Root Access

Bob

00:01

@JourneymanGeek spinrite does more harm than good just by its mere existence, I think

last time I read their site they seemed to imply that it could put a drive back into working condition

which is a great big !!no

Journeyman Geek

@Bob interesting thing is a lot of people believe its magic (rocks)

Bob

then people start using the drive again ... and it fails two days later

Journeyman Geek

I suspect it would have worked on older drives

Ramhound

I saved a hdd once because of spinrite but that was before 5TB drives

Bob

@JourneymanGeek at best? it can maybe partially read a corrupted sector by retrying a few thousand times

Journeyman Geek

00:02

@Bob lol. I'm using DOID and the brix again

Bob

in the process maybe also destroying the surrounding sectors

Ramhound

it simply cannot scan a drive larger then 2TB

Journeyman Geek

@Bob someone actually wrote a way to replicate what they claim it does I think

Bob

so ddrescue first, then maaaaaaybe spinrite as a last resort if you reaaaaaaaaaaaally need the data but not enough to pay for professional recovery

and then bin the drive

djsmiley2k

@Bob s/bin/turn into a clock/g

Bob

00:03

@JourneymanGeek eh, it's easy. just repeatedly read the sector until it works or permanently dies

Ramhound

Brand new drive... this is a soft failure .... I hope

Journeyman Geek

@Bob which is what ddrescue does, but it actually copies it out

does a few other things.

Bob

there was some thing about reading raw data and trying to correct it via software, but... apparently that was a command in ATA4 and obsolete (and unimplemented) for 20 years now

djsmiley2k

brand new.... i.e. untested :/

Bob

@JourneymanGeek ddrescue's main benefit is the copying (and skipping unreadable chunks to come back to later)

it's a "get it out NOW before more damage occurs"

spinrite doesn't even try that... it just keeps trying to 'fix' a sector while trashing the rest

Journeyman Geek

00:05

5

A: What kind of periodic maintenance should I carry out on HDD backup?

If you have more free space than the backup data uses - your option 1 in the question - or if you have multiple copies of the data, I've got an idea that would "do something"; if you think SpinRite really helps with hard drive "maintenance" and/or want to completely overwrite and then re-write ev...

Bob

@Ramhound that's, uh. not how drives work. see bathtub curve.

Ramhound

If this boots I'll create an image tonight... even if I have to pay 200% premium at Walmart

but I suspect it's my EFI partition based on preliminary research

entry in UEFI was weird listed has Windows Boot Manager ....

@Bob I know it could be a real failure but I hope beyond hope it's not because I have poor backups currently after the last hdd trash bin failed on me

Journeyman Geek

....

bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-01/i-m-renting-a-dog

What the what the whaaaaaat?

djsmiley2k

@JourneymanGeek lol for a moment I thought it was an actual dog rental company, which kind of makes sense...

but heh, US law sucks, consumers can suck it.

Journeyman Geek

@djsmiley2k its even worse

djsmiley2k

00:13

worse than 'suck it' ?

Journeyman Geek

> Smith, 40, has used leases from Bristlecone for two dogs, both Morkies—a Maltese-Yorkie hybrid. She bought the first dog, Julius, on a whim after walking into a local pet store without a credit card. “It was like, I didn’t want to leave without him,” she said. After Julius was killed in a traffic accident, Smith worked with Bristlecone to craft a lease for a new dog, which she named Monsieur Fluffington (“the smaller the dog, the longer the name”).

and

> She still worries the transaction will come back to haunt her. Before she took Tucker home back in early 2015, the dog had a microchip implanted under his skin to register him with the American Kennel Club. When she sold him, she forgot to ask the buyer to update the registration.

a dog isn't an asset.

you don't take a loan, buy a dog, then resell it.

djsmiley2k

well my cat is Henrik Wafflehammer the Third, First of his name.

MagicallyDelicous

@Ramhound I'm not sure what you mean by non-constructive criticism... I'm not telling you anything someone here has not told me before...

Bob

@Ramhound I'll give you the same advice I give everyone else with drive failure: image the drive first, ASAP, before trying anything else.

The act of trying to boot Windows from it could very well kill it completely.

MagicallyDelicous

I had a blurry screen shot before that someone asked me to post them more clearly so I stated the same to you... stop crying...

Bob

00:20

Heck, I even have recent experience!

(recovered a bit of data, the delta since last backup, from my failed drive. then chkdsk killed it dead.)

Ramhound

Chkdsk ran... system restore failed... don't got a blank DVD for Acronis... Bah!

@MagicallyDelicous ok, when I get the chance on a week to chnage the screenshot I will,

More worried about the fact my pc failed to boot, ok?

djsmiley2k

Chkdsk not showing any errors @Ramhound?

Ramhound

I am not sure, it was one of the automatic ones, and I went to decompress in the other room and the recovery attempt simply failed

and a log file was generated

which I forgot to look at, ha!

djsmiley2k

Ah ok

Ramhound

my files are there, that's a good sign

djsmiley2k

00:33

gonna say, if chkdisk can run, that's usually a good sign

Ramhound

the automatic repair scan disks don't display a progress

or perhaps just the one Windows 10 runs, honestly I didnt seee it actually finish

Rebuilding BCD might do command prompt chkdsk next

if this boot fails

fudge failed again!

djsmiley2k

:/

getting a boot error?

Also have you tried completely powering off? wouldn't supprise me if uefi/bios got confused

Ramhound

I have.... making it worse 😂

God I hate my laptop and it's all I have to create a Acronis WinRE disk <sigh>

fantastic... UEFI isn't working ....

just a blank screen

wierd

djsmiley2k

o_O

Ramhound

I have no idea what to do... it won't even attempt to boot and going into UEFI settings fails

djsmiley2k

00:45

so i maybe right D:

Ramhound

I will try to pull the cord, but, dual bios motherboard do I press the button with the pc off or on?

Manual just says what the button does...

AsUS

djsmiley2k

:/

No clue

Ramhound

Pressed it then pressed the start button and it switched

so that solves the UEFI problem

I hope UEFI just got confused :-$

djsmiley2k

fingers crossed for you

i know the stress of something not working right

Ramhound

01:00

Now I can't get back into Advanced Startup for some odd reason

just stuck in the mode that gives you other boot options ...

Wonderful...

no idea how to get back to the Advanced Startup lol again

Yep that BCD thing I did really borked it

going to wait until the weekend I think

Journeyman Geek

01:17

ooh

there will be a borderlands 3

0_0

theverge.com/2017/3/1/14778316/…

But how do they smell?

Enquiring ~~minds~~ noses need to know

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek you mean you can't open the front door, sniff, and smell the cartridge in the nearby town's technology trade show as they demo Nintendo Switch there?

Journeyman Geek

>_>

allquixotic

because I can. (they say cats can smell things better than dogs, but choose not to be helpful to humans about it, so we don't know it)

Bob

@JourneymanGeek bu... but we haven't even started 2 yet! :P

Journeyman Geek

@Bob oh, it looks early and sweeeeeet

;p

Bob

01:30

@JourneymanGeek what. why would anyone test this.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob good question

Bob

how does someone make the decision

"oh, I wonder what this tastes like. *lick*"

unless you're one of these guys

@JourneymanGeek smells like burnt toast

oh wait that's just cause someone burnt some toast here -_-

allquixotic

@Bob shows how good your canid noses are! :P

Bob

allquixotic

sniffs Isaac Newton last farted in his lab at Trinity College. I can tell and he died in 1727.

Journeyman Geek

01:37

cats lie

a lot.

Sometimes in the sun

Journeyman Geek

02:09

0

Q: FX 8370 core(s) hang randomly. How to find a reason?

At work we've tried this PC with various Linux distros already (Debian and Red Hat mainly). First we thought it's because VMs are overloading the processor, but now it crashed when no VMs were running. From what we can tell the cores (sometimes just one, sometimes more) just start hanging, shifti...

this seems fun

Run5k

-4

Q: questions in Windows , NTFS and ipconfig

I have the following question i'd like you to help me to choose the right answer for each : In most situations, you should format a hard disk with NTFS. You use FAT or FAT32: a. To enable disk compression. b. To enable file-level and folder-level security. c. To dual boot Windows and an...

windows ntfs active-directory ipconfig

I must admit, I am rather amused that this garnered one up-vote!

Journeyman Geek

erf

yeah, looks like he throws his homework here

Run5k

@JourneymanGeek, you already know my sentiments regarding the up-vote/down-vote ratio, but that is getting a bit carried away. ;-)

Journeyman Geek

see, that's one case where a downvote makes a ton of sense

Run5k

Exactly! They definitely have their time and place.

As a related follow-up from previous conversations, when they posted up-vote/down-vote statistics for Super User moderator candidates, what was their source?

16

Q: Information on the moderator candidates

Yi Jiang has put together a nice site that use the Stack Overflow API to display information on the moderator candidates. Click here to see all the information. The information presented is: The nominees election Answers/Questions on the main site and it's meta Up-vote/down-vote ratio Averag...

discussion election

Journeyman Geek

02:23

@Run5k the API ;p

Run5k

Are the numbers the same as what the rest of us see on the user profile Activity tab?

Journeyman Geek

I have no idea

presumably yes

Run5k

Just curious. As you might imagine, I tried to be as fair and equitable as possible when compiling those statistics... no "shenanigans" involved! ;-)

Journeyman Geek

data.stackexchange.com/superuser/query/6856/…

feels like a handy starting point

@Run5k I don't feel the statistics show the whole picture.

Run5k

@JourneymanGeek, interesting query. I ran it with a minimum rep of 3000 and while I didn't recognize that vast majority of the names, there were still a handful of prominent contributors who made the list.

Journeyman Geek

02:36

for example

Ben N

I made the list with both suggested settings. (At least I already knew I should vote more)

Journeyman Geek

I deleted... something like a hundred posts this week

those would have been downvoted had I been a normal user

Run5k

That being said, you're right. Statistics need to be viewed within the proper context, versus dismissed entirely. In that Meta question I authored, I was rather confident in advance that someone would dust off that old Mark Twain quote. Obviously, me prediction came true rather quickly!

Journeyman Geek

yup!

Hence I'm providing context that's missing

also, many of those posts would be downvoted by others had they not survived me

and.. yeah

Now, something does bother me

that people would rather flag or DV when they can edit

Run5k

Absolutely! There's nothing wrong with that. I could have been the consummate wise-guy and mention that I had three different professors in college who emphasized that Mark Twain was partially responsible for the blatant dismissal of many valid statistics throughout the last 100 years. ;-)

@JourneymanGeek, agreed... I try to devote the time to edit instead whenever possible.

Journeyman Geek

02:41

but its a wierd thing

Run5k

?

Journeyman Geek

there's this range of reputation where one feels little benefit in some edits.

I had it, sure

Right now, my primary reason for edits is "This bothers me"

Run5k

What range are you referring to? Between 3000 and 10,000, perhaps? Or are you actually referring to the person whose work is being edited?

Journeyman Geek

hmm. I'd say 3k to 10K

or least where you think reputation really matters

Run5k

I know what you mean. I think I have felt that to some extent. Thankfully, there are people like you and the helpful 10k-plus people like @BenN who are quick to share their insight regarding what we can't see.

Journeyman Geek

02:45

Well, technically, Ben N should have some insight into the inner workings of SE

he's a mod (elsewhere) so roughly knows the tools we have

We actually have graphs on the percentage of closed/deleted questions in analytics

but how much we can share of it is frustratingly vague

Run5k

Yes, and he has also been nice about posting things that 10k-plus people can actually see, but 3k people can't.

Journeyman Geek

ah, 10K+ things we have some leeway on

I think you get analytics at... 20k I think?

Run5k

Really? Interesting numbers, to be sure. It is rather comforting to know that the SU veterans have some good tools at their disposal.

Journeyman Geek

I got modded before that was released.

Ben N

25K

Journeyman Geek

02:49

Oh, hardly ever use those ;p

99% of mod work is queues and the main page and meta.

Run5k

I have no doubt. It may seem like the proverbial thankless job, but I know that many of us really do appreciate your time and effort.

Journeyman Geek

lol

glares at review queue numbers

I actually find that more frustrating

Run5k

I am chipping away at Close Votes, but as you know we are constrained to 20 per day.

Journeyman Geek

yup

but I find more than that, even with unlimited votes...

quality suffers

and yanno, my closes are one shot kills

Run5k

Basically, I crank out 20 every evening while my wife is making dinner.

Ah... that makes sense.

Journeyman Geek

03:02

Actually its a bit of a pain when reviewing. ;p

I have "Yes this is good" or "DIE DIE DIE"

Run5k

I can certainly understand how you must encounter some serious "SMH" moments on a semi-regular basis.

@BenN, if you don't mind me saying so, during my rather short tenure within the Super User world I have noticed that you seem to post some of the most level-headed, helpful answers in the Meta questions. I was looking forward to hearing your thoughts on my up-vote/down-vote ratio question... but certainly understand anyone who doesn't want to touch that topic. ;-)

Bob

03:19

floof

Psycogeek

If anyone from california says they gonna sue you , in the High Court , this might be what they were referring to . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK5mCWbuH40
Real cases, real people, fryed up judge.

Bob

05:18

!!tumbleweed

ChatBot John Cavil

Bob

05:29

@allquixotic LXD on Bash on Ubuntu on Windows on Azure!

(well. it's installed by default. doesn't work though :P)

Journeyman Geek

05:55

0_0

bwDraco

AMD Ryzen press embargo expires in nine hours. Reviews will be up at 1500 UTC today.

Journeyman Geek

06:28

lol

djsmiley2k

06:39

@bwDraco So, what you thinking - is the hype valid?

bwDraco

It's a little late for me to talk about this right now. I'll wake up to see the buzz next morning.

The big thing here is that high-performance 8C/16T processors are suddenly a lot more accessible than they used to be.

Nighty-night.

One last thing...

Jan 24 '15 at 15:01, by DragonLord

AMD will probably recapture the price/performance lead with the Zen chips in 2016

Jan 24 '15 at 15:27, by DragonLord

I am bloody scared that Intel's only desktop CPU competitor may die a horrible death

Jan 27 '15 at 17:24, by DragonLord

The upcoming AMD Zen architecture looks really promising, but I'm not sure if they can hold down the fort long enough before the architecture and its associated 14nm process are ready...

Jun 1 '16 at 22:40, by bwDraco

I was thinking that if AMD can deliver a competitive 8C/16T product around the $500-600 mark, they'd have a real winner on their hands.

Two years later, we are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. AMD indeed has a winner on their hands.

Burgi

08:48

hey

Journeyman Geek

Woof

Rahul2001

Lalalalalalala!

DavidPostill

09:10

\o

tereško

my ordered headphones finally arrived , yey :D

also, mornin

DavidPostill

09:26

Oooh. Another silly question hits HNQ. I'm not complaining though :)

Burgi

link?

DavidPostill

9

Q: How do I "unzoom" the currently selected character in Windows Character Map?

When I launch the Windows character map, it looks like this: When I click on a character to select it, it looks like this: Notice that the zoomed in view of the ± character obscures the ° to the left and the ² to the right. So how do I get it to unzoom, so that the selected character is n...

windows-10 character-map

It was a trivial exercise to gargle the answer.

Burgi

enjoy the repcap

DavidPostill

@Burgi Thx :)

Journeyman Geek

09:46

hm, that is slightly creeepy

DavidPostill

@JourneymanGeek ?

Journeyman Geek

Youtube suggested an LGR video about a game that runs off a boot disk

I just answered a question where I was talking about why a modern day booter game was impossible today ;p

granted I've been watching a lot of LGR

Burgi

10:40

London Greek Radio?

Journeyman Geek

Lazy game reviews.

tereško

10:56

Burgi

hmmm...

tricky

Journeyman Geek

11:12

@Bob the watch guys offterd me 60% off on a new watch or 90usd to fix it. After 3 months.

I think they started at 40%

Bob

11:49

@JourneymanGeek how much did the thing cost in the first place?

Journeyman Geek

@Bob 139 before shipping.

Bob

@JourneymanGeek urk.

Journeyman Geek

I'm fed up at this point.

And it's been nearly two months.

Burgi

can you go chew their trouser legs?

Journeyman Geek

Alas, too far away.

Burgi

12:05

what is the bandwidth of the midnight howl?

could you send a message via the howl to a local canine to go nibble on them?

Journeyman Geek

Its china.

Anyway, see what happens next

Burgi

you'll need about 2700 dogs

that is assuming you can hear a dog 1 mile away

Journeyman Geek

12:21

> We're pleased to tell you that your Stack Exchange swag is on its way! If you like to keep track of things heading to you in the mail, the following information will give you an idea of where the package is at.

yaaaay

jokerdino

omg 100k swags?

1/4 way there.

Journeyman Geek

There's a list of things too

vaguely

Burgi

13:12

anyone else having issues with feedly today?

Journeyman Geek

AWS? ;p

Burgi

hmm?

Journeyman Geek

maybe they're still recovering from yesterday's excitement

DavidPostill

status.aws.amazon.com claims everything is running normally ...

lol

> And unfortunately that was the case on Tuesday when at the very moment Cockcroft was on stage making the case for AWS, a good chunk of the internet had been taken down (including Business Insider's site) because AWS' computer storage service, S3, was suffering major technical problems.

Journeyman Geek

lol

DavidPostill

13:27

> In the few minutes while Cockcroft spoke onstage touting the advantages of Amazon's cloud services, likely unaware of the AWS technical troubles occurring that very moment, an internet meme was born.

Burgi

hmmm... we use centrify and it keeps failing which stops the server DNS from working

Burgi

13:45

arstechnica.co.uk/cars/2017/01/…

Oliver Salzburg

S3 was down in 1 of 12 regions and everybody acts like the world has ended

Just because a lot of providers only host in a single region :P

Sometimes people forget that the US is actually only a subset of the planet

Burgi

LIES!!!!

RH will flag you for that

Oliver Salzburg

I fear no flag!

Journeyman Geek

!!flagged

ChatBot John Cavil

Journeyman Geek

13:48

....

@OliverSalzburg imgur dosen't work

Oliver Salzburg

@JourneymanGeek Yeah, apparently they're only hosting in us-east-1

Journeyman Geek

;p

imgur man

Oliver Salzburg

At least that's what it looked like during the last S3 outage

Journeyman Geek

IMGUR

DavidPostill

@Burgi He got terribadly upset when I jokingly threatened to flag him for calling our parliament/politicians corrupt (the fact that they probably are is irrelevant)

Oliver Salzburg

13:49

Oh right

Journeyman Geek

but this is why I run important things like my rss feed reader myself ;p

Oliver Salzburg

Rightly so

Yesterday I was plagued with a faulty SSL cert on a CDN we're using

Yay for CDNs!

Journeyman Geek

lol

apparently SE is getting attacked by wild webcams, and their CDN is taking the brunt of it

Oliver Salzburg

The providers seems to lack the N in their CDN, which leads to a lack of D, which results in no C

Lack of D is bad

If you know what I mean

Journeyman Geek

no?

Burgi

14:00

no network means no distribution of content

Journeyman Geek

Not the long Ds then?

HackToHell

14:28

anandtech.com/show/11170/…

THE REVIEW IS HERE

DavidPostill

Capped :)

Ben N

Nice! Also, I had no idea Space did anything in charmap, that's neat

Rahul2001

Hello!

Ben N

Hi!

Rahul2001

I spent weeks looking for suitable USB encryption software. Guess what I ended up doing? I created an encrypted 7z archive and now just add files to it :P

...And it turns out that files added later aren't encrypted. Great :(

Ben N

14:38

BitLocker works on flash drives

HackToHell

veracrypt

Rahul2001

@BenN I use linux in school :/

sourceforge.net/p/sevenzip/bugs/1361

Appears to be fixed? Let me update 7z...

Okay, yay! It worked!

Journeyman Geek

15:28

@Bob that sg data center tech role I applied for seems to have vanished :(

bwDraco

roar

Bob

@JourneymanGeek :(

not gonna try for an au one? :P

(yea, bad timing and all)

bwDraco

The wait is over. anandtech.com/show/11170/… tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-7-1800x-cpu,4951.html

Darksoulpk68

Hey people, I'm looking for someone who could help me with my Excel worksheet... I'm not having an issue, but I'm looking for ideas. Anyone could help ?

Journeyman Geek

@Bob timing and all, yeah

Bob

15:40

@JourneymanGeek could see if they reply and then say your cirumstances changed :P

maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe a way into sg, who knows

Journeyman Geek

lol

they have a speculative CV option I shall try tommorrow

bwDraco

extremetech.com/gaming/… arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/amd-ryzen-review

(noted weakness in single-threaded gaming workloads)

Bob

@bwDraco that... was my first guess.

Burgi

@JourneymanGeek DO have an office in your area...

Bob

> Ryzen, it seems, is a much better floating point performer than it is an integer performer.

That's interesting...

anyways... zzzZZZzzzZZZ

looks like... decent price/perf, but of course whether it's equal-or-betterin raw perf is situational. entirely as expected. also not surprising at all that AMD only released the best of the benchmarks :P

Journeyman Geek

15:51

@Burgi nothing listed here

Burgi

Their name should be Analogue Sea

Bob

@Burgi s/sea/land/

Burgi

heh

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