Finally...the Muse people start to understand things from the User's side. Telling a user to buy a 2nd disk as an answer to the clone issue isn't the correct answer , just as several people told here already more than 1 time...
i don't see the point in hidding that the OS disk has or not some hidden files which can not be properly cloned by common software. If this is true why not tell the users the disk can't be cloned instead of telling it can be damaged (which implies it can be cloned too )...well....
Disk clone ?
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- KVRer
- 14 posts since 4 Jan, 2005 from Topeka, KS
I'm not responding directly to Artcool, just sounding off for whoever reads this...
There are sectors on the hard drive that are generally inaccessable except at a very low system level, BUT I would think a good cloning program would account for this. I used CloneDisk to make a backup copy of my EXS24 CD which is needed to periodically reauthorize the installation. Though that CD has schemes which puts data in areas that can't normally be read, CloneDisk worked just fine. It's a perfect copy and validates the installation just fine.
But, there would be technical problems with a copy protection scheme using "hidden" sectors on a hard drive...it's workable on a CD since the state of that medium is static. But a hard drive would be open to a potential problem of multiple programs trying to utilize that space for copy protection or other reasons. Therefore none of them do it. The only programs I ever saw that used these hidden sectors on a hard drive were viruses. Usually "undocumented" programming schemes and hard drives do not mix very well and create far more problems than they solve.
Also, isn't that why Receptor uses ILok?
I think, and I'm just guessing here, is that the concern is that different flavors of cloning software have different requirements. What I use is Casper, and it only addresses Basic and not Dynamic drives. Since Receptor uses Linux, and I'm assuming the hard drive format is FAT32, I can easily envision a casual computer user going in and changing the format to NTFS or to a dynamic drive because the cloning software doesn't work the first time they try it. After that the drive probably would no longer work in the Receptor.
My suggestion is that if you do not know the difference between FAT32 & NTFS, or basic/dynamic drives, or differences between Windows and Linux, don't mess with this. Also, if you are not 100% comfortable with using your computer tools, in the case of windows I'm talking about the Disk Manager under the Computer Managmenet folder of the Control Panel, leave it alone. And, as always, proceed at your own risk. I don't hold myself out as an expert here and I would never rely soley on a forum post anywhere to make decisions that would compromise my equipment.
Me, I'm going for it! Sorry for the long winded post...
There are sectors on the hard drive that are generally inaccessable except at a very low system level, BUT I would think a good cloning program would account for this. I used CloneDisk to make a backup copy of my EXS24 CD which is needed to periodically reauthorize the installation. Though that CD has schemes which puts data in areas that can't normally be read, CloneDisk worked just fine. It's a perfect copy and validates the installation just fine.
But, there would be technical problems with a copy protection scheme using "hidden" sectors on a hard drive...it's workable on a CD since the state of that medium is static. But a hard drive would be open to a potential problem of multiple programs trying to utilize that space for copy protection or other reasons. Therefore none of them do it. The only programs I ever saw that used these hidden sectors on a hard drive were viruses. Usually "undocumented" programming schemes and hard drives do not mix very well and create far more problems than they solve.
Also, isn't that why Receptor uses ILok?
I think, and I'm just guessing here, is that the concern is that different flavors of cloning software have different requirements. What I use is Casper, and it only addresses Basic and not Dynamic drives. Since Receptor uses Linux, and I'm assuming the hard drive format is FAT32, I can easily envision a casual computer user going in and changing the format to NTFS or to a dynamic drive because the cloning software doesn't work the first time they try it. After that the drive probably would no longer work in the Receptor.
My suggestion is that if you do not know the difference between FAT32 & NTFS, or basic/dynamic drives, or differences between Windows and Linux, don't mess with this. Also, if you are not 100% comfortable with using your computer tools, in the case of windows I'm talking about the Disk Manager under the Computer Managmenet folder of the Control Panel, leave it alone. And, as always, proceed at your own risk. I don't hold myself out as an expert here and I would never rely soley on a forum post anywhere to make decisions that would compromise my equipment.
Me, I'm going for it! Sorry for the long winded post...
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- KVRer
- 21 posts since 22 Mar, 2006 from Kensington, MD
Not if it's dropped or thrown.raintalk wrote:I still rather see RAID
I don't want to be cloning and swapping out drives when the adding a second drive for RAID makes this trouble free.
My $.02
I once packed a ruggedly built external floppy drive unit in a ridged case with four inches of varying density foam and checked it in at the airport. It arrived at my destination as a kit. The case had been thrown so hard that the spindle of the drive (this was the old days) came right off the end of the drive itself. Totally ruined.
I'm convinced that airport luggage workers see rugged cases as challenges.
There is redundancy and then there is redundancy. The DC10 had redundant systems; but, all the systems ran right down the middle of the cabin floor. The result, when the baggage door came open in flight, was a complete loss of hydraulic control as ALL the redundant sytems were ripped out. Boeing, on the other hand, ran their redundant systems in the 747 down each side and the middle of the floor. It most likely would have survived the same event. Redundant systems involving location separation are a good thing.
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- KVRer
- 14 posts since 4 Jan, 2005 from Topeka, KS
The saga continues...
I pulled my 40G out of the receptor and installed it in a PC w/WinXP. XP saw the drive, identified 4 partitions of "unknown" type. You couldn't read the drive. Conversely, my ghosting software couldn't deal with it either. So as Thomas Edison would have said .. "Success! We now know another way not to do this!"
My goal is to build a bigger drive, because I have a 160g sitting here doing nothing. In doing the above I did no harm to the Receptor drive, it works just fine in the Receptor.
Next step...the IT guy where I work has a commercial grade ghosting apparatus so I'll go there next. I'm concerned about the multiple partitions...obviously the partition to expand in size will be the one that is currently the largest...but if there is O/S stuff in the smaller partitions that are relying on the current structure of the data partition...who knows?
Worst that can happen, though, is this doesn't work and I'll have to shell out a couple hundred for a bigger drive...
Not sure why this product was ever released with a 40gig drive. Do they even offer that anymore?
I pulled my 40G out of the receptor and installed it in a PC w/WinXP. XP saw the drive, identified 4 partitions of "unknown" type. You couldn't read the drive. Conversely, my ghosting software couldn't deal with it either. So as Thomas Edison would have said .. "Success! We now know another way not to do this!"
My goal is to build a bigger drive, because I have a 160g sitting here doing nothing. In doing the above I did no harm to the Receptor drive, it works just fine in the Receptor.
Next step...the IT guy where I work has a commercial grade ghosting apparatus so I'll go there next. I'm concerned about the multiple partitions...obviously the partition to expand in size will be the one that is currently the largest...but if there is O/S stuff in the smaller partitions that are relying on the current structure of the data partition...who knows?
Worst that can happen, though, is this doesn't work and I'll have to shell out a couple hundred for a bigger drive...
Not sure why this product was ever released with a 40gig drive. Do they even offer that anymore?
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- KVRer
- 21 posts since 22 Mar, 2006 from Kensington, MD
Actually, this, in itself, can be risky becuase at startup there is danger that the machine will write to the drive in ways you can't control. If it writes the wrong thing at the the wrong place in an attempt to 'fix' the drive you can be out of luck.mildist wrote:The saga continues...
I pulled my 40G out of the receptor and installed it in a PC w/WinXP. XP saw the drive, identified 4 partitions of "unknown" type. You couldn't read the drive. Conversely, my ghosting software couldn't deal with it either. So as Thomas Edison would have said .. "Success! We now know another way not to do this!"
Forensics professionals have to deal with 'hidden' data all the time and they have to protect the drives in their custody. They learned long ago not to hook up any drive directly to a computer without an interface between the drive and computer that absolutely prevents the drive from recieving written data from the computer.
It took me forever to convince one of my larger clients NOT to put a failing drive into another computer in order to clone it. They were doing more damage than good by that technique. I actually had to loan them my personal NoWrite FPU so that they could see the difference in success rates for capturing data from failing drives before they would believe me.
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- KVRist
- 69 posts since 9 Jan, 2006
The Receptor does not use FAT32 nor NTFS. It has one boot partition which is about 100 MB, a root / partition which is around 3 Gb (this is where the OS resides), and a swap at 2 Gb, and the rest is mounted as the "hard drive" you see when you mount it from your desktop computer. The last partition probably varies in size from Receptor to Receptor depending on the disk size that it comes with.mildist wrote:...I think, and I'm just guessing here, is that the concern is that different flavors of cloning software have different requirements. What I use is Casper, and it only addresses Basic and not Dynamic drives. Since Receptor uses Linux, and I'm assuming the hard drive format is FAT32, I can easily envision a casual computer user going in and changing the format to NTFS or to a dynamic drive because the cloning software doesn't work the first time they try it. After that the drive probably would no longer work in the Receptor.
My suggestion is that if you do not know the difference between FAT32 & NTFS, or basic/dynamic drives, or differences between Windows and Linux, don't mess with this. Also, if you are not 100% comfortable with using your computer tools, in the case of windows I'm talking about the Disk Manager under the Computer Managmenet folder of the Control Panel, leave it alone. And, as always, proceed at your own risk. I don't hold myself out as an expert here and I would never rely soley on a forum post anywhere to make decisions that would compromise my equipment....
My partition table looks like this:
Code: Select all
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 379 2939895 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 380 623 1959930 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda4 624 19457 151284105 83 Linux--
Olle Gustafsson
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- KVRist
- 69 posts since 9 Jan, 2006
Haha, you really made me laugh here. Anyway. You seem to have prooved your own point in the sence that if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it, or at least let someone who knows how to do it do it for you (this would be the "IT guy" you mentioned).mildist wrote:I pulled my 40G out of the receptor and installed it in a PC w/WinXP. XP saw the drive, identified 4 partitions of "unknown" type. You couldn't read the drive. Conversely, my ghosting software couldn't deal with it either. So as Thomas Edison would have said .. "Success! We now know another way not to do this!"
I'm getting a new 300 Gb drive tomorrow, and I could write up a small guide on how to properly and "clone" the installation to a new drive. But, I'm not sure the Muse guys would like me to do this thou, as it involves some "hacking" on the user end. Plus, they do make a living off people who doesn't have the knowledge to do things on their own (which is a good thing, since more money means more developement a more stable system, more supported plugins etc.).
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Olle Gustafsson
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- KVRer
- 14 posts since 4 Jan, 2005 from Topeka, KS
You know I appreciated your prior post where you gave me useful information, but I'm not sure why you felt compelled to insult me here. I don't know exactly how the receptor drive is put together, and have been speculating on its structure, etc. However, in all my experiments, I have not caused any damage to the receptor drive and I know enough not to. And I feel I'm getting closer to accomplishing what I set out to do, both due to my own study plus the help from people here and elsewhere.oGG wrote: Haha, you really made me laugh here. Anyway. You seem to have prooved your own point in the sence that if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it, or at least let someone who knows how to do it do it for you (this would be the "IT guy" you mentioned).
So, thanks for your prior post that helped. Since I appreciated the assist, I'll refrain from further comment regarding this message.
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- KVRist
- 69 posts since 9 Jan, 2006
Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you. I probably should have placed an appropriate emoticon after my ignorant stupid and completely unnecessary commentmildist wrote:You know I appreciated your prior post where you gave me useful information, but I'm not sure why you felt compelled to insult me here. I don't know exactly how the receptor drive is put together, and have been speculating on its structure, etc. However, in all my experiments, I have not caused any damage to the receptor drive and I know enough not to. And I feel I'm getting closer to accomplishing what I set out to do, both due to my own study plus the help from people here and elsewhere.oGG wrote: Haha, you really made me laugh here. Anyway. You seem to have prooved your own point in the sence that if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it, or at least let someone who knows how to do it do it for you (this would be the "IT guy" you mentioned).
So, thanks for your prior post that helped. Since I appreciated the assist, I'll refrain from further comment regarding this message.
.Anyway. I've spent a couple of hours writing up a little FAQ about the Receptor. In it you can read a step by step guide on how I did to clone my drive onto a bigger one. You can read it if you follow this link.
Happy hacking!
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Olle Gustafsson
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- KVRer
- 14 posts since 4 Jan, 2005 from Topeka, KS
No problem. I probably was being a little too sensitive myself. Thank you for posting that faq, I'll log in and keep learning!Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you. I probably should have placed an appropriate emoticon after my ignorant stupid and completely unnecessary comment Wink.
Take care...
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- KVRer
- 14 posts since 4 Jan, 2005 from Topeka, KS
oGG, just looked at your FAQ. Thank you so much for sharing this. It answers a lot of questions I had, more than just the cloning issue. I have no Linux experience, but I did a lot of low level programming in assembly back in the DOS days.Anyway. I've spent a couple of hours writing up a little FAQ about the Receptor. In it you can read a step by step guide on how I did to clone my drive onto a bigger one. You can read it if you follow this link.
Owe you one!
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- KVRist
- 336 posts since 15 Mar, 2006
UR too cool!oGG wrote:mildist wrote:oGG wrote:
Anyway. I've spent a couple of hours writing up a little FAQ about the Receptor. In it you can read a step by step guide on how I did to clone my drive onto a bigger one. You can read it if you follow this link.
Happy hacking!
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Olle Gustafsson
Hey I'm wondering if on the dd if you set the block size if it would copy faster.
bs=1024k maybe?
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- KVRist
- 69 posts since 9 Jan, 2006
I haven't tried this. It might be true thou.raintalk wrote:UR too cool!
Hey I'm wondering if on the dd if you set the block size if it would copy faster.
bs=1024k maybe?
Please note that dd is a very powerful tool, and it can most certanly destroy things if you use it wrong. (For instance, if you were to accidently switch if= with of= you could, or you will, end up erasing the wrong disk, and there's no way to restore these kinds of misstakes).
Also, I don't really have that much experience using dd. So I'm no expert on the subject. But there's plenty of things to read on the net if you google around.
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Olle Gustafsson
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- KVRer
- 14 posts since 4 Jan, 2005 from Topeka, KS
oGG, I've read your faq several times. My belief is that I may have already got the various partitions right, they correspond in type/size to what they should via your faq. Also, I may already have properly copied the data volume over.
So, what I'll probably do just to find out how close I came is just do the O/S and swap part and just see what happens. If that doesn't work I'll start over. Norton Ghost reads the drives I was working on as ext3 & identifies volume 3 as a linux swap drive. The data drive is volume 4.
But first I'm going to read up on and learn all of the command line tools you used. Partly because it will mitigate my making a mistake, and partly because I want to understand them better. Fdisk is very familiar to me, but the rest of the linux command line tools are not.
Thanks again...
So, what I'll probably do just to find out how close I came is just do the O/S and swap part and just see what happens. If that doesn't work I'll start over. Norton Ghost reads the drives I was working on as ext3 & identifies volume 3 as a linux swap drive. The data drive is volume 4.
But first I'm going to read up on and learn all of the command line tools you used. Partly because it will mitigate my making a mistake, and partly because I want to understand them better. Fdisk is very familiar to me, but the rest of the linux command line tools are not.
Thanks again...