Fixture
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Blake, if you'd read what I wrote, you'll see that I'm far from endorsing the idea.
However, short of opening/using each of the thousands of files on both the original partition and the new one, there's not much I can do to test.
I think the next best thing to do would be to load Windows 98 on a 500MB drive and try it that way. Corruption would be more apparent in a smaller working area.
However, short of opening/using each of the thousands of files on both the original partition and the new one, there's not much I can do to test.
I think the next best thing to do would be to load Windows 98 on a 500MB drive and try it that way. Corruption would be more apparent in a smaller working area.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
I think the easiest way to verify the files are good would be to fill the all of the space on all partitions with really big videos, preferably w/o any dupes, and scan through them as you were doing above. It should show curruption more easily than trying to verify lots of small files.
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
It would be faster to have two identical drives, muck one up, and then do a binary compare of the common files.
timwhit
Hairy Aussie
Or just copy a few huge files over to the drive and use their MD5 signatures to see if they have changed. Kind of what sechs said, but simpler.
ddrueding
Fixture
I'd think that filling up the second partition with video (I know you got it) completely, then rebooting, should be a good test.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Like I'd let the constituent bits of WinRAR pass my firewall!
timwhit
Hairy Aussie
Mercutio said:
I knew you would have some flip remark about that one.
time
Storage? I am Storage!
RAR is a very good archive format if you know what you're doing. It's unfortunate that like all modern formats, it's proprietary.
I don't know why anyone would buy WinZip in this day and age, though. WinRAR (or WinAce) can manage the zip format just as well or even better, and is every bit as fast (unlike all the WinZip clones out there). And when you want compression - as opposed to just sticking files together, which is about all Zip is good for these days - you can use the RAR format.
In this instance, all you need is a checksum tool, so the logical choice would be the Zip - Store method.
BTW, it would make far more sense to make multiple copies of the same file rather than having different files. They'd all have the same checksum (MD5) then, or you could do a binary comparison between any two files. You could write a simple 'for' statement in a bat file to generate as many copies as you wanted.
I don't know why anyone would buy WinZip in this day and age, though. WinRAR (or WinAce) can manage the zip format just as well or even better, and is every bit as fast (unlike all the WinZip clones out there). And when you want compression - as opposed to just sticking files together, which is about all Zip is good for these days - you can use the RAR format.
In this instance, all you need is a checksum tool, so the logical choice would be the Zip - Store method.
BTW, it would make far more sense to make multiple copies of the same file rather than having different files. They'd all have the same checksum (MD5) then, or you could do a binary comparison between any two files. You could write a simple 'for' statement in a bat file to generate as many copies as you wanted.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
How the hell did this get 2000 page views?
Anyway, I can't stand WinRAR. The UI is awful. WinACE has a barely tolerable UI but is embarassingly slow when dealing with RAR files.
I've swapped my experimental drive back to being a slave. I'm going to format both "partitions" and write copies of a zipped VOB file (which is, handily, exactly 1024MB) to the drive until both partitions are full.
Fair enough?
Anyway, I can't stand WinRAR. The UI is awful. WinACE has a barely tolerable UI but is embarassingly slow when dealing with RAR files.
I've swapped my experimental drive back to being a slave. I'm going to format both "partitions" and write copies of a zipped VOB file (which is, handily, exactly 1024MB) to the drive until both partitions are full.
Fair enough?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I did three trials between last night and this morning.
Test: I wrote 19 copies of a 1024MB zip file to the primary (real) partition on my drive. I wrote a further 10 copies to the partition created with the ghost process.
Trial 1: 19/29 zip files could be opened.
Trial 2: 18/29 zip files could be opened.
Trial 3: 21/29 zip files could be opened (I suspect that if I tried to extract and play the VOB file, one or two of 'em wouldn't play, but I haven't gotten that far).
I would've predicted there would be some consistency in which files could be opened; there wasn't. In my second trial, the third zip file I tried on the first partition was corrupt. Generally, the files I couldn't open were those on primary partition, after writing on the second partition.
Test: I wrote 19 copies of a 1024MB zip file to the primary (real) partition on my drive. I wrote a further 10 copies to the partition created with the ghost process.
Trial 1: 19/29 zip files could be opened.
Trial 2: 18/29 zip files could be opened.
Trial 3: 21/29 zip files could be opened (I suspect that if I tried to extract and play the VOB file, one or two of 'em wouldn't play, but I haven't gotten that far).
I would've predicted there would be some consistency in which files could be opened; there wasn't. In my second trial, the third zip file I tried on the first partition was corrupt. Generally, the files I couldn't open were those on primary partition, after writing on the second partition.
Will Rickards WT
Learning Storage Performance
time said:
I bought it a couple of years ago because I used it. Now I use 7-zip. UI isn't as great as winzip.