O.T. Missing Folder/files

Robert in CA wrote:
I finished the Mrimg on the 8500 but I had to delete a couple of the older
ones because Macrium gave me a message there wasn't enough room to
finish.

https://postimg.cc/Q9LkHfMj

So our problem now lies with the 780 and why won't the external hd connect?
They did fine all during the cloning. So why are they hanging up now?

Robert


I think the "cable" did connect, because it gave you
a "device" with "no media".

But, we don't know what is doing that.

I'm not able to reproduce that here. I can't make
a device claiming "no media", using the same Asmedia chip.

It has a drive letter, but because the size is zero,
I don't think there's much we can do to it in that state.

*******

If the raw drive is placed inside the 780, does it work then ?
What does Disk Management say (block on the left of the row) ?

Paul

We no longer have any raw drives I used #! and #2 on the 780 to create clones
#3 and #4 were used for the 8500 and now are Activated and operational hard
drives. I tested #1 and #2 to make sure they booted after cloning like we always do
which is why I don;t understand why it's not recognizing the hd's?

This doesn't make any sense at all

I reconnected to cable to the hd just in case , and tried it again with the same results.
I'll try again with #1.

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
We no longer have any raw drives I used #! and #2 on the 780 to create clones
#3 and #4 were used for the 8500 and now are Activated and operational hard
drives. I tested #1 and #2 to make sure they booted after cloning like we always do
which is why I don;t understand why it's not recognizing the hd's?

This doesn't make any sense at all

I reconnected to cable to the hd just in case , and tried it again with the same results.
I'll try again with #1.

Robert


You can plug the enclosure into the 8500 as well as
the 780, for file system testing. Do safely remove
before removal.

Paul

There's no icon to safely remove and you said if no icon was present then
the partitions haven't loaded and I could just pull the plug, correct?

I'm not going to risk the 8500( my primary computer) in this after all the
trouble we had of fixing it. Also the 780 is suppose to back up the 8500
not the other way around.

As an alternative I can put #1 or #2 inside the 780 and see if they boot.

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
There's no icon to safely remove and you said if no icon was present then
the partitions haven't loaded and I could just pull the plug, correct?

I'm not going to risk the 8500( my primary computer) in this after all the
trouble we had of fixing it. Also the 780 is suppose to back up the 8500
not the other way around.

As an alternative I can put #1 or #2 inside the 780 and see if they boot.

Robert

Sure. You can do that.

If it boots, you hardly even have to look at
Disk Management then. Much of what is on the disk
has to be in working order, for it to boot.

The 780 is a legacy BIOS machine, so no UEFI
and no GPT disk support. It would be as bog-standard
in a sense, as your 8200 was. The one difference being
it has SATA ports, which the 8200 didn't have.

Test and see if it boots. It should.

But the mystery remains, why the enclosure chip insists
the drive is "removable media". My enclosure, the chip
is close to the same as yours, and I can't get it to
go to that No Media state.

And just for the record, the 2TB hard drives, the size
set for those is not the "magic value" of 2.2TB (the limit
of 28 bit LBA addressing), so there isn't much excuse for the
drive to trigger odd behavior. Only if the enclosure had a
1TB limit, might the 2TB disk upset it, and I see no such
limit here in testing. My 2TB drive works.

Paul

Yes, it is odd that I was able to clone the drives yet they don;t
connect externally.

I'm running a SuperAntiSpyware scan on the 780 at present but
as soon as it finish's I'll switch hd's and see if it boots.


You have to admit this whole scenario with the 8500 and the 780
is odd.

Robert

I installed #1hd in the 780 and it booted normally. So why doesn't the 780
recognize the external hd?

https://postimg.cc/BPBnKFbT

https://postimg.cc/pyfT7wCm


At any rate it works, I think I'll check the #2 hd to make sure it also boots
and at the same time change the partitions in both hd's which was the whole
point of attaching the external hd's in the first place. Hmmmmm maybe I
changed the partitions during cloning?

Robert

Both #1 and #2 booted normally on the 780 so I have backup
hd's for both computers and the partitions are set for all of them
I believe. Thankfully we were able to activate all of the 8500 hd's
so that's finished and both 780 clone boot fine and the partitions
are expanded.

https://postimg.cc/18q7yrjY

https://postimg.cc/4nx8Yg0c

So were all finished other than the external hd problem of connecting. Which
is strange because the Patriot key connects and the Mrimgs connected.

https://postimg.cc/TpyCccfY

https://postimg.cc/9rv1gqQP

What do you think causes this?

I'm now going to put the 2TB clone we did off the original 780hd back in the
computer and #1 and #2 go back in their boxes.

I want to thank you again for all your great help and taking the time to explain
things. I really appreciate it.


Robert

I should be OK now with my backups and Mrimgs etc. Although since I put
the 2TB #4 in the 8500 it means I only have the #3 hd as a spare and the 1TB .
The 780 has a 2TB hd plus (2) spares #1 and #2.

However, I should be able to create clones now without the activation problem
is that correct? The problem is will the external connect to create a clone?

That can wait till later though,... I don't want to start causing problems after we
spent so much time on getting everything fixed. Maybe if I have to use #3 I'll
create more then. I may buy more HD's just in case though.

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
I should be OK now with my backups and Mrimgs etc. Although since I put
the 2TB #4 in the 8500 it means I only have the #3 hd as a spare and the 1TB .
The 780 has a 2TB hd plus (2) spares #1 and #2.

However, I should be able to create clones now without the activation problem
is that correct? The problem is will the external connect to create a clone?

That can wait till later though,... I don't want to start causing problems after we
spent so much time on getting everything fixed. Maybe if I have to use #3 I'll
create more then. I may buy more HD's just in case though.

Robert

I think your universe has reached a state of quasi-stability,
requiring that you "knock on wood".

The backspace key will have to wait I guess, until one of
your applications admits it's been naughty...

The thing with the activation problem, comes with no guarantees.
The test cases indicate the outcome is a coin flip. Could
go one way, or the other. But at least you know how to fix it now.

I would consider your current stock of 1TB and 2TB materials,
to be "boot disks". If something from the pool fails, you move
to the next one. It might take some time, before you burn through
all of them. Perhaps your next disk can be a larger capacity one,
but be warned, that the larger the disk is, the longer maintenance
takes on it. Like if you need to clean off a disk to make room
for something, that can take all day to finish on a big drive.

I have a number of disks that are "retired", but they have not
stopped spinning. Your current supply of disks should last for
a while, based on the failure statistics of mine. The last disk
that just "died" on me, was a 40GB Maxtor IDE (I actually had more
than one of those fail).

Paul

Believe me I have knocked on wood several times during the process.

It is unfortunate we couldn't get the backspace key back but I'll certainly
post if anything comes up about it.

You mean the Activation can flip all of a sudden on it's own and I loose it
again? So does that mean I have to continually fix this?

I don't plan on changing the size of my drives. 2TB is prefect for me and
I barely used any space on the 1TB. So I don't see me changing sizes. I
have thought however of buying more blank hd's just in case.

I also still have the original hd to the 780 I think it was 733GB hard drive?


Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
Believe me I have knocked on wood several times during the process.

It is unfortunate we couldn't get the backspace key back but I'll certainly
post if anything comes up about it.

You mean the Activation can flip all of a sudden on it's own and I loose it
again? So does that mean I have to continually fix this?

I don't plan on changing the size of my drives. 2TB is prefect for me and
I barely used any space on the 1TB. So I don't see me changing sizes. I
have thought however of buying more blank hd's just in case.

I also still have the original hd to the 780 I think it was 733GB hard drive?


Robert


No, the Activation, I suspect, will be a one-off caused
by the cloning. But exactly why, I don't know why.

There is only the one page about it, written by an MVP
years ago. Tipping over a PC tends to happen when
a lot of hardware changes are made. User changes 2 core
processor to 4 cores, changes memory from 4GB to 8GB,
changes out the motherboard and puts in another motherboard.
Bing! Not Genuine.

Changing the hard drive is not typically part of that
calculus. If it were, I would have tipped over a PC here
by now, and that's never happened. And I'm all the time
moving OSes from one disk to another, cloning, restoring
from backup, and so on. If storage were a factor,
I'd have seen it by now. I don't think I've ever had
a Not Genuine here, for the production OSes. Sure, the
VMs I spin up here are Not Genuine, but then, they never
had a license key, they were never activated. And those are
thrown away after they get a bit old.

*******

Your 780 could be a 750GB drive. They made those at one
time, but they're not an official product today. In fact,
making small drives is "hard". The small platter now, is
1TB in size. If they need to make a 500GB hard drive,
they use half of the platter. The market still called
for 500GB drives, otherwise they would have swiftly
stopped making them and concentrated on 1TB ones.

As a consequence of the ever-expanding platters,
some of the small sizes aren't really good options
any more.

When the 750GB drive was made, it was likely made from
three platters of 250GB each.

Paul

So if I clone again even with the 2TB hd it will deactivate
the clone again and I'll have to do the slui again? The 780
was a refurbished computer so it never did have the original
OS and that's why we never had a problems cloning it. Yet
from what you say I should have the same problem on the 780
regardless as the 8500 but I don't. Isn't that odd? Just as odd
as the 780 doesn't recognize the external hd but recognizes the
Patriot Key and the hd with Mrimgs and when I put the clones
drives inside the 780 they both worked. So there's some
inconsistencies going on.

At present both original hd's from both computers are boxed
and both computers now have a 2TB hd.

Are you suggesting I buy a larger hd's even though I won't use hardly
any of it? That will totally mess up my backup system because it
changes the format and I can't go backwards if I upgrade to a larger
hd, correct?

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
So if I clone again even with the 2TB hd it will deactivate
the clone again and I'll have to do the slui again? The 780
was a refurbished computer so it never did have the original
OS and that's why we never had a problems cloning it. Yet
from what you say I should have the same problem on the 780
regardless as the 8500 but I don't. Isn't that odd? Just as odd
as the 780 doesn't recognize the external hd but recognizes the
Patriot Key and the hd with Mrimgs and when I put the clones
drives inside the 780 they both worked. So there's some
inconsistencies going on.

At present both original hd's from both computers are boxed
and both computers now have a 2TB hd.

Are you suggesting I buy a larger hd's even though I won't use hardly
any of it? That will totally mess up my backup system because it
changes the format and I can't go backwards if I upgrade to a larger
hd, correct?

Robert

Buying a single larger drive would only be if you needed
to store more MRIMGs.

And that would depend on what good you think your MRIMGs
are. For example, if you needed Bookmarks from 2015, then
having extended storage would help.

If the purpose of the backups is mainly for disaster protection,
you have enough materials as it is. If one 2TB drive fails, you
have one to take its place.

I suppose the notion is silly at the moment, because there
is a shortage of the larger drives, and if there are any
available, the prices are too high.

Paul

I think I'm pretty well set for the present and my needs. The main
purpose for the Mrimgs is for disaster protection. As I said, I may
buy more hd's but I think I would also want to buy the 9020 as a
backup computer for the 8500 in case its motherboard should
ever fail. Then we would have to clone hd's for that.

However that has to wait a bit as I have other projects that have been
sitting idle while I dealt with the computer.

Many thanks again,
Robert