Root Access

Journeyman Geek

00:02

This model, but green

Least I think its green. I'm a dog, what would I know ;p

I joke if it dosen't boot up one day I'm going to gut it and build a nice mini ITX box in there ;p

tereško

looks kinda ugly

Recycle Bin

I disagree

Journeyman Geek

@tereško Its a bit like a 50s car

Standards change, but its still a classic.

and its quite easily 20 years old and mostly runs.

Ramhound

thats more of a puke then a green

Journeyman Geek

well, almost 20 years old

@Ramhound If your puke was that colour, I'd suspect food colouring, or poisoning ;p

Recycle Bin

00:13

oi58.tinypic.com/254zj14.jpg genius

Journeyman Geek

@RecycleBin: That makes perfect sense.

Recycle Bin

yeah, connected but not connected

Ramhound

I got the perfect myth for the Mythbusters last episode, they bust the myth, the show could go without them :$

Journeyman Geek

@Ramhound: 14 years with a full proper season to end is a good run

(also, adam's focusing a bit more on tested, I wonder if he's replacing will)

Ramhound

Indeed I was just being snarky

Bob

00:19

> Western Digital Announces Acquisition Of SanDisk

O_O

> Western Digital buying SanDisk in $19 billion storage merger

Recycle Bin

I got a good myth - why do objects with matter attract each other gravitationally

Ramhound

That isn't a big deal honestly. SanDisk being worth 19 billion is though, lol

bigger news is Youtube Red

Recycle Bin

brb

Ramhound

Google does not realize I can skip and block their ads already for free

I can also download their Videos for free

Don't need to give them money to do that :$

Bob

@Ramhound Large acquisitions and mergers are always a big deal.

Could affect product lines and prices quite a lot in coming years.

@Ramhound That's... not news at all.

YouTube Music Key has existed for about a year.

Does the same thing. They just renamed it.

And it's still not available here, so it's even less of news to me :P

Journeyman Geek

00:22

@Ramhound: Basically one of the last three hard drive makes got a pretty big piece of the SSD market

Ramhound

Well they emposs eveyrthing and it will be the label that produces their own content

sanDisk have that large of a market hold?

Bob

@Ramhound They're pretty common with flash drives.

Might be the biggest, actually.

And SD cards.

Ramhound

Figured it was down to Intel, Samsung, Crucial

flash drives are sort of a dieing market i feel

Given Staples was giving away 128 GB drives for $59.99 back in Aug

Bob

@Ramhound Hardly. They're the only way to install an OS on many modern machines :P

@Ramhound That's just standard price reduction as NAND prices drop.

Ramhound

True; Windows for the first time in 30 years is sold on one...

Bob

00:25

Also, 128 GB for $60 is expensive.

Especially if you don't specify r/w speeds.

Ramhound

This was USB 3.0

name brand

I think it might have been a SanDisk lol

They also had 64 GB for $30

Bob

@Ramhound "USB 3.0" really means little.

You'd have to be more specific about speeds.

There's some drives that use the USB 3.0 interface but have R/W speeds that would fit within USB 2.0.

Ramhound

I picked it out for mother who wanted a single disk instead of two 8 GB

Bob

Anyway here's a $35 PNY one: amazon.com/PNY-Turbo-128GB-Flash-Drive/dp/B00FE2N1WS/…

> Sequential Read: 100.7MB/s Write: 100.8MB/s 512K read 25.2MB/s write: 57.11MBs 4K random read: 0.263MB/S write 0.943MB/s 4K random QD32 read: 0.457MB/s write: 0.694MB/s

Ramhound

come on 2 TB SSD $199.99 that is my magic price!

Recycle Bin

00:27

I hate mothers

Bob

Those speeds are about average-good.

There are some drives with excellent speeds.

IIRC SanDisk Extreme was one of those.

But, yea. 128 GB for $60 is very expensive for the capacity alone.

Now, if it was high capacity and excellent speeds, that would make sense.

If it's one of the cheapo store-brand-type high-capacity extra-slow ones? No thanks.

Ramhound

I can't wait for 2 TB SSDs @ $199.99 - 249.99; It would be a 4x price difference compared to a 8 TB mechanical ( currently also $249.99 )

Bob

Problem here is many drives don't even specify speeds. They specify capacity as a number and claim "USB 3.0" as if that makes them magically fast.

Reliability is a factor too but much harder to measure.

qasdfdsaq

@Bob Yeah, there's a good few now that will stretch the limits of USB 3.0 (i.e. >400MB/sec read & write)

Bob

@qasdfdsaq I think those go for >$5/GB :P

qasdfdsaq

00:32

And indeed, I've a pile of Kingston USB 3.0 thumb drives with 12MB/sec write and 32MB/sec read. And a cheaper, hardware encrypted Kingston USB 3 drive with 80MB/sec read & write... Go figure

Ramhound

They stop increasing the size of SSHDs or something?

Bob

@Ramhound SSHds usually come with minimal flash (~4 GB) anyway :\

Mostly for laptop usage.

Ramhound

I know that; I need to spend a weekend and clone my system to a larger disk and convert to GPT

qasdfdsaq

@Bob Not necessarily. amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Extreme-USB-Flash-Drive/dp/B00DZPUOUI/… <== This isn't the fastest, but 250MB/sec and less than $1 per GB

Ramhound

tired of using only 2 TB of my 3 TB disk

qasdfdsaq

00:34

In fact less than £0.50 per GB, so something like $0.8

Recycle Bin

im gonna run a 289mb install of XP on 10 GB of ram, this will be fast!

qasdfdsaq

@RecycleBin I question why you are running XP at all...

Recycle Bin

its a vm

qasdfdsaq

That doesn't explain why

Bob

@qasdfdsaq Because he somehow broke his Win7 installation and now thinks the entire OS is the problem.

qasdfdsaq

00:36

-_-

Bob

And that somehow XP is supposed to be more reliable and faster.

Michael Frank

:24863621

Bob

@qasdfdsaq "250MB/sec" [citation needed]

Read speeds are often alright, but write speeds is where these things often fall.

Ramhound

0

Q: Windows 10 volume converted from MBR to GPT, how to readd recovery command line console?

I decided to do what you're not supposed to do and convert my MBR install of Windows 10 to GPT. I used Paragon Hard Disk Manager 15 for the conversion, it worked fine, and I managed to get boot working by repartitioning the boot portion of the hard drive and running bcdedit. All is fine there. H...

stumped on that one

qasdfdsaq

@Bob: tomshardware.co.uk/…

(Tomshardware test: 268MB/sec read, 220.7MB/sec write)

Also, this here is specified at 400MB/sec read, 270MB/sec write, and also $0.80 per GB:

http://www.lexar.com/flash-drives/jumpdrive-p20

Bob

00:39

@qasdfdsaq Yea, that's decent.

qasdfdsaq

(although the Lexar seems to get about 1/2 of the spec in independant tests)

Ramhound

When did Tesla go public by the way? I thought they were still private and still not had their IPO ( similar to SpaceX )

qasdfdsaq

I've seen some peg 400+ but can't find the links right now... anyhow. A lot lower than $5 per GB these days :)

Bob

@qasdfdsaq That's why you never trust manufacturer speed specs :P

@qasdfdsaq Oh, that was a (partial) exaggeration.

They certainly exist: amazon.com/Super-Talent-USB3-0-Express-Drive/dp/B005KZOTR0

> The Super Talent Express RC8, which costs $200 for 50 GB and is only marginally faster than the SanDisk Extreme, with 220 MB/s advertised write speeds.

> The Imation IronKey has impressive read speeds of 360MB/s, but terrible 41.7MB/s write speeds, according to Tom’s Hardware. The 32GB model costs $160.

qasdfdsaq

Ermm, well. Yes there's always some awkward overpriced stuff that nobody actually buys

Bob

00:42

=> amazon.com/IronKey-Windows-Flash-Drive-WGHB0B032G0001/dp/…

qasdfdsaq

I've seen 2TB hard drives listed for $5000 on Best Buy

Bob

@qasdfdsaq These aren't so much random listings; they're actually around RRP

And from some fairly big names too (Imation, etc)

qasdfdsaq

Course, but who in their right mind would actually pay those prices?

It's like $450 for a 4TB HDD or $150 for the same 4TB HDD... A few enterprises buy the $450 version but everyone else...

Ramhound

Tomshardware is beyond useless, i only use it, for product release news :$

the amount of times I have seen a forum thread there that had so many errors it wasn't even funny

Bob

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2012 hiyohiyo
                           Crystal Dew World : crystalmark.info
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

           Sequential Read :   148.734 MB/s
          Sequential Write :    24.617 MB/s
         Random Read 512KB :   142.592 MB/s
        Random Write 512KB :     3.426 MB/s

That's a Toshiba Retractable Pro (16 GB).

Great read speeds, halfway-decent sequential write... random write is completely screwed.

qasdfdsaq

00:46

I rarely read them as well, since they went downhill something like ten years ago. But still, there's very little you can screw up by plugging in a USB drive and running a one-click benchmark

A lot of the problem is the lack of concurrency in USB based flash controllers

Modern SSDs effectively have 8-16 channels RAID'ed together.

Incidentally, onboard storage in mobile phones used to have very much the same problem - good speeds on paper, crappy random performance in reality.

Bob

@qasdfdsaq Not just the controllers but the NAND itself.

@qasdfdsaq Not even good speeds on paper.

eMMC sucks.

But it's cheap.

qasdfdsaq

Until some new standard came out a year ago and then everyone started making a case of marketing it

Well, it may suck but still gets 200MB/sec sequential. Which is more than I can say for any microSDXC card I've come across.

UFS 2 is the new standard I think

"2.7 times faster than eMMC 5.0"

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: eMMC speeds vary tho

and well if you don't mind the size, its still somewhere between spinning rust and proper SSDs

qasdfdsaq

A proper SSD is about the same size as a modern smartphone anyway, so not much chance of fitting one of those in there...

Bob

@qasdfdsaq M.2 and mSATA cards are smaller.

And even then half the card is unpopulated in the lower capacities.

qasdfdsaq

00:52

Still wouldn't fit in a smartphone... (especially given even tablets and laptops have them soldered not socketed)

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Depends which version.

The later versions have higher max speeds.

But most flash that uses the eMMC protocol is particularly slow.

The majority actually achieves lower sequential speeds than HDDs.

qasdfdsaq

phonearena.com/news/… Seeems the Z3 gets about 2350 IOPS in random 4K write and nearly 4000 IOPS in random 4K read.

Not bad for eMMC :)

Recycle Bin

whoa this is fast!!

qasdfdsaq

Hah, course the UFS 2.0 based S6 gets five times that....

Recycle Bin

it can open 180 apps in like 10 seconds

qasdfdsaq

00:55

phonearena.com/news/… - 77MB/sec random 4K, 315MB/sec read.

The random I/O is higher than my desktop SATA 6G SSD :-/

WTF, how's a 1TB 850 Evo slower than a mobile phone

Stupid SATA. Roll on NVME!

@RecycleBin: Given Android's propensity to preload every installed application on startup, that's not quite as useless as you may think.

Bob

01:12

@qasdfdsaq I get 48 MB/s random read and 2.77 MB/s random write on my G4

shrug

(I believe this was 4k random... app doesn't say)

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: I Theeeenk we had that conversation before ;p

Bob

@JourneymanGeek regarding eMMC speeds? ya. I think I've given you the results from my testing. was considerably worse.

Dec 4 '14 at 15:47, by Bob

Samsung MCG8GA eMMC...

That's my Lenovo Miix 2 10

I'll see if I can dig up the results.

Clear question with examples

superuser.com/questions/990048/… bloat superuser.com/questions/79308/… clickbait

Bob

Mar 16 at 16:00, by allquixotic

a 5400rpm HDD is faster

That was @allquixotic with his Stream 7 (?)

LOL

Feb 23 at 14:42, by Bob

For my future chat searches: CrystalDiskMark screenshot above of Lenovo Miix

I've done this before!

(as in, searched for this before)

Hm. The Samsung one was in the VivoTab.

The Miix tablet uses SanDisk eMMC

@JourneymanGeek Basically: don't judge eMMC (in general, not by the max capability) by your laptop.

IME the vast majority of eMMC is far worse.

Of course, I'm not talking about the eMMC protocol -- I'm talking about typical implementations/storage devices.

Feb 23 at 14:40, by Bob

Even that is better than what I usually see in phones (of the last few years).

Current-gen phones do perform better.

Recycle Bin

woo youtube.com/watch?v=YfV0lPDgUgI&feature=youtu.be

Journeyman Geek

01:40

FLP's not quite normal XP

(also impossible to get legitmately unless you're a volume customer)

also, what exactly is woo about it?

Recycle Bin

its fast

Journeyman Geek

I think the R61 is the new OS/2 VM

Edge is now stuck on the blue splash screen

why does a browser need a splash screen?

Recycle Bin

not sure

DragonLord

@JourneymanGeek Edge is a Windows Store app.

Journeyman Geek

and I got the -1% memory bug again

@DragonLord: That was a rhetorical question

Recycle Bin

01:52

when I installed this it took about 1.5GB up but got it down yet still stable

just for fun, I wouldnt do this on my main OS

brb

Michael Frank

@DragonLord Why does a Windows Store app need a splash screen then?

allquixotic

02:08

random much worse than sequential on my array

Recycle Bin

AETSTWLON
Thats why

allquixotic

wonder if defragging would help get most stuff into sequential territory

(keep in mind, these speeds are without the benefit of the maxCache read since once-written data won't be in the warm cache)

Recycle Bin

any excuse to slap the windows logo on something, hence the splash screen

allquixotic

03:31

I'm gonna do it. Going to shrink my RAID array down so it fits on a 4 TB drive, then copy it off to a spare drive, then re-create the RAID array as 4kn, then copy it back.

DragonLord

@allquixotic Good luck with that, be sure you have a backup.

Journeyman Geek

Backups? Where we're going we don't need backups

hides

allquixotic

JMG is right, sadly

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: arn't you on crashplan anyway?

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek yes, but I have a few gigs of video that haven't been synced due to their size... most of my irreplaceable stuff is synced, but it would be tens of hours of work to get everything installed again if I lost my OS

Journeyman Geek

03:39

and heh. I need to hook the netbook into the backup system. I'm considering using the onboard SSD as the primary backup tho

@allquixotic: wait, you don't have an OS backup?

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek no, I don't have a block-level backup of an 8 TB drive

I don't have that much space

anywhere except on my RAID10 array

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: os backup

dosen't need to be block level

allquixotic

what is an "OS backup" if it's not block-level?

Journeyman Geek

Well on my setup its what's used - hibernation and pagefile.

My backup software includes drivers in the restore environmentr so I could, in theory restore back to ~~the~~ a raid array

allquixotic

I mean, I have installation CDs, and I have CD keys for software, and I have passwords, and I have critical "loose files", but I don't have an "OS backup that isn't block level", whatever that means

Journeyman Geek

03:45

@allquixotic: hypothetical test case?

allquixotic

an OS backup that doesn't include the boot sector, core Windows files (which can't simply be represented as loose files due to metadata, etc) is not very useful

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: it does

but "block level" bit for bit it isn't

its psudo file level

basically what every backup software calls 'intelligent' backup?

So, lets say I had a raid array. I have a catastrophic multi disk failure. My recovery environment is windows based and has the raid controller drivers.

so if I backup, and shit fails, I boot off a usb key, point it at my backups, and things get reinstalled exactly as it were

(I've also restored to a smaller disk, which was fun)

Not done it on a raid controller, but yes, I've done full, complete, from bare metal to last working backup state a few times.

Bob

> Image creation mode
You can use these parameters to create an exact copy of your whole partitions or hard disks, and not only the sectors that contain data. Note that the Back up unallocated space check box is available only when the Back up sector-by-sector check box is selected.

To make a sector-by-sector backup, check the Back up sector-by-sector parameter. By default the program copies only the hard disk sectors that contain data. However, sometimes it might be useful to make a full sector-by-sector backup. For example, you have deleted some files by mistake and want to make a disk i…

@allquixotic ^

@JourneymanGeek Heh. I've had one Unplanned Backup Test (TM) so far.

When the PrimoCache write cache broke my OS

Didn't even have an Acronis restore disk at the time. Had to burn one with the laptop.

Everything went well, at least.

allquixotic

@Bob hmm, right, but copying only the used blocks is contingent upon the tool correctly understanding your filesystem, and your filesystem being free of errors (which is far from guaranteed on something like NTFS)

Bob

It looks like, at least the way Acronis does it, it's similar to ntfsclone.

@allquixotic If there's FS errors your data is toast anyway.

allquixotic

03:56

when Acronis creates an "image", can it also backup your ESP and Windows Recovery Partition?

Bob

@allquixotic Yep.

I'm in full disk mode right now.

In partition mode it actually grabs the System Reserved and Windows OS partitions by default (when you create a new disk backup job).

I'm not booting with EFI but an ESP is just a normal partition with special GUID.

Most backup programs do something similar.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: I've done erm....

allquixotic

well, remember how I ordered that HGST drive to "replace" my "dead" Seagate 4 TB (the last Seagate in my array)? Welllllllllll the Seagate came alive again and is now responding. If it passes a SMART quick self-test, should I trust it with making an image of my OS and then restoring it? :P

Journeyman Geek

How many...

@allquixotic: gddrescue there.

Bob

@allquixotic !!no

Journeyman Geek

03:58

Oh

If you feel lucky

DO YOU?

allquixotic

typically not

Journeyman Geek

lol

@Bob 3-4 "tests"

1 actual test

3 migrations

Bob

It'd have to survive without errors under heavy load for at least 24hrs.

That's dangerous at best.

Journeyman Geek

(I trust veem now ;p)

Bob

@JourneymanGeek I've done several full restores with laptops sent in for servicing.

All worked flawlessly.

allquixotic

04:00

@Bob how about if dd if=/dev/my-array | sha1 == dd if=backup.img | sha1?

Bob

o.O

I'm confused

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: Thing that worries me is of dd understands the array

@allquixotic sha1 won't protect you from data loss, only integrity checking? ;p

allquixotic

@Bob why so? if I backup my entire array with dd to another disk, then sha1 the blocks of the array and compare it to the blocks of the backup, they should equal. right?

if the volumes aren't precisely the same size I could set a count to limit the number of blocks read/written

and I could avoid two reads of the array by passing the original dd off of the array to a tee to sha1 or sha512

then after writing it to the backup drive, sha it again

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: the backup could fail completely while restoring? ;p

allquixotic

yes, the drive could crash during restore, but unless there's a mechanical problem with the drive, simply reading from it sequentially shouldn't be much of an issue

granted, this isn't an SSD backup drive we're talking about, so it's more likely to fail mechanically than an SSD is to just fall apart during a read

Bob

04:08

@allquixotic Then what happens if the disk dies (or corrupts data) during the restore?

@allquixotic The fact that it previously died suggests that there is a mechanical problem.

allquixotic

hmm. OR I could be totally insane, and intentionally degrade one of the stripes of my array by pulling an HGST drive off of it, then RAID-1 that with the old Seagate in a second logical array, then dd over to that, then back

then rebuild the array with the HGST :P

Bob

On a new drive (with burn-in to avoid a bathtub failure), I'd consider this relatively safe. On a drive that previously failed? !!no

"bathtub failure" is fun to say

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: Its your data ;p

allquixotic

HDDs care more about powered-on time than what they're actually doing during that time, right? like, it's no biggie to do several full disk writes on an HDD?

this thing any good? :P bestbuy.com/site/…

Journeyman Geek

._.

@allquixotic: I got one of their nases as one of my 3-4 levels of backup

allquixotic

04:13

you guys do a lot more backup than I do

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: I've lost disks ;p

Bob

> Beginning in March 2012, Varoufakis became Economist-in-Residence at Valve Corporation. He researched the virtual economy on the Steam digital delivery platform, specifically looking at exchange rates and trade deficits. In June 2012, he began a blog about his research at Valve. In February 2013 his function at Valve was to work on a game for predicting trends in gaming.

allquixotic

I've lost disks too, but I shrugged and ordered a replacement. the beauty of having a RAID array with different disks of staggered manufacturing time

Bob

> Yanis Varoufakis is an academic economist who was a member of Greek parliament between January and September 2015. He represented the ruling Syriza party and held the position of Minister of Finance for seven months.

@allquixotic Until the whole array fails. Or you end up in a situation like me where a software failure broke it.

allquixotic

@Bob you're right; I need offline backups

also, crypto malware is always a possibility

if that happens and I have recent offline backups, I shrug, give them the finger, and restore

Bob

04:16

@allquixotic Funnily enough, that's probably the only thing I'm not really doing.

I don't have full offsite backups, and my backups are only offline when I remember to switch off the drive :\

allquixotic

for my home stuff, I'm not really able to practically keep recent offsite backups except for things like pictures and documents (Google Drive) and code (Github/Bitbucket), because there's just too much data to upload it over the net, and I can't afford to be shipping drives all over

Journeyman Geek

I have one offline backup but its not super up to date

and I have one backup that randomly fails to work

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Sounds like a useful backup!

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: yeah, that's why its my +1

I have NO idea what's wrong with it but it'll randomly deny me permissions.

Bob

o.O

Journeyman Geek

04:26

tho...

My current backups are too reliant on my main box to sync

so if I could pull backups off of the nas...

this supports owncloud and btsync...

HackToHell

04:42

TIL flask.pocoo.org/docs/0.10/security/#json-security

Bob

Hm, I can't decide what I want to do for the recovery drive.

Chuck a bunch of installs on there with YUMI?

Chuck Knoppix on there by itself with EFI boot?

Clear question with examples

All the talk about backups, that's what I've been having problem with. Though I just want to do a continuous byte-level incremental of my documents on Linux. And send it to remote storage

Journeyman Geek

@Clearquestionwithexamples: That's kinda inefficient

Since you'd need to lock the file

and 'byte level' would mean what... dd?

Clear question with examples

Well, block level

I want to keep a list of checksums on my end to check for change

Journeyman Geek

rsync might work

Clear question with examples

04:49

I'm looking for the closest match in software now. But the storage source is also a mystery

I'm looking at Hubic for storage and borg for software but the backend for hubic is confusing

Journeyman Geek

I try to keep it simple

Clear question with examples

05:05

I haven't seen any information on simple really. especially not simple and gratis and safe

Journeyman Geek

I typically start with "what am I backing up" "where am I backing up from" and where am I backing up to"

I use cifs/samba/windows file sharing as a backend since its the same everywhere

allquixotic

@Bob Chuck Knoppix doesn't need backups. The bits are too afraid of an ass-kicking to flip the wrong way on him.

Journeyman Geek

lol

Bob

allquixotic

You're supposed to open the enclosure and remove the HDD/SSD from the enclosure, even if it's a "permanent" enclosure

do what the message box says!

lol

Bob

05:22

@allquixotic It's a flash drive... :S

Do I remove the NAND chips?

Should I break out the reflow oven?

Journeyman Geek

lol

no no

YOU NEED TO REMOVE THE DEVICE!

HackToHell

Oh look, chrome make JSON pretty if the MIME type is proper

Bob

???

HackToHell

06:33

oh look aws.amazon.com/api-gateway/details

This might be the easiest way to scale hmm'

Bob

@HackToHell The "easiest way to scale" is to design the program to do so.

@allquixotic apparently Xiaomi releases MIUI updates weekly o.O

Journeyman Geek

Yeah, they essentially do

HackToHell

btw, wheee my phone's coming in today

@Bob No one in the team has done something like that at the scale that's expected ^_^

And we don't have much time either

Clear question with examples

06:55

What do you think this site is feasible? area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/89684/…

Transcript for