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#1
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Chkdsk or what???
Greetings Backup time again, but before I start, lets see what is on the backup drive, in terms of duplications. Oh look, yes, there are multiple files in multiple trees. So leave us consolidate some of this before we run the backup program. Interesting, when we started,we had 46 gigs free space, but now after consolidation, we are up to 25 gigs. And the entire "workspace" directory and subtree has disappeared. Could these be related? I clicked on "properties" for drive I: ("Terabite") and chose "error-checking". Fortunately, I've had a lot of other things to do, so the fact that it has taken a couple hours to get half way through has not been a great problem. (I find computer maintenance to actually be an aid to productivity. Which it is muttering to itself, I go get other things done. Like letter writing, the shopping, and so forth. But I digress.) My reason for running this check is the possibility that something hiccupped and left allocated some 20 gigs of files, but forgot to tell the directory tree were they were. Anyway, the point I'm after: would I have been "better" off to run chksdks from a command line, at least for speed? And is there something else which might do the job, at least no worse? Someday's, I miss the old days when the computers, OS and software wasn't so capable. Some days. Today is not one of them. tschus pyotr -- pyotr filipivich The question was asked: "Is Hindsight overrated?" In retrospect, it appears to be. |
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#2
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Chkdsk or what???
pyotr filipivich wrote:
Greetings Backup time again, but before I start, lets see what is on the backup drive, in terms of duplications. Oh look, yes, there are multiple files in multiple trees. So leave us consolidate some of this before we run the backup program. Interesting, when we started,we had 46 gigs free space, but now after consolidation, we are up to 25 gigs. And the entire "workspace" directory and subtree has disappeared. Could these be related? I clicked on "properties" for drive I: ("Terabite") and chose "error-checking". Fortunately, I've had a lot of other things to do, so the fact that it has taken a couple hours to get half way through has not been a great problem. (I find computer maintenance to actually be an aid to productivity. Which it is muttering to itself, I go get other things done. Like letter writing, the shopping, and so forth. But I digress.) My reason for running this check is the possibility that something hiccupped and left allocated some 20 gigs of files, but forgot to tell the directory tree were they were. Anyway, the point I'm after: would I have been "better" off to run chksdks from a command line, at least for speed? And is there something else which might do the job, at least no worse? Someday's, I miss the old days when the computers, OS and software wasn't so capable. Some days. Today is not one of them. tschus pyotr How many disks do you own ? In your situation, I would be copying the files to a second drive. I would not "clone", even though cloning is the superior solution. Good cloning software will run chkdsk first in check-only mode, and refuse to clone if the file system is "broken". Copying files can still fail, but the failure will be a bit more "passive" (the transfer stops, you know something is wrong). CHKDSK can be absolutely destructive, totally destroying the volume. If you've never seen this happen, it's a sight to behold. This is why you should not be in a rush to run CHKDSK in every situation. Think about your options first. You *can* do clones at the disk dump ("dd") level. This allows making a second, exact copy. And there is a port of "dd" available for this purpose. I don't know what the max disk size is. I've probably not tested this at extreme size values. http://www.chrysocome.net/dd http://www.chrysocome.net/downloads/dd-0.6beta3.zip The first link contains a description of the tool. In any case, you have (some) options for a safety-first approach to this problem. If Macrium Reflect Free will agree to "clone" the disk for you, then so much the better. As it implies the disk isn't damaged enough to prevent cloning. If I have my suspicions about the health of something, I might use more than one disk for the job (and a different safety mechanism on each disk). Paul |
#3
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Chkdsk or what???
In message , Paul
writes: [] I would not "clone", even though cloning is the superior solution. Good cloning software will run chkdsk first in check-only mode, and refuse to clone if the file system is "broken". [] In any case, you have (some) options for a safety-first approach to this problem. If Macrium Reflect Free will agree to "clone" the disk for you, then so much the better. As it implies the disk isn't damaged enough to prevent cloning. If I have my suspicions about the health of something, I might use more than one disk for the job (and a different safety mechanism on each disk). [] That's interesting. I've always taken "clone" - of a whole drive, anyway, different for partitions - to mean a complete sector-by-sector copy, either to an identical disc, or to a larger disc which after cloning would appear the same size as the original, or to an image file of some sort. I always imagined such cloning would copy a "broken" file system, including the broken-ness, unless the drive was physically faulty (some sectors not being readable [at least, returned as such by the drive's internal electronics]). At least, with the cloning software set to "dumb copy", rather than the (default, these days) smarter version that just copies the "used" parts, which implies understanding of the DFS in use. Certainly, the dumb version must be what's used in forensic (crime-investigation) situations. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Do ministers do more than lay people? |
#4
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Chkdsk or what???
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
That's interesting. I've always taken "clone" - of a whole drive, anyway, different for partitions - to mean a complete sector-by-sector copy, either to an identical disc, or to a larger disc which after cloning would appear the same size as the original, or to an image file of some sort. I always imagined such cloning would copy a "broken" file system, including the broken-ness, unless the drive was physically faulty (some sectors not being readable [at least, returned as such by the drive's internal electronics]). At least, with the cloning software set to "dumb copy", rather than the (default, these days) smarter version that just copies the "used" parts, which implies understanding of the DFS in use. Certainly, the dumb version must be what's used in forensic (crime-investigation) situations. Macrium builds an index of a file system. It has a table of filenames and LBA clusters. Macrium uses smart copy for both backups and cloning. It does *not* copy all the sectors. If you have files recently deleted, you would like to do an undelete on them, then running Macrium in clone or backup, will *not* bring over the materials necessary for undelete to work. Things that are deleted, are not recorded. A Macrium clone or a Macrium backup, is *not* a forensic copy. Not by any stretch of the imagination. If you have 20GB of files on a 500GB partition, Macrium does 20GB of writes for either "clone" or "backup". The other 480GB are not touched. I have tested Macrium in the past, ticked some box that claimed to be closer to traditional "dd" style cloning, and it *still* only did 20GB of writes. And you just know your undelete information is being tossed into the drink. The beauty of a Macrium (or twenty other backups softwares) when they do cloning using VSS, is they tend to copy the LBAs sequentially. The head on the disk drive doesn't have to fly all over the place, as it would in a file copy operation. Similarly, a "dd" sector-by-sector copy (500GB of writes for a 500GB partition), is sequential and easy on the head assembly. Whereas with desktop file copying, if a file is fragmented, the copy routine will have the heads fly all over the disk in the LBA order recorded for the file. If there's a thousand fragments, the head has to do a thousand seeks. Some seeks don't cost anything, if the track buffer happens to have the cluster in question, but some LBAs will be separated by long strides. And fragments can be ahead or behind where the heads are currently. The "nice" characteristic of a Macrium operation are degraded by an attempt to change the partition size. Changing partition size in Macrium (during a clone or during a restore from backup), results in a kind of defragmentation. And it also causes the heads to chatter more than they normally would. Paul |
#5
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Chkdsk or what???
In message , Paul
writes: J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: That's interesting. I've always taken "clone" - of a whole drive, anyway, different for partitions - to mean a complete sector-by-sector copy, either to an identical disc, or to a larger disc which after cloning would appear the same size as the original, or to an image file of some sort. I always imagined such cloning would copy a "broken" file system, including the broken-ness, unless the drive was physically faulty (some sectors not being readable [at least, returned as such by the drive's internal electronics]). At least, with the cloning software set to "dumb copy", rather than the (default, these days) smarter version that just copies the "used" parts, which implies understanding of the DFS in use. Certainly, the dumb version must be what's used in forensic (crime-investigation) situations. Macrium builds an index of a file system. It has a table of filenames and LBA clusters. Macrium uses smart copy for both backups and cloning. It does *not* copy all the sectors. If you have files recently deleted, you would like to do an undelete on them, then running Macrium in clone or backup, will *not* bring over the materials necessary for undelete to work. Things that are deleted, are not recorded. A Macrium clone or a Macrium backup, is *not* a forensic copy. Not by any stretch of the imagination. If you have 20GB of files on a 500GB partition, Macrium does 20GB of writes for either "clone" or "backup". The other 480GB are not touched. I have tested Macrium in the past, ticked some box that claimed to be closer to traditional "dd" style cloning, and it *still* only did 20GB of writes. And you just know your undelete information is being tossed into the drink. (I've only used it for images, but I presume its clone mode works similarly.) So one wonders what that option - I think it's under "Advanced", and called something like "smart [something]", default to on - actually does if you turn it off. (I. e. what difference does it make turning it off. Or on.) The beauty of a Macrium (or twenty other backups softwares) when they do cloning using VSS, is they tend to copy the LBAs sequentially. The head on the disk drive doesn't have to fly all over the place, as it would in a file So you mean it (they) copy sectors in sequential order (so any fragments end up where they were), but only sectors that were marked as in-use, i. e. skipping sectors marked unused (and presumably, on the target drive, leaving those sectors containing whatever they did)? [] The "nice" characteristic of a Macrium operation are degraded by an attempt to change the partition size. Changing partition size in Macrium (during a clone or during a restore from backup), results in a kind of defragmentation. And it also causes the heads to chatter more than they normally would. Paul Hmm. I'm not sure what I'd expect it to do if I was "cloning" but changing partition size at the same time; to me, that isn't a clone. (The couple of times I've done it, I've not changed, but used a partition manager afterwards to access the new space - but, those were restoring from an image [on a third disc], not a clone.) -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf As for cooking, what a bore that is. It's such a faff, thinking of what to have, buying it and cooking it and clearing up, then all you do is eat it - and have to start all over again next day. Hunter Davies, RT 2017/2/4-10 |
#6
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Chkdsk or what???
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
Hmm. I'm not sure what I'd expect it to do if I was "cloning" but changing partition size at the same time; to me, that isn't a clone. (The couple of times I've done it, I've not changed, but used a partition manager afterwards to access the new space - but, those were restoring from an image [on a third disc], not a clone.) Take the case of cloning a 1TB boot drive, to a new 128GB SSD you bought. Assuming the OS isn't too big, it should still fit. But the partitions will need "massaging", and it's unwise to modify the source for the task. (That's in case you expect the 1TB to work as before, immediately, if you plug it in during an emergency). The easiest use case, might be to shrink C: on the source 1TB drive. But a typical situation, is Disk Management cannot shrink C: by more than half. The shrink operation would get you to 500GB or so. Now you need a commercial defragmenter to move the unmovable stuff down a bit more. Whereas the "clone+shrink" that Macrium can do, could easily make the large partition fit onto the small SSD. Because it's a clone, there are no constraints on the activities on the (unmounted) destination partition. This is what good software does, makes use cases like this "seem like magic". For that's what it is, in this case, saving a lot of hair loss. And because the source is not modified, you don't even need a backup. If the clone fails, only write cycles on the SSD are wasted. Paul |
#7
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Chkdsk or what???
Wolf K on Mon, 10 Sep 2018 19:25:38 -0400 typed
in alt.windows7.general the following: On 2018-09-10 18:29, pyotr filipivich wrote: Greetings Backup time again, but before I start, lets see what is on the backup drive, in terms of duplications. Oh look, yes, there are multiple files in multiple trees. So leave us consolidate some of this before we run the backup program. Interesting, when we started,we had 46 gigs free space, but now after consolidation, we are up to 25 gigs. And the entire "workspace" directory and subtree has disappeared. Could these be related? How did you consolidate? Move? Copy and Delete? Delete duplicates? Keep in mind that deleted files are counted until the trash can is emptied. I used Robocopy and the /mov option. Took all night. And I have cleared the recycle bin, several times. But, still no simple answer. I used CCleaner to find duplicate files. Over 700,000 entries in the resulting text file (about 150k entries are "--------------------------" to separate the entries.) Trying to massage that into a useable size file to search for "useful" duplicates. (Not "readme.txt, urchin.js, faculty.jpq,etc) is a long tedious process. Going to try some other preliminary approaches to narrow it down.) Best, -- pyotr filipivich Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing? |
#8
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Found It! was Chkdsk or what???
pyotr filipivich on Mon, 10 Sep 2018 15:29:02
-0700 typed in alt.windows7.general the following: Greetings Backup time again, but before I start, lets see what is on the backup drive, in terms of duplications. Oh look, yes, there are multiple files in multiple trees. So leave us consolidate some of this before we run the backup program. Interesting, when we started,we had 46 gigs free space, but now after consolidation, we are up to 25 gigs. And the entire "workspace" directory and subtree has disappeared. Could these be related? I clicked on "properties" for drive I: ("Terabite") and chose "error-checking". Fortunately, I've had a lot of other things to do, so the fact that it has taken a couple hours to get half way through has not been a great problem. (I find computer maintenance to actually be an aid to productivity. Which it is muttering to itself, I go get other things done. Like letter writing, the shopping, and so forth. But I digress.) My reason for running this check is the possibility that something hiccupped and left allocated some 20 gigs of files, but forgot to tell the directory tree were they were. Anyway, the point I'm after: would I have been "better" off to run chksdks from a command line, at least for speed? And is there something else which might do the job, at least no worse? Okay, for those who want to know, chkdsk run from a DOS prompt runs faster than whatever 'checking disk integrity' service gets started when you click on Properties. Secondly, I found the "missing mass" - or something. There was Yet Another Directory Tree Which after I merged it with the First Tree (robocopy Q: R: /s ... /mov) left 83 gigs of stuff behind. I'm going a quick and dirty "does this sound important" on the stuff left behind, and deleting it. Yeah, 25 gigs freed up on just the preliminary. fun and games. pyotr -- pyotr filipivich Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing? |
#9
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Chkdsk or what???
On Tue, 11 Sep 2018 08:31:15 -0400, Paul wrote:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: That's interesting. I've always taken "clone" - of a whole drive, anyway, different for partitions - to mean a complete sector-by-sector copy, either to an identical disc, or to a larger disc which after cloning would appear the same size as the original, or to an image file of some sort. I always imagined such cloning would copy a "broken" file system, including the broken-ness, unless the drive was physically faulty (some sectors not being readable [at least, returned as such by the drive's internal electronics]). At least, with the cloning software set to "dumb copy", rather than the (default, these days) smarter version that just copies the "used" parts, which implies understanding of the DFS in use. Certainly, the dumb version must be what's used in forensic (crime-investigation) situations. Macrium builds an index of a file system. It has a table of filenames and LBA clusters. Macrium uses smart copy for both backups and cloning. It does *not* copy all the sectors. If you have files recently deleted, you would like to do an undelete on them, then running Macrium in clone or backup, will *not* bring over the materials necessary for undelete to work. Things that are deleted, are not recorded. A Macrium clone or a Macrium backup, is *not* a forensic copy. Not by any stretch of the imagination. If you have 20GB of files on a 500GB partition, Macrium does 20GB of writes for either "clone" or "backup". The other 480GB are not touched. I have tested Macrium in the past, ticked some box that claimed to be closer to traditional "dd" style cloning, and it *still* only did 20GB of writes. And you just know your undelete information is being tossed into the drink. I haven't tested Macrium in that way and have no reason to doubt you, but that's NOT what the Reflect GUI would have you believe. The two options a - Intelligent Sector Copy (Recommended) Copies only disk sectors used by the file system. Windows pagefile and suspend to disk (hibernation) are not copied. This reduces the image size and backup time. - Make an exact copy of the partition(s). Partitions include unused sectors therefore forensic examination of the partition(s) remain unchanged. Deleted files may be recovered for example. Are they lying about that second option? -- Char Jackson |
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Chkdsk or what???
On Tue, 11 Sep 2018 12:17:13 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: That's interesting. I've always taken "clone" - of a whole drive, anyway, different for partitions - to mean a complete sector-by-sector copy, either to an identical disc, or to a larger disc which after cloning would appear the same size as the original, or to an image file of some sort. Technically, cloning is disk-to-disk, while imaging is disk-to-file. You can't "clone" a disk to an image. They're just words, I suppose, but words are all we have. :-) -- Char Jackson |
#11
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Chkdsk or what???
Char Jackson wrote:
Are they lying about that second option? Yes. A simple "timing test" and the operation taking no time at all, tells you the entire disk is not being read. Paul |
#12
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Chkdsk or what???
Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 11 Sep 2018 12:17:13 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: That's interesting. I've always taken "clone" - of a whole drive, anyway, different for partitions - to mean a complete sector-by-sector copy, either to an identical disc, or to a larger disc which after cloning would appear the same size as the original, or to an image file of some sort. Technically, cloning is disk-to-disk, while imaging is disk-to-file. You can't "clone" a disk to an image. They're just words, I suppose, but words are all we have. :-) I think that makes sense. IOW, you can't "clone" a partition, but you can "copy" a partition to another drive - but only IF you have a spare region to put it on (meaning if a partition is already there, it *must* be deleted first and will not simply be overwritten as with file copies). (Please correct me if I'm mistaken). To me, cloning (of a drive) and image backups (of partitions) are two very different things, and it's best to have both as backups, since each has its own advantages and disadvantages. |
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Chkdsk or what???
On Tue, 25 Sep 2018 13:41:16 -0400, Paul wrote:
Char Jackson wrote: Are they lying about that second option? Yes. A simple "timing test" and the operation taking no time at all, tells you the entire disk is not being read. Thanks for the heads up. I'll try to make it a point to check it out someday. So far, the smart copy method is what I've needed. -- Char Jackson |
#14
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Chkdsk or what???
On Tue, 25 Sep 2018 12:50:16 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote: Char Jackson wrote: On Tue, 11 Sep 2018 12:17:13 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: That's interesting. I've always taken "clone" - of a whole drive, anyway, different for partitions - to mean a complete sector-by-sector copy, either to an identical disc, or to a larger disc which after cloning would appear the same size as the original, or to an image file of some sort. Technically, cloning is disk-to-disk, while imaging is disk-to-file. You can't "clone" a disk to an image. They're just words, I suppose, but words are all we have. :-) I think that makes sense. IOW, you can't "clone" a partition, but you can "copy" a partition to another drive - but only IF you have a spare region to put it on (meaning if a partition is already there, it *must* be deleted first and will not simply be overwritten as with file copies). (Please correct me if I'm mistaken). That's correct. Popular partition managers let you cut/copy and paste partitions as if they were files, but when it comes to the pasting part, there has to be sufficient _unallocated_ space available. To me, cloning (of a drive) and image backups (of partitions) are two very different things, and it's best to have both as backups, since each has its own advantages and disadvantages. I agree and preach that, but unfortunately I don't practice it myself. I don't have any clones at all, and my images get created on an irregular schedule, sometimes several years apart. -- Char Jackson |
#15
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Chkdsk or what???
In message , Char Jackson
writes: On Tue, 25 Sep 2018 12:50:16 -0600, "Bill in Co" wrote: Char Jackson wrote: On Tue, 11 Sep 2018 12:17:13 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: That's interesting. I've always taken "clone" - of a whole drive, anyway, different for partitions - to mean a complete sector-by-sector copy, either to an identical disc, or to a larger disc which after cloning would appear the same size as the original, or to an image file of some sort. Technically, cloning is disk-to-disk, while imaging is disk-to-file. You can't "clone" a disk to an image. They're just words, I suppose, but words are all we have. :-) I think that makes sense. IOW, you can't "clone" a partition, but you can "copy" a partition to another drive - but only IF you have a spare region to put it on (meaning if a partition is already there, it *must* be deleted first and will not simply be overwritten as with file copies). (Please correct me if I'm mistaken). That's correct. Popular partition managers let you cut/copy and paste partitions as if they were files, but when it comes to the pasting part, there has to be sufficient _unallocated_ space available. To me, cloning (of a drive) and image backups (of partitions) are two very different things, and it's best to have both as backups, since each has its own advantages and disadvantages. I agree and preach that, but unfortunately I don't practice it myself. I don't have any clones at all, and my images get created on an irregular schedule, sometimes several years apart. It's further complicated in that Macrium (and probably others) can create an "image" that contains partition _information_, and probably boot sector/MBR data too. I've two or three times created a Macrium image file, of my C: partition and the hidden partition (but not my D: partition); on restoring from this image to a new (larger) drive, the system has then booted from that drive, seeing the C: as the same size as before (and I was able to use a partition manager to get at the remaining parts later). [I believe Macrium can do the resizing at the same time, but I prefer to do things in baby steps.] -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Squawk Pieces of eight! Squawk Pieces of eight! Squawk Pieces of nine! SYSTEM HALTED: parroty error! |
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